RIP Leonard Cohen

[buckworks]

I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah... RIP Leonard Cohen.


[nytimes.com...]

[keyplyr]

"In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress" - Leonard Cohen

[not2easy]

Wow, didn't he just release new music? Sad news, he will be missed.

[engine]

Yes, he did just release a new album.
Leonard Cohen created haunting lyrics and admitted he was not a singer, and that's one reason there are lots of cover versions out there.

"There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

RIP Leonard Cohen.

[martinibuster]

So many cool songs. The experience of listening to one of his albums for the very first time was similar to my introduction to Nina Simone; a bit of slap in the face, startled (and thinking wtf is this?), then waking up to something entirely new, beautiful and without equal- slowly dawning that this is something remarkable.

He's been part of the soundtrack of my life since I was a young man, thirty years now.

Lady Midnight is one of my favorites. Look how much he communicates in just a few lines:

She said, "Don't try to use me
or slyly refuse me,
Just win me or lose me,
It is this that the darkness is for."

And then there are the alternately haunted, angry, and pleading verses of Avalanche. He cycles through so many states of mind, echoing the chaotic thinking of someone who had loved, vulnerable, and was now losing his grip but fighting to retain it and not altogether winning that fight. Anyone who has ever loved and lost knows what that's like.

Avalanche

I have begun to long for you,
I who have no greed;
I have begun to ask for you,
I who have no need.
You say you've gone away from me,
but I can feel you when you breathe.

Some of his songs are written with the long established theme of battle, of a war. However Leonard Cohen seemed to me to be focused on the casualties, sometimes like a nurse attending the wounds and sometimes as someone in the next cot over, holding your hand.

There is a War

You cannot stand what I've become,
You much prefer the gentleman I was before.
I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control,
I didn't even know there was a war.

Field Commander Cohen

Field Commander Cohen, he was our most important spy.
Wounded in the line of duty,
Parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties,

Layers and layers of meanings that change from person to person.

[tangor]

Wordsmith first, music composer second. It shows. And will be missed.

[phranque]

so many good songs:
Everybody Knows
I'm Your Man
Chelsea Hotel
First We Take Manhattan
Closing Time
Sisters of Mercy
...

I feel lucky to have heard his live performances.

[Robert Charlton]

I feel lucky to have heard his live performances.

phranque, I remember years ago at PubCon that your face was glowing after one of his performances which you'd attended in Vegas. It's a lovely memory.

I first became aware of Cohen's songs and singing via the soundtrack of "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". There's a lot of Cohen's material that I can't imagine anybody else performing, and his songs in this film are among them. I've always preferred his more melancholic, rougher versions of "Hallejuah", eg, to the more fully voiced, inspirationally intended covers by the better known vocalists, who ironically made the song famous.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, NPR's "Fresh Air" wove together Terry Gross's recent Oct 21 interview of Cohen, on the release of "You Want It Darker", with some commentary and pieces of earlier interviews. He was profoundly thoughtful. It's a wonderful program and a great tribute.

Remembering Leonard Cohen, Singer, Songwriter and Poet
trt 44:39
November 25, 2016 - Heard on Fresh Air
[npr.org...]

[phranque]

wow! i just read the transcript of that episode this afternoon...

by the way the 2006 interview was hosted by terry gross while the october interview was "David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, in for Terry Gross".

[Robert Charlton]

phranque, I'm delighted at the synchronicity.

...by the way the 2006 interview was hosted by terry gross while the october interview was "David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, in for Terry Gross".

Thanks. It turns out to be more complicated than that. Terry Gross hosted the 2006 interview [npr.org...] which was in fact the only interview. It was 45-minutes long and makes up the bulk of the post-Thanksgiving "Remembering Leonard Cohen" program.

I'd thought that the October 2016 show was an interview done by Gross and that it was longer. Apparently, that show was a 9-min review by Ken Tucker (not an interview) of the "You Want It Darker" album [npr.org...] ...I'm thinking that when NPR ran this review in October, they may have also run the 2006 interview, as sections of that older interview are mainly what I'd remembered.

For the November 25 show, David Bianculli, who is also a frequent guest host on Fresh Air, was substituted for Ken Tucker. Most of Tucker's review was dropped; the writing was strengthened considerably; and the new introduction to the program was framed around Cohen's death and the "You Want It Darker" title song. This was pieced together with the earlier interview so well that I didn't notice the gap.

If you've only read the transcript, definitely check out the audio online. My guess is that if you give it five minutes, you'll end up listening to the whole thing.