famous blue raincoat.

link:

1) What comes first, the music or the lyrics?
2) Are Song Lyrics Poetry?
All art aspires to the state of music. May be a cliché, but it’s the truth. And, in the 1940s, before I wrote or published anything, I’d make up songs, awful, by any standard, awful. But songs… and am fascinated by the connection between music, songwriting in particular, and poetry. I interviewed poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen years ago for CBC Radio and was especially interested to hear what he had to say about his origins—as poet, songwriter… [Leonard Cohen interview on my website, www.robertsward.com]

My journals, my blogs, are scrapbooks—among other things—places to keep and, hopefully, organize so I can find what I’m looking for later. Blogs, I find, way better for finding things than paper notebooks. Hundreds and hundreds of paper notebooks. But now I have only to search “Rosanne Cash” or “Leonard Cohen” or (songwriter) “John Stewart”, and I have what I’m looking for.

So, Saturday, April 12, 2008, reading the NY Times… Rosanne Cash in feature titled “Well, Actually, It Is Brain Surgery,” I light on some of her remarks. She begins by saying, “I haven’t written a song in about a year.” And goes on to say of her songwriter mentor John Stewart (”Daydream Believer,” “Gold,” “California Bloodlines”), he used to say to me, upon hearing a new song of mine that he thought might be too perfect or careful or contrived, either lyrically or structurally, 'But where’s the madness, Rose?'

“His belief in songs, and his sense of liberation and expansion when he approached writing, was deeply inspiring. John showed me that songs were the expression of the essential language that all other languages hinged upon. When I first began to know him, I felt that I had been speaking with a vocabulary of 200 words, and in a few months he taught me 10,000 more…”

I like when she says next, “the level of my attention has increased, when I have broken free of chord-progression ruts, when a burst of inspiration propelled me an inch or two forward in my own evolution — but “Dance With the Tiger” was an important moment.

“People always ask me, “What comes first, the music or the lyrics?” I don’t know why people are so fascinated with the answer to that question, and the question always makes me slightly nervous, as if I should have an expert opinion or a backlog of statistics on my own songwriting to give a definitive answer. I can’t…

“Often, it’s true for me that the lyrics come first. I seldom find just melodies on the guitar that come out fully fleshed, and add the lyrics afterward. If I start on the piano, it often happens that the melody will come first, of a piece. The instrument has a lot to do with the order of inspiration. Sometimes. And sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins. My song “Seven Year Ache” began as a long poem, several pages of rambling, and I distilled it down into a lyric. The melody came last.

“On vacation recently, there were some Christian fundamentalists at lunch at the next table and I felt the tension and constriction of their religious beliefs wafting off them like a perfume. That is my own projection, I’m sure, but I thought of something a friend used to say about that particular brand of religion — that it was like “looking at the ground with a flashlight when the whole universe was around you waiting to be noticed.” Walking to the beach later, I was thinking about how my own idea of God was so mutable, and that even though I pray, most of the time I haven’t a clue to whom I’m praying.

“And I like it that way. Sometimes God is Art, Music and Children and that is more than good enough. Ruminating on these things, I thought of a phrase — “the pantheon of my religious desires” — and I wrote it in my notebook. That line is probably too sophomore-English-major precious, but this is how songs begin for me. Sometimes.”


http://drswardscureformelancholia.blogspot.com/2008/04/rosanne-cash-leonard-cohen-poetry-song.html

The God Abandons Anthony ................

All those within the sound of my voice: RUN AND GET TICKETS TO ANTONY & CLEOPATRA at Theatre for a New Audience!! It's playing on 42nd St through May 2, and there are still TDF tix (if you're a member) up through April 27th. Best of all, if you're under 25, tix are only $10! I haven't seen Shakespeare this good in a long time - and this play is so rarely performed, it's a real treat. The acting is wonderful - they do things with the old lines that really let them breathe and speak afresh - and the director is a goddam genius. Plus he's added some magic: the God (who is also the Soothsayer) walks through the stage from time to time, and stirs the waters of a small pool in the middle with his staff. It's a tragedy, sure, but they're all so over the top that there's nothing for them but death, so I maintained my composure -- until the very end, when ol' Darko threw in an image that utterly dropped me. The Enobarbus was a joy - I loved that actor as LeBret in Kevin Kline's recent Cyrano, too - and Octavius Caesar was young, gorgeous, and properly nerveless and chilling. (deliasherman will probably blog and say something more intelligent about all this soon.)

And I'd forgotten that some of my favorite lines came from the last act: The bright day is done, and we are for the dark . . . and of course, I wish you joy o' th' worm! . . . And I'd forgotten that in IV, iii the God leaves Antony, leaves Alexandria - just as he does in the beautiful poem by Cavafy (here are a couple more translations - the best, I think, may be in the 2001 translation of all his work by Theoharis C. Theoharis, still too much in copyright to be posted here). The story supposedly came from Plutarch - and most of Shakespeare's details certainly did!
Leonard Cohen turned The God Abandons Anthony into an exquisite song called "Alexandra Leaving" - listen to it if you get the chance.

from:

There is this heavy air in the hotel lobby. All of the dreams of afternoon lovers are pooling here at the entrance and threatening to choke off your air. Lost in a haze of emotion and unsure of each footstep you stumble further through the red and gold wallpapered pathways of midnight hell towards the record player casting shadows out of a doorway. There are memories tied to every note, remorse on every staff line of this ode to the moment you're in. Vision blurred, stumbling towards the song floating into the room you fall into the bed in slow motion. Leonard Cohen can seduce you in ways you never thought were possible. He has forgotten more about being spiritually and physically naked than most of us have ever known. This is definitely not music for listening to at work, in the car or any time you're not able to grab a bottle of wine and take off your clothes. If you have someone to share this album with, you're in the place he wants you to be. Leonard Cohen is a poet of the highest order, sparing with his words and generous with emotion. But don't listen to me, listen to him. I lock this album up in my liquor cabinet with Nick Drake, Ani Difranco and Joe Henry.

from:

1994 interview

An interview with Leonard Cohen which focuses on the release of his poetry collection, Stranger Music. I'm assuming this interview took place in 1994 and I think it was in Montreal.

the best Leoard Cohen song you never heard.......

Do I Have To Dance All Night
I’m Forty-One, the moon is full,
you make love very well.
You touch me like I touch myself,
I like you Mademoiselle.
You’re so fresh and you’re so new,
I do enjoy you, Miss.
There’s nothing I would rather do
than move around just like this

But do I have to dance all night?
But do I have to dance all night?
Ooh tell me, Bird of Paradise,
do I have to dance all night?

You never really have to tell me what
you really think of me - alright.
Let’s say I’m doing fine,
but do I have to dance all night?

Do I have to dance all night? …

I learned this step a while ago.
I had to practice it while everybody slept.
I waited half my life for you, you know,
I didn’t even think that you’d accept.
And here you are before me in the flesh
saying “Yes, yes, yes!”

But do I have to dance all night? …

I learned this step a while ago …

But do I have to dance all night? …

Listen via:here:

Leonard Cohen - 1993-05-02 - Gothenburg, Sweden

01.The Future
02.Ain't No Cure for Love
03.Bird on the Wire + radio announcer
04.First We Take Manhattan
05.Suzanne
06.I'm Your Man
07.Joan of Arc
08.Closing Time
09.Hallelujah+radio announcer
via:

The Sparrow~Leonard Cohen.

Catching winter in their carved nostrils
the traitor birds have deserted us,
leaving only the dullest brown sparrows
for spring negotiations.

I told you we were fools
to have them in our games,
but you replied:
They are only wind-up birds
who strut on scarlet feet
so haplelessly far
from our curled fingers.

I had moved to warn you,
but you only adjusted your hair
and ventured:
Their wings are made of glass and gold
and we are fortunate
not to hear them splintering
against the sun.

Now the hollow nests
sit like tumors or petrified blossoms
between the wire branches
and you, an innocent scientist,
question me on these brown sparrows:
whether we should plant our yards with breadcrumbs
or mark them with the black persistent crows
whom we hate and stone.

But what shall I tell you of migrations
when in this empty sky
the precise ghosts of departed summer birds
still trace old signs;
or of desperate flights
when the dimmest flutter of a colored wing
excites all our favorite streets
to delight in imaginary spring.

amesadeluz

I'm sitting here surrounded by the chaos of yet another 'cleanup' of my studio.
My favourite form of displacement and procrastination activity.
And, in yet another attempt to be too busy to begin doing something creative, I am going to write a quick post about the current weighty tome I am reading to Nic called "Songwriters on Song Writing" by Paul Zollo. From this enormously interesting, interview style of non fiction book ,I have read aloud Jimmy Webbs's thoughts on the creation process and read to myself, Janice Ian's.
This morning in the quiet before the storm I began reading about Leonard Cohen, precisely because it was tempting not to.
In the 70's my suicidal sister played his albums over and over and over again.
I come with some baggage Mr Cohan.
I haven't finished his —as to be expected; lengthy chapter, but I am blown away by the man's intelligence and I find so may truths that are applicable to the process of creation. He says that
"It's just as hard to write a bad novel as a good one. It's just as had to write a bad verse as a good verse. I can't discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. the cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.
You can't discover that in the raw."
Sounds like the process of painting or sculpting to me.
And then he goes on to talk about the unexpected things that come from what we deem to be junk.
"The people that we think are junk, the ideas that we think are junk, the television we think is junk."
This interview is just getting better and better and I'm feeling kind of inspired to finish cleaning the studio and get on with it... because to end this post with another quote from the interview
"I think unemploymentWall-Street-Layoffs is the great affliction of man.
Even people with jobs are unemployed.
In fact, most people with jobs are unemployed.
I can say, happily and gratefully, that I am fully employed.
Maybe all hard work means is fully employed."

Amen

fully-employed

Rare Lenny!

Go Here &click on "Music Links".Scroll down & you will find download links for some great music including bootlegs of Leonard Cohen in England (1979):Amsterdam (1980&1985):Montreaux(1985);San Fransico (undated) + much,Much More! ENJOY!

Ohhhhhh my god, I woke up as usual, with a horrible sore throat, and Alana, also woke up with a horrible sore knee. She decided to try and get some treatment at the hospital emergency room after breakfast and I decided to just sleep all day on her couch, until it was time to meet up with Abdul for the trip home.

So we walked (slowly) past Leonard Cohen's house to Chez Bagel, where Leonard Cohen has a signed 8x10 glossy on the wall. It was a very good bagel, but it came with very burnt potatoes, and alright scrambled eggs and kind of dry ham. But very friendly/fast service.

Alana went on her way to the hospital and I went back to her house to pass out on the couch again. Martin was there, so I stayed up for a little while with him and a pot of tea. Alana surprisingly came back within two hours and we both went to sleep until it was time for me to go.

At about 5 p.m., I said goodbye, bought a couple of bottles of super juice for the ride home. Then, got a little turned around on the subway, met Abdul and passed out once again in the backseat of his car.

I got home at about 8:30 p.m. and went to the doctor the next day, was prescribed some intense antibiotics, and did not go to work for two days...
*sigh*
from:

As part of "Find Yourself Friday," The Cohenites will be presenting three academic talks on Leonard Cohen with special emphasis on healing, Buddhism and minimalism as they reference his works.

These speakers will present at the Hospitality Suite (in the Westin Hotel) on Friday afternoon. Featured performers are:

Ira Nadel - Infamous in Cohen fan circles as Leonard's Biographer, Ira Nadel has spoken at numerous Cohenites events in the past. He will be discussing "The New Cohen" - recent developments in Cohen's life and art.

Dr. Thomas Mueller - A local Nephrologist, and ex-LCN board member, Dr. Mueller will be talking about Cohen's connections to medicine, meditation, and Buddhism.

Prof. Doug Barbour - Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alberta, Doug Barbour is a well-known and oft recognized Edmontonian poet with a soft spot for Cohen. Returning once again to our festival, Prof Barbour will be speaking on Minimalism in Cohen's work.

from:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Enter Wrong Hall

"...................The captions are, obviously, only my guesses about the thought process that went on following Leonard Cohen’s initial realization that he was adrift in the Waldorf’s own Bermuda Triangle.

From left to right: 1. “Why did entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seem like a good idea?” 2. “If the stage isn’t to the right, it must be to the left” 3. “Well, if that’s the stage, I’m kinda disappointed in the turnout.”...................." Read In Full

B.B.C. Radio Interview

Leonard Cohen... On Songwriting (30 min)
Broadcast on Radio 2 Thu 28 Feb - 23:00



Listen Here
As Mark Ellen interviews the reclusive Canadian Leonard Cohen, who gives a rare insight into his working methods, including a rare peek into his ideas notebook.

.............................In the last part of the sermon, in an attempt, I think, to connect with The Youth of Today, she decided to talk about the religious content of her favorite song: Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I knew this was trouble as soon as she mentioned it. It’s one of my favorite songs too and it’s rife with religious imagery, but its meaning is very complicated, convoluted and elliptical. And I’m really not sure it’s a song I’d equate with the kind of divine love Christians are supposed to find on the day of the Resurrection. I’m pretty sure Cohen’s talking about something else entirely. But the priest read several verses. [Thankfully one of them was NOT:

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah]

and then seized on the phrase “our love is not a victory march” and went on and on about how this is the perfect phrase to describe Christian love. I kind of tuned out at this point. But it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud when she finished and the congregation laid into the offertory hymn. Verse 1:

The strife is o’er, the battle done;
The victory of life is won;
The song of triumph has begun: Alleluia!

D’oh! Apparently love IS a victory march! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that church isn’t entertaining. If the sermon wasn’t entertainment enough, you would have enjoyed watching all the little girls in their Easter dresses spinning in the aisles like miniature fairy princesses. I know I did. I may be a heathen, but I appreciate a good ritual, even if it’s an annual ritual of conspiratorial mockery. Tomorrow I will repent. Or not.

spynotes

not everything that rises up is a miracle...........

Sunny, cold, highs minus 9

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

How can you not love a guy who wrote that? Actually I used that quote in A Fatal Grace – as part of Clara’s art. Happy Easter.

I once said that on air at CBC radio and a listener called in to lambast me and point out that this is not a happy day. Christ was crucified on this day.

I was about 21 years old and deeply sorry I’d offended someone.

So I apologized on air.

It was only decades later I realized I didn’t agree with that assessment. But I believe what makes this holiday so special isn’t that Christ was crucified, but that he rose.This is a holiday of hope. And how can that not be happy?Indeed, it’s such fun to be speaking to you on this day. This is exactly the time when my latest book, The Cruelest Month, is set.

Over the Easter holiday. In my book it’s a very late Easter – being a movable feast I did my goddess thing and moved it to late April. So that the spring bulbs would just be poking out. A promise. But fragile, vulnerable. And in the book we find out what happens to anything that exposes itself too much and too soon.In the words of Shakespeare’s Wolsley’s Farewell (a wonderful speech): A killing frost. It nips his bud. And then he falls, as I do.In the book there’s a killing frost – both physically and psychologically. Aimed at a villager in Three Pines, but also at Chief Inspector Gamache.Spring is an unsettling season – and Easter an unsettling time. As one of the characters says – not everything is meant to come back to life. Not everything that rises up is a miracle.

I hope you enjoy reading The Cruelest Month as much as I enjoyed writing it. It’s about murder, of course, being a murder mystery. But at its heart it’s about second chances, and redemption.Here’s to our cracks, and the hope and compassion that springs from them.
http://louisepenny.blogspot.com/2008/03/deeply-cracked-easter.html

Jeff Buckley

The Powers That Be Wont let me embed Jeff Buckley being seen singing! click here to see Him singing it!

K.D. Lang

John Cale

Click To Play

the tickets arrived today!

Leonard Cohen, The Chelsea Hotel, and Ceremonial Crap

Leonard Cohen, The Chelsea Hotel, and Ceremonial Crap.....{read}



MySpace Dude:"Is Leonard Cohen Dead Yet?"
"Poetry Is Not An Occupation,It's A Verdict.."

see many more similar Here

September 2001 Magazine Interview

Speaking Cohen

Speaking Cohen Website

2008 Tour Band Members

Roscoe Beck - bass & vocal (Musical Director)Neil Larsen - keyboard, accordion, brass instrumentsBob Metzger - guitar, steel guitar & vocalJavier Mas - bandurria, laud, archilaud and 12 string acoustic guitar.Christine Wu - violin, viola, cello & keyboardRafael Gayol - drums & percussionDino Soldo - keyboard, saxophone, wind instruments & vocal

Conspiracy Of Beards:"Sisters Of Mercy"

On Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, San Francisco's remarkable Conspiracy of Beards will perform in New York for the first time ever. Conspiracy of Beards is 30-man choir from that performs gritty, original arrangements of the songs of Leonard Cohen. This a cappella group has had a string of acclaimed performances at Bay Area venues, including the Cafe du Nord, the Great American Music Hall, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The choir has also been featured on National Public Radio's "West Coast Live," on KFOG-FM, and on PBS television station KQED-TV.
It would be coolfer if they all really had big beards though. Video and venue info for tonight and tomorrow, below...

Conspiracy Of Beards doing "Sisters Of Mercy" Leonard Cohen

Thanks For The Cheque Tonight Don For The Tickets.I will let you know when they arrive.what Do You Think The Odds Are Of Lenny" jumping off the stage& rubbed a Marshmellow-thingy in my glasses"? (I think I might contact Ladbrokes................)


Here is Unky Lenny's Induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame( only 10 days ago..........!) .I LOVE THIS! It Must Be The most bitterest " Acceptance Speech" Ever!.....(watch+learn!.if you ever feel yourself cornered by a group of Idiots, this is how you answer them..........) you have to wade thru 5 minutes of old stuff & Lou Reed + BONO (snigger!) but get to "5-minutes" & Lenny Tells 'em how it REALLY is!



Leonard Cohen's Induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of FameDate:March 10, 2008Place:Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City


Over The Easter Holiday I will Be Making This Monster Post About All Things Leonard Cohen.I will Keep Adding Stuff.Here Is what Ive Got So Far.Keep Checking Back As I Add More...........Enjoy!
"................Who doesn’t have at least one cover of the seemingly ubiquitous song “Hallelujah” in their iTunes collection, if not the Jeff Buckley version. Along with pulling the first all nighter to finish that term paper and taking PS 22: City Politics, possessing this song seems to be a near requirement of all college freshmen.
Twenty-five years ago, a character on the TV show The Young Ones named Neal–the hippie–said, “I’m beginning to feel like a Leonard Cohen record, cause nobody ever listens to me.” Today, in contrast, one particular Leonard Cohen song is featured prominently in no less than three separate episodes of teen uberdrama The OC, and can be heard in at least twenty-four separate movies and TV episodes, almost always as the soundtrack to a montage of people being sad.What I hope to show today is how, exactly, that happened to a song called “Hallelujah.”After reading this I simultaneously both wanted to delete my copy of this song AND listen to it as well...................{Read More............................ }
{and & here }



Photo."Bird on a Wire"



Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, 28, revealed to MTVU that he tried to kill himself. Pete tried to overdose on prescription pills a couple of years ago, because he was stressed:"I got in my car. I remember I was listening to Jeff Buckley doing Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' and sat there and took a bunch of [anxiety drug] Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot. And I called up my manager because I was, at that point, completely out of my head with Ativan. And I was talking to him and I was slurring...... read more.....

Some General Lenny Websites here..............*The Leonard Cohen Files
Official Website
UK Website
"I,m Your Man" Film Website
Leonard Cohen:You Tube


The Full List of leonard Cohen's 2008 Tour Dates. here .Interesting Facts include When i see him in Manchester it will be only the 3rd concert of The Tour + The First in UK.
Also (strange) none are in the USA..
You can download his 1999 Greatest Hits here
Leonard Cohen has his own Search Engine here
Leonard Cohen on Flikr
Leonard Cohen: wikipedia
and she feeds you tea&Oranges...:The Story Of Suzanne
70 Guardian Newspaper Facts about Lenny

One Of The Great Moments in Rock&Roll! Note the tear in his eye @ the end of the song............................