I had originally intended to review the 31-song collection The Essential Leonard Cohen, but my increasing workload at the EU has destroyed any possibility of taking on such a large project while adhering to my weekly review schedule. I was also motivated to change to an album-by-album approach after getting through a third of Sylvie Simmons’ detailed biography, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, when I realized that any compilation album would have short-changed the many different phases of Cohen’s development as a songwriter and musician.

Okay, I will admit that there was one other factor influencing my decision. I had reached the part in the story when Janis Joplin gives Cohen a blow job in the Chelsea Hotel and I needed to clear my mind of that distraction before going any further. In Sylvie’s defense, Cohen did write about the experience in “Chelsea Hotel #2,” so it was fair game. The act of fellatio occurred soon after The Songs of Leonard Cohen had finally hit the shelves, creating a suitable break in the narrative that allows me to explore an important milestone in Leonard Cohen’s artistic trajectory.

*****

Trying to define Leonard Cohen is quite a challenge. Sylvie Simmons frequently used the word “outsider” to describe the man, a status that Cohen was very comfortable with because it was part of his birthright. Though the term is rarely applied to those born to a wealthy, prominent family, wealth is not always a ticket to inclusion:

The Westmount Jewish community was a close-knit one. It was also a minority community in an English Protestant neighborhood. Which was itself a minority, if a powerful one, in a city and a province largely populated by the Catholic French. Who were themselves a minority in Canada. Everybody felt like some kind of outsider; everyone felt like they belonged to something important.

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (p. 10). (Function). Kindle Edition. (quote from “The Stranger Music of Leonard Cohen,” Goldmine)

I would go even further and argue that Leonard Cohen was an anomaly (as in “not easily classified”) and something of an “anachronism” (as in “out of place for their time period”). Adding to the befuddlement, I also believe he was a perfect fit for his time period because he was an anachronistic anomaly. To borrow a phrase from Churchill, Cohen appeared to be “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” a man of many contradictions. By all accounts, Leonard was a well-behaved youngster who dressed for dinner every night and did well in school, but when his parents and friends had all gone to bed, he strolled the backstreets of Montreal where the gangsters and prostitutes conducted business. He took to the Jewish faith like a duck takes to water, but also developed a deep admiration for Jesus Christ, viewed sexual intercourse as a spiritual experience (as do I), and would spend five years in a Zen Buddhist monastery in his later years. He found women utterly fascinating and would consummate relationships with many members of the opposite sex, but largely depended on women to serve in the role of muse, avoiding any long-term commitments or agreeing to remain faithful.

Note that all of those anachronistic anomalies are only contradictions when compared to traditional norms and expectations. Leonard Cohen adhered to traditions and norms that worked for him and disregarded those that did not, including those that marked 50s-60s counterculture. He was “born in a suit” and would continue to wear suits, hippie conformity be damned.

As I thought about Leonard Cohen’s independence from common expectations, I was reminded of a poem written by another poetic outsider: William Blake. In one of the segments in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Blake corrects common interpretations of scripture:

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the cause of the following errors:—
1. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following contraries to these are true:—
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul. For that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight

I think Leonard Cohen would have approved of those scriptural modifications. He was a sensualist who followed his Energies and a lifelong explorer who pushed the boundaries as he searched for truth and enlightenment wherever he could find it. He was also a stubborn artist determined to share his experiences and insights with the world through literature and song, and for that, we can be eternally grateful.

*****

His artistic yearnings were triggered by a chance encounter with The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca in a secondhand bookshop in Montreal, but as was always the case with Leonard Cohen, other influences came into play:

He did not try to copy Lorca—“I wouldn’t dare,” he said. But Lorca, he felt, had given him permission to find his own voice, and also an instruction on what to do with it, which was “never to lament casually.” Over the subsequent years, whenever interviewers would ask him what drew him to poetry, Leonard offered an earthier reason: getting women. Having someone confirm one’s beauty in verse was a big attraction for women, and, before rock ’n’ roll came along, poets had the monopoly.

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (p. 26). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Around the time he encountered Lorca, Cohen also picked up a Spanish guitar at a pawn shop and taught himself a few chords. He then learned Flamenco tremolo patterns from a guitarist he stumbled upon near his home in Westmount after noticing that “a cluster of women had gathered about the musician.” In the subsequent years, the guitar took a back seat to his overwhelming desire to make it as a poet and novelist, a journey that spanned three continents as he traveled to New York, London, Israel and the Greek island of Hydra to increase his knowledge of literature and search for environments compatible with the creative spirit. When his first volume of poetry won the McGill Literary Award, he had the great good fortune to run into Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg while studying at Columbia University, but the Kings of the Beats dismissed him as a square. Leonard couldn’t have cared less.

It is interesting that someone who in high school and university had seemed keen to sign up for, even lead, any number of groups should choose not to join this particular club at such a pivotal moment for poetry. In the fifties, the Beats made poets the counterculture spokesmen, the rock stars, if you like, of their generation. It’s interesting too that although Leonard was younger than Ginsberg and Kerouac, they viewed him as part of the old guard. In the sixties, when rock stars would become the counterculture spokesmen and poets of their generation, Leonard would once again be considered old—if with better reason this time; he was in his thirties when he made his first album—and would feel himself to be an outsider.

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (p. 56). (Function). Kindle Edition.

He would sweat his way through two more volumes of poetry and two novels, but as time crept on, he found himself returning to his guitar more frequently and eventually decided to shift gears:

So it happened by degrees, sometimes in public, more often in private, alone or with friends. In February 1966 in New York, appearing at the 92nd Street Y for a reading, Leonard closed by singing “The Stranger Song”—a little slower, his voice strained and plaintive, and with a handful of different words, but otherwise much as it would appear two years later on his first album. In 1968 Leonard told the Montreal Gazette, “I just see the singing as an extension of a voice I’ve been using ever since I can remember. This is just one aspect of its sound.” In 1969 he told the New York Times, “There is no difference between a poem and a song. Some were songs first and some were poems first and some were situations. All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.”

But everybody, including Leonard, agrees on why he decided to be a singer-songwriter: economics.

“Well, I always played the guitar and sang. I’d been living in Greece for a number of years and it was a very good way of living, I could live in Greece for eleven hundred dollars a year, but I couldn’t pay my grocery bill, so I would come back to Canada, get various jobs, get that money together plus the boat fare, come back to Greece and live for as long as that money lasted. I couldn’t make a living as an author. My books weren’t selling, they were receiving very good reviews, but my second novel Beautiful Losers sold about three thousand copies worldwide. The only economic alternative was, I guess, going into teaching or university or getting a job in a bank, like the great Canadian poet Raymond Souster. But I always played the guitar and sang, so it was an economic solution to the problem of making a living and being a writer.”

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (pp. 143-144). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Recording his debut album was hardly a walk in the park. John Hammond had wanted to sign him to Columbia for months, but had to wait for Clive Davis to take over to seal the deal. Leonard had never worked with session musicians before and didn’t speak their language, so Hammond nixed the full band sound and recorded Leonard on guitar with Willie Ruff on bass. After Hammond handed over the producer’s reins to John Simon, the recording sessions dragged on for six months, largely due to Simon adding loads of unnecessary and incompatible overdubs. “When Leonard heard the result, he was not happy; the orchestration on ‘Suzanne’ was overblown, while everything about ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ felt too soft. Several tracks had too much bottom, and there were even drums; Leonard had clearly stipulated no drums.” (Sylvie Simmons, Mojo Magazine). Cohen was able to make a few minor changes, but most of Simon’s “enhancements” remained due to the limitations of four-track recording. Finally, on December 26, 1967, after the Hanukkah and Christmas markets had passed, The Songs of Leonard Cohen hit the shelves.

The album did exceptionally well in the Netherlands (#4) and the U.K. (#13) but topped out at #83 in the USA and failed to chart in Canada. “On its original release, the U.S. press was considerably more lukewarm. Arthur Schmidt in Rolling Stone wrote, ‘I don’t think I could ever tolerate all of it. There are three brilliant songs, one good one, three qualified bummers, and three are the flaming shits . . . Whether the man is a poet or not (and he is a brilliant poet), he is not necessarily a songwriter.’ The New York Times’s Donal Henahan damned it with faint praise: ‘Mr. Cohen is a fair poet and a fair novelist, and now he has come through with a fair recording of his own songs.’ Leonard sounded ‘like a sad man cashing in on self-pity and adolescent loneliness,’ he wrote, placing him ‘somewhere between Schopenhauer and Bob Dylan’ on the ‘alienation scale.'” (Simmons, ibid)

Almost half a century later, Anthony DeCurtis would finally get it right in his liner notes to the 2003 re-release: “If Leonard had recorded just this one compelling album and disappeared, his stature as one of the most gifted songwriters of our time would still be secure.” The album may not be perfect, but the songs that work represent a giant leap forward in the art of popular songwriting.

Before we begin our exploration of the poems/songs, let’s get a few things straight. First and foremost, I will spend as little time as possible delving into the personal history of the muses who inspired this poem or that song. I don’t care that Dante had Beatrice, that Picasso had Dora Maar, or John Keats had Fanny Brawne—what I care about is the artist’s ability to evoke thought and emotion. The meaning of a work of art lies in the medium, not the backstory. When I eventually get to “Chelsea Hotel #2,” you won’t hear a peep about Janis Joplin. If you want to learn who was who in Cohen’s life, Sylvie Simmons is your girl.

As my main interest in Leonard Cohen involves the quality of the poetry, I will focus more on the lyrics than the music. I prefer to take my Cohen straight and without much in the way of instrumentation; if I had been his producer, I would have recorded all his songs with only guitar and vocals, occasionally permitting a small string section here or there, maybe a bass to strengthen the rhythm or a supporting guitarist to supply counterpoints. There is only one song on this album where the arrangement completely ruins the song for me; as for the rest, I will either figure out a way to work around all the noise and limit my bitching to a bare minimum.

*****

“Suzanne”: Yes, there was a Suzanne, and no, the song is not about her. From the 1994 BBC Radio 4 program Kaleidoscope: “The song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman’s name entered the song. And I knew it was a song about Montreal, it seemed to come out of that landscape that I loved very much in Montreal, which was the harbour, and the waterfront, and the sailors’ church there, called Notre Dame de Bon Secour, which stood out over the river, and I knew that there’re ships going by, I knew that there was a harbour, I knew that there was Our Lady of the Harbour, which was the virgin on the church which stretched out her arms towards the seamen, and you can climb up to the tower and look out over the river, so the song came from that vision, from that view of the river.” Suzanne’s role in the song is the embodiment of the zeitgeist of Montreal at the time, when the emergence of a new generation of artists in multiple fields formed a “bohemian heaven” (Suzanne’s artistry involved dance and poetry).

The story begins at Suzanne’s place overlooking the St. Lawrence River, where two soul mates are engaged in the simple act of enjoying each other’s company. Leonard knows that Suzanne is “half crazy,” adding, “but that’s why you want to be there,” because like all artists, he’s half crazy as well. When the poet attempts to engage in verbal communication, Suzanne responds telepathically, for there is no need for soul mates to resort to language. Though there is obviously a mutual attraction, the relationship will remain platonic by mutual consent:

Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half crazy, but that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength, and she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

As the pair takes in the sights, Leonard takes note of Notre Dame de Bon Secour with its statue of Our Lady of the Harbor welcoming the sailors, and naturally, his mind turns to another sailor: Jesus Christ. It should be noted that, except for the references to walking on the water and the crucifixion, the lyrics do not reflect scripture. Jesus frequently retreated to solitary places to meditate, mourn and pray, but there is no mention of a retreat to a “lonely wooden tower” in the gospels. There is also no evidence that he said “all men will be sailors.” My take is that Cohen employed his knowledge of the gospels to create his own parable to explain the essence of Jesus, who used parables to instruct and enlighten his followers and often found it frustrating when they didn’t get the message. We have all heard of people who turn to prayer only when their life is on the line like the drowning men depicted in the poem; hence the metaphorical wish that “all men shall be sailors.”

Jesus tried everything he could to get across to the unenlightened, but he knew he had a tough job ahead of him. “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” (Matthew 13:13-15). Cohen also had the intelligence to see that many so-called Christians in his day did not understand the teachings, for it “sank beneath (their) wisdom like a stone.”

And Jesus was a sailor when He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him
He said all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But He himself was broken long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with Him
And you want to travel blind
And you think you’ll maybe you’ll trust Him
For He’s touched your perfect body with His mind

You may wonder, “Hey, where is Suzanne in all this?” She may not be mentioned in these stanzas, but she was there, sitting quietly and allowing the poet to follow his fancies. She was providing him with an environment to ignite his imagination, like any halfway-decent muse.

Reverie finished, the unfashionable Suzanne takes Leonard’s hand and leads him to the river, where “the sun pours down like honey on Our Lady of the Harbor.” Some interpreters who knew nothing about Montreal landscapes mistakenly identified Suzanne as the lady, but now you know better. Once there, she gives Leonard a precious gift: the ability to perceive beauty and accomplishment in the ugly and wasteful aspects of human life. She also reminds him that the one thing that human beings seek more than anything else is love—the timeless, eternal love advocated by Christ:

Now Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river
She’s wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey on Our Lady of The Harbor
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with your mind

If you’re having trouble with the “heroes in the seaweed” phrase, allow me to offer you some assistance via taste-for-life-org: “In the distant past, however, seaweeds were seen as a fundamental component of the sea and the beings associated with it, and they also held an essential connection to the land and the people who dwelt there.” I had trouble with “While Suzanne holds the mirror” and could feel the meaning on the tip of my tongue, but eventually I had to consult songmeaningsandfacts.com to save the day: “Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ does not merely reflect reality; it holds a mirror up to the soul, challenging the listener to seek the heroes among the seaweed. The song has etched its legacy not because it answers our existential queries but because it compels us to ask more—of ourselves, of love, and of life.”

If there’s one song that best demonstrates the need for a no-frills arrangement, it’s “Suzanne.” You may never see Leonard Cohen on the list of top singers, but his deep, warm voice is mesmerizing and perfect for storytelling. His careful enunciation ensures that listeners can hear the carefully-chosen, provocative lyrics and begin to consider their meaning . . . as long as producers like John Simon don’t drown him out with irrelevancies.

Judy Collins recorded the song before Leonard recorded his version, and it’s accurate to say that Judy’s version made other artists sit up and take notice of Leonard Cohen’s unique talent for songwriting. With its vivid lyrics, deep meaning and lovely melody, “Suzanne” is simply one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

“Master Song”: “Cohen offered an opaque explanation of this song when he performed it on the BBC in 1968, saying, ‘It’s about the Trinity. Leave that for the scholars. It’s about three people.'” (Songfacts) I would classify that bit of information under the heading “Things Musicians Say to Journalists When They Don’t Want to Be Bothered.” Sylvie’s brief notes on the song are closer to the truth: “There are characters in the songs as cryptic as those in Bob Dylan’s, like the man with the sadism of a Nazi and the golden body of a god with whom the singer shares a lover in ‘Master Song.’” (Simmons, ibid)

Closer, but not quite there. The inspiration for the song involves a falling out between Cohen and his long-time partner Marianne, which led her to travel to Mexico to spend time with “her master,” an odd fellow depicted be part-guru and part BDSM practitioner. Cohen used that bit of life experience to expose the negative emotions and dark fantasies wrought by a combination of loneliness and jealousy. The narrator has no way of knowing what was happening between the two, but confined to his sickbed, he reveals his deep insecurity by imagining the worst. His bitterness and resentment are revealed in the verse that serves as the opener and the closer, when his lover has returned.

I believe that you heard your master sing
When I was sick in bed
I suppose that he told you everything
That I keep locked away in my head
Your master took you traveling
Well, at least that’s what you said
And now, do you come back to bring
Your prisoner wine and bread?

That’s called “beating the shit out of someone with words.” He sarcastically imbues the master with alleged powers beyond his own capabilities to make her feel guilty for abandoning him, revealing his own fragility in the process. Cohen devotes several stanzas to this theme, which may seem like overkill, but jealousy is a cruel mistress who can never be satisfied. I’ll quote the verse that I felt best captured the sickness:

And now, I hear your master sing
You kneel for him to come
His body is a golden string
That your body is hanging from
His body is a golden string
My body has grown numb
Oh, now you hear your master sing
Your shirt is all undone

Ugh. After a while, one does get tired of the “poor-me” act, but in Cohen’s defense, that’s part of the ugly reality. The song is initially set to flamenco-influenced Spanish guitar and bass, but my hope that Simon would leave well enough alone is crushed in a barrage of weird noises and jumbled interference.

“Winter Lady“: This is one of three songs that Cohen admirer Robert Altman chose for the soundtrack to McCabe & Mrs. Miller four years after the release of The Songs of Leonard Cohen. Though I can’t stand Warren Beatty, I forced myself to watch the film and found myself agreeing with the assessment Scott Tobias shared on Dissolve: “The film is unimaginable to me without the Cohen songs, which function as these mournful interstitials that unify the entire movie.” The songs Altman chose do not always sync with the film’s narrative, but they do fit the mood.

“Winter Lady” is a lovely little song about a woman traveler who bears a remarkable similarity to the former lover of the man who offers her shelter. I wouldn’t say he has the smoothest pickup line I’ve ever heard, but he compensates for that flaw with his honesty:

Traveling lady, stay awhile
Until the night is over
I’m just a station on your way
I know I’m not your lover

Well, I lived with a child of snow
When I was a soldier
And I fought every man for her
Until the nights grew colder

She used to wear her hair like you
Except when she was sleeping
And then she’d weave it on a loom
Of smoke and gold and breathing

And why are you so quiet now
Standing there in the doorway?
You chose your journey long before
You came upon this highway

I think she’s “so quiet now” because she can’t decide whether his comparison is flattery or flim-flam, but alas, Leonard chooses to end the song before we know whether or not the one-night stand was consummated.

“The Stranger Song”: This is the song played at the beginning of McCabe & Mrs. Miller and reappears from time to time throughout the film. Songfacts notes that “the song connects so well with the sad tale of McCabe that it could have been written for the film,” but while the persona of the dealer in the song syncs well with the gambler, “The Stranger Song” is a rich piece of poetry that can be interpreted in many ways.

Perhaps the most cryptic track on the album is “The Stranger Song,” a masterful, multilayered song about exile and moving on. It was born, Leonard said, “out of a thousand hotel rooms, ten thousand railway stations.” The Stranger might be the Jew, exiled by ancestry, perpetually on the run from his murderers and God; the troubadour, rootless by necessity; or the writer, whom domesticity would sap of his will to create. Here love is once again presented as something dangerous. We have Joseph, the good husband and Jew, searching for a place where his wife can give birth to a child who is not his, and whose existence will come to cause more problems for his people. In the “holy game of poker,” it is of no use to sit around and wait in hope for a good hand of cards. The only way to win is to cheat, or to show no emotion, or to make sure to sit close to the exit door.

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (pp. 194-195). (Function). Kindle Edition.

While the song can legitimately be interpreted as autobiographical, the opening verse leans more toward the general threat of domesticity and the risks inherent in coupling. The song was written in the 60s, when men and women were expected to marry sometime before they hit the old age of thirty, and in the pre-feminist era, women generally adhered to the norm to avoid “old maid” status. Men were more ambivalent, reluctant to give up the practice of sowing their wild oats and fearful of commitment. When they eventually hit a Mick Jagger losing streak, they were more likely to surrender to expectations, but the surrender is tinged with regret and insincerity:

It’s true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

Relationships driven by societal expectations rarely last long, and the gambler soon decides to take his chances elsewhere, blaming the broad for diverting him from his rightful path:

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild
he’ll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

And then leaning on your window sill
he’ll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he’ll say
“I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.”

With his wife about to go into labor, Joseph was looking for a manger—any manger—and the gambler on a losing streak is looking for a broad—any broad. Once this jerk hits the road, the woman continues to leave the door open for Mr. Right, but the experience with the first gambler has awakened her to male reluctance masked by language. When the next man shows up, she spots the game, despises her role in it and accurately envisions what will happen in the end.

But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you’ve seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it’s rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there’s a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

She invites him in anyway, and comes to the realization that she is the odd duck for adhering to tired expectations and that he is simply following the long-standing tradition of troubadours and oat-sowers: keep on moving.

You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can’t close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger.

“Well, I’ve been waiting, I was sure
we’d meet between the trains we’re waiting for
I think it’s time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter”
When he talks like this
you don’t know what he’s after
When he speaks like this,
you don’t know what he’s after.

“Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river”
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that’s warm
You realize, he’s only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say “ok the bridge or someplace later.”

Since I’m 100% sure that Leonard Cohen was not a sexist, I interpret the closing couplet as an affirmation of the truth that both sexes have the right to manifest their true selves. “He never was a stranger” tells her he was simply being himself, and her “ok” tells me that she is ready to free herself of the traditional role and join him on a journey of self-discovery and freedom: the true “shelter” for any human being.

I love Leonard’s delivery in this song, his voice tinged by a hint of whisper that conveys a sense of mystery. However you choose to interpret the mysteries embedded in “The Stranger Song,” I am certain that it will give you plenty to think about.

“Sisters of Mercy”: Whether it was a poem, a novel, or a song, Leonard Cohen was a fastidious writer who often struggled to find the right words. Marianne remembered, “Sometimes it was torture to get it the way he wanted. Some of it came, pouf!, just like that, but he was a perfectionist, a man who demands much of himself.” (Simmons, ibid). “Sisters of Mercy” was his only composition that emerged in one fell swoop:

Then I was in Edmonton, which is one of our largest northern cities, and there was a snowstorm and I found myself in a vestibule with two young hitchhiking women who didn’t have a place to stay. I invited them back to my little hotel room and there was a big double bed and they went to sleep in it immediately. They were exhausted by the storm and cold. And I sat in this stuffed chair inside the window beside the Saskatchewan River. And while they were sleeping I wrote the lyrics. And that never happened to me before. And I think it must be wonderful to be that kind of writer. It must be wonderful. Because I just wrote the lines with a few revisions and when they awakened I sang it to them. And it has never happened to me like that before. Or since.” (Songfacts)

The song is marked by the genuine tenderness and appreciation in Leonard’s voice, and for once, John Simon’s overdubs finally reach the level of “not too bad.” It’s important to remember that Leonard was also a traveler when he met the “sisters,” for after introducing his newfound muses, the serendipitous meeting triggers what seems to be a heart-to-heart conversation with himself (“you who’ve been traveling too long”) regarding aspects of his life he would like to change:

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned:
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

In the next verse, he confesses his sins to the sleeping sisters (or metaphorical nuns, if you prefer) and imbues them with healing powers via a beautiful metaphor: “If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn/they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.” The song closes with a “note to his alter-ego,” which Sylvie spotted in a heartbeat: “Yet, however pure and holy, a sense of romantic possibility remains for a man who in The Favorite Game described the woman making up the hotel bed in which they had just made love as having ‘the hands of a nun.'”

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don’t turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won’t make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

The song also makes an appearance in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, where the merciful sisters are Mrs. Miller’s prostitutes, proving once again that sex is a spiritual experience.

“So Long, Marianne”: From Songfacts: “Cohen wrote this song when they split up, but they got back together and lived together on and off until 1973, even after Cohen had a son, Adam, with another woman in 1972. Marianne left a lasting impression on Cohen, who had several other passionate relationships that informed his songs.” Much to her credit, Marianne loved the song and they remained friends until both of them died in 2016. While both were on the down-slope, Leonard sent her a very touching farewell:

Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.

I admire their maturity and shared understanding, but this song has never grabbed me. The arrangement is godawful, loaded with vocal and instrumental distractions and the worst drumming I’ve ever heard on record. The lyrics are too personal to qualify the song as timeless, and though he admits that “I’m cold as a new razor blade,” he pins most of the blame on Marianne for “making him” forget his prayers and complaining that her “fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone.” Excuse me, sir, but weren’t you the one who chose to skip your prayers? I also find Leonard’s rather nonchalant tone rather unsuited to a breakup song, no matter how mature their relationship happened to be. I realize that most critics have rated the song as one of his best, so pardon me for my blindness.

“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”: Now THIS is the way to write a breakup song: in the words of Otis Redding, “try a little tenderness,” even if the breakup involves a one-or two-night stand.

” . . .  (it was) composed to the sound of a radiator and dripping tap in a thin-walled hotel room on Thirty-fourth Street. It arose ‘from an over-used bed in the Penn Terminal Hotel in 1966,”’ Leonard wrote in the liner notes to his 1975 Greatest Hits album. ‘The room is too hot. I can’t open the windows. I am in the midst of a bitter quarrel with a blonde woman. The song is half-written in pencil but it protects us as we maneuver, each of us, for unconditional victory. I am in the wrong room. I am with the wrong woman.'”

Simmons, Sylvie. I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (p. 151). (Function). Kindle Edition.

There is no evidence of a bitter quarrel in the song, so perhaps Cohen re-imagined the scene as occurring in an alternate universe where people are empathetic and understanding. The lyrics also hint at either a deeper relationship or two incredibly well-matched fuck partners who clicked when it came time to get down and dirty, but had little else to keep them together. Leonard’s voice is soft and warm, expressing genuine regret that circumstances made a long-term relationship impossible:

… I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye

… I’m not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me
It’s just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea
But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye

Ironically, that is the way to say goodbye: be gentle, understanding, and appreciative.

“Stories of the Street”: This piece gives me the impression that Cohen was trying to out-Dylan Dylan, and I think he was better off as Leonard Cohen. It starts as a muddled protest song and winds up going absolutely nowhere. Oh, well. Even Shakespeare wrote a few turkeys.

“Teachers”: It begins with his search for a teacher, then he winds up in a hospital and eventually learns nothing. Hard pass.

“One of Us Cannot Be Wrong”: Sylvie likened this song to Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” and found the song “wryly humorous.” The only time I laughed was during the first three lines: “I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me/But the room just filled up with mosquitoes/They heard that my body was free.” As for the rest, I repeat: Leonard was better off as Leonard Cohen.

*****

Given that this was a debut album featuring an artist with little experience in the studio and that the process of recording that album turned out to be a bloody mess, perfection was never a possibility. Though he would later transform some of his poems into songs, at this point Leonard Cohen was in the midst of a transition to a medium quite unlike book publishing. Nonetheless, The Songs of Leonard Cohen is loaded with timeless masterpieces that earned him recognition as a one-of-a-kind talent with a bright future in songwriting. I look forward to exploring more of his work and fervently hope that the EU will figure out a way to avoid war so I can fulfill that desire.