Various Positions by Ira B. Nadel

Author:Ira B. Nadel [Nadel, Ira b.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-36702-0
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 1996-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

“Bird on the Wire” became an anthem and Cohen used it to open his concerts, explaining that it “seems to return me to my duties.” Kris Kristofferson, who had begun selling his own songs, told Cohen at a Nashville party that Cohen had stolen part of the melody from Lefty Frizell’s “Mom & Dad’s Waltz.” But Kristofferson admired the song and said that the first three lines—“Like a bird on the wire, / Like a drunk in a midnight choir / I have tried in my way to be free”—would be his epitaph.

“Bird on the Wire” began in Greece: when Cohen first arrived in Hydra, there were no wires on the island, no telephones, and no regular electricity. But soon telephone poles appeared, and then the wires: “I would stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn’t going to be able to escape after all. I wasn’t going to be able to live this eleventh-century life that I thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning.” Then he noticed that the birds came to the wires. The next line referred to the many evenings Cohen and friends climbed the endless stairs up from the port of Hydra, drunk and singing. Often you’d see “three guys with their arms around each other, stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds.” He finished the song in a Hollywood motel on Sunset Boulevard in 1969.

A single, “The Old Revolution,” hit #63 on the U.S. charts and did surprisingly well in England. In France the popularity of the album led to Cohen being named le folksinger de l’année by Le Nouvel Observateur. Cohen entered the cultural grammar; it was remarked that if a Frenchwoman owned but one record, it was likely to be by Leonard Cohen. It was later reported that the president, Georges Pompidou, often took Cohen’s records with him on vacation.

While still living in Nashville, Cohen made a trip to Italy. In June of 1969 he joined Franco Zefferelli and Leonard Bernstein at a villa outside Rome to score a movie on St. Francis of Assisi, titled Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Music was to play a leading part, with Bernstein composing the music and Cohen writing the lyrics. With Zefferelli, Cohen visited the tomb of St. Francis, taking away some small metal birds blessed by the abbot. There were long meetings and luxurious Italian meals served by attractive young men but little real work. Cohen was unhappy with the scene and left for Rome, where he unexpectedly ran into Nico. He was seized with his old obsession but nothing came of it. Zefferelli eventually made his film but Cohen was not a part of it. He was replaced by Donovan.

After several false starts, Cohen did get involved in scoring films, providing songs for Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Cohen was in Nashville recording some tracks for his third album, Songs of Love and Hate, and ducked into a theater to see Altman’s film Brewster McCloud.

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