Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen by Ira B. Nadel

Author:Ira B. Nadel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General
ISBN: 9780679442356
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 1996-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

TRUMPETS AND A CURTAIN OF RAZOR BLADES

THE TITLE of Cohen’s third album, Songs of Love and Hate, reflected the double-edged nature of Cohen’s life following his tour. As Zen was becoming more important to him, his relationship with Suzanne was becoming strained. They had a son, Adam, in 1972, and two years later their daughter Lorca was born. He adored his children but continued to leave to further his art as he had always done. Between 1971 and 1977 he released five albums, but only two books appeared. But his productivity did not bring popularity, and Cohen felt marginalized; his alienation and doubts increased. He thought that his voice wasn’t appropriate for the material. He was depressed, and doing drugs, and there were rumors that he was about to retire. He continued to work, but his audiences dwindled and his support from the recording companies waned.

Recorded in March 1971 in Nashville, Songs of Love and Hate was again produced by Bob Johnston, although overdubs were added in London. Many of the songs were from earlier periods and had been reworked for the album. “Joan of Arc” had been written at the Chelsea in New York; “Avalanche” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag” dated from earlier years. Another song, “Love Calls You by Your Name,” was a minor rewrite of an unpublished 1967 song, “Love Tries to Call You by Your Name.” This practice of reshaping old material marked Cohen’s musical career and continues with his recent albums.

“Joan of Arc” was something of an experiment for Cohen, in that he both sings and speaks the lyrics on overlapping tracks. This technique was Cohen’s idea, drawn from the literary form of the palimpsest: “I had, as the model, manuscripts that you’d see with lines written over lines. I just thought it was appropriate at that moment. It’s like the line of a Larry Rivers painting, you see the variations.” “Famous Blue Raincoat” also appears on the album, a retelling of a romantic triangle. Originally titled “The Letter,” the song outlines the dismal loss of love with no hope of recovery. Cohen based the song on a Burberry raincoat he purchased in London in 1959, later stolen from Marianne’s loft in New York. Elizabeth, his London friend, “thought I looked like a spider in it … it hung more heroically when I took out the lining, and achieved glory when the grayed sleeves were repaired with a little leather.”

His melancholic tone persisted, reflecting his unhappy situation and increasing depression. “Last Year’s Man” had taken Cohen five years to finish but its theme of paralysis and decay was timely:

But the skylight is like skin

For a drum I’ll never mend

And all the rain falls down amen

On the works of last year’s man.

Cohen was not entirely pleased with Songs of Love and Hate and later commented that “with each [of my first three] records I became progressively discouraged, although I was improving as a performer.”

Franz Schubert had once noted that whenever he sought to write songs of love, he wrote songs of pain, and whenever he wrote songs of pain he wrote songs of love.

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