It's the Same Old Song Week: Cohen I

This week, a week of lyrics from the songs of Leonard Cohen. I'm not familiar with all his work, but some of my favorite songs are his. Cohen is a Canadian poet, who turned to song-writing prose and performing. It was an odd career-path, kind of abandoning the garrett existence of the poet and turning to the folk-rock lifestyle. Cohen cut an odd figure. More often than not, he was dressed impeccably, in a suit and tie, in the manner of french cabaret singers, while playing (minimally) a guitar. But, as Stephen King always identifies a song by the singer rather than the author, Cohen's biggest successes in the music business have come from the many, many "covers" of his songs.

I was talking to Steve M the other day, and the song "All Along the Watchtower" came up, which he always associated with Jimi Hendrix. I pointed out that Bob Dylan wrote it. He didn't know that. Nor, really, should he. Because, with Dylan, when other artists do his music, whether it's Hendrix, The Byrds or The Band, or even Olivia Newton-John and Cher, they change it to the point where it sounds less like Dylan and more like their style. That's the interesting thing about Bobby Zimmerman's writing: it can be many things to many people, folk, folk-rock, acid, pop, religious, hell, I've even heard his stuff performed as a choral. Sometimes they make it more tuneful. He writes the idea. Other artists provide the style.

That doesn't happen with Leonard Cohen. There is something about his writing that is immutable. It's as if his DNA is stamped irrevocably into the song, like a watermark, and no matter who sings it, it is always Cohen's song. I don't know how many covers of his "Hallelujah" I've heard...or "Suzanne"...but no matter the artist, man or woman, no matter what they try to do to it, it never strays from Cohen's template. His writing is that strong, but seemingly so simple. That's just an illusion. Cohen's work is individualistic, but it so encompasses the life-experience and gathers together so many aspects of Life--the mythic, the religious, the poetic, the gritty and the grubby. It soars with the heights of religious ecstacy and examines the dirt under your fingernails. It encompasses the ideals of romantic love and the low-down good times of bumping good sex. Bad apartments. The complexity of friends. Success and Failure, and the intertwining of the two. Cohen's turf is the Sacred and the Profane, and it's walking distance from one to the other. And magically, we've all been there, even if we specifically haven't. We can all relate...or imagine we do...with Cohen's world and his world of ideas.

I first encountered Leonard Cohen through my brother, who brought home an early record of his. I wasn't enamored with Cohen's work--my idea of deep song-writing at the time was Paul Simon--besides that, he had a weird voice that croaked out his songs in a toneless rhythm-speak that didn't appeal to me. He also had composed a song that was a hit in the 60's, "Suzanne," which made the charts sung by Noel Harrison (son of Rex, and co-star of "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.").

That's ancient history, but my current experience with his work began with this song, co-written by Jennifer Warnes. Warnes is an interesting figure in the music industry. She was a "studio singer." Her solo hits were few, and where she made her mark was as a virtuoso singer of music for the movies. She sang David Shire's Oscar-winning "It Goes as It Goes," in "Norma Rae." She made the charts, usually in collaborations, the most prominent of which was "Up Where We Belong" - the duet with Joe Cocker that figured prominently in "An Officer and a Gentleman." She has a wonderful range, the ability to transition in octaves (without turning it into a soullessly technical vocal exercise the way so many post-Whitney Houston stylists do) from note to note without a strain, and she "sells" the song. With Warnes, it was never about her, it was all about the material and she delivered the goods, making the most of everything she sang. All too rare, these days. And she was loyal to material and artists that spoke to her personally. It's amazing to watch the old Roy Orbison "Black and White" concert (which pops up on PBS pledge drives, seemingly on an endless loop) and see his back-up singers consist of Bonnie Raitt, k.d. lang and Warnes. And she also was devoted to Leonard Cohen (you'll see a clip of him in concert this week, where she's his anonymous back up), so much so that one of her few albums, besides her eclectic "Best of...." release, is a collection of Cohen songs, entitled "Famous Blue Raincoat."

That's where this song, a collaboration between the two, came from, and like so much of Cohen's work, entwines the Sacred and the Profane. Well, not so much Profane. I first heard this song on a nostalgic 80's CBS revival of "The Smothers Brothers' Variety Hour," (which, in itself, is a wierd story), and amazingly, that performance can be found on YouTube, so you can see what I saw that night when this beautiful song punched me in the gut and moved me and my wife to tears.

Here is "Song of Bernadette."

Song of Bernadette

There was a child named Bernadette
I heard the story long ago
she saw the queen of heaven once
and kept the vision in her soul

No one believed what she had seen
No one believed what she heard
That there were sorrows to be healed
And mercy, mercy in this world

So many hearts I find
Broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we've done and can't undo
I just want to hold you
Won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do.

We've been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we've done.
Tonight, tonight I cannot rest
I've got this joy here inside my breast
To think that I could not forget
That child, that song of Bernadette

So many hearts I find
Broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we've done and can't undo
I just want to hold you
Come on let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do

I just want to hold you
Won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do