I
first heard Leonard Cohen when I was stationed at Fort Hood Army base in Texas.
I had a year left to serve. My unit was filled with Intelligence personnel,
back from Vietnam like myself. The Army didn’t really know what to do with us. I
was a POW Interrogator and Order of Battle Analyst and in Texas there wasn’t
much need for my expertise, so they put me to work in the motor pool. I kept
track of and ordered parts for vehicles.
I shared an open bay on the second floor of an Army barracks with a bunch of guys
and two of them became good friends. Both Phil and Tony were excellent guitar
players. In the evenings we would sit on the edge of one of our bunks and they
would play music. Tony was a polished musician, having played in the LA clubs
before being forced into the Army. Phil played an old Martin D-28 and finger
picked like Mississippi John Hurt. I loved their music and wanted in. They
helped me pick out a guitar in a Killeen music store and began teaching me how
to play. I picked up some music books to help with the process and one of them
was the “Songs of Leonard Cohen”.
Tony
was knowledgeable about all the folk artists of the time, and he introduced me
to the music of Eric Anderson, Phil Ochs, Hoyt Axton, Jackson Browne (Tony knew
Jackson from the LA circuit and they exchanged songs before Jackson had his
first album out), Tom Rush and Leonard Cohen. Leonard had two albums out in
1969, Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs from a Room. I loved his music.
Unlike American music, his songs sounded more like the French singers, Jacques
Brel and Edith Piaff. I guess this isn’t surprising, since he came from
Montreal. I
loved his poetry of existential/religious/symbolic language. He was
intellectual and classy, in his natty attire, a "continental" man. The guitar music
in his songbook was in tablature, which shows you exactly where to put your fingers on the strings.
Many of the songs were easy to learn on the guitar and I spent hours
painstakingly learning a bunch of them.
The
songbook also contained biographical information about Leonard and pictures of
his house on the Island of Hydra, Greece with Marianne, his beautiful Norwegian
girlfriend and muse. For a twenty one year old boy back from the war and soon
to be free with plans of travel and college, I was enchanted by Leonard and his
lifestyle. I wanted to be him or some version thereof. Years later I got the chance to see him live. In
1993, Katie and I drove up to Vancouver, BC to attend a Leonard Cohen concert.
Even then Leonard was not widely known in the US. His songs were not top 40
material. This was before his song Hallelujah,
from his 1984 Various Positions album, became a huge hit. At
the time his most famous song probably was Suzanne
made popular by Judy Collins on her 1966 album In My Life and Leonard’s first song on his first album. Here’s the
last verse.
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 this 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 her mind.
To
my surprise, the concert at the Orpheum was packed and the audience knew the
words to most of the songs. Like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, Leonard was
Canada’s own. With an exceptional back-up band and angelic sounding women
singers enveloping and surrounding his low gravelly voice, his songs filled the
beautifully ornate theater. It was definitely one of the music concert
highlights of my life. Leonard
has been part of my life since I was twenty. I wish I could have thanked him
personally.
First
verse of his song Anthem from the
album The Future. A very timely message.
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Thank
you Leonard.
You're making me cry. I was lucky to hear some interviews with Leonard and his son working on his last album since I switched to listening to CBC several months ago...some good came out of this current political mess.
ReplyDeleteWhile you were in the motor pool listening to intellectually driven music the rest of us were in college listening to Herman's Hermits. What is wrong with this picture? Maybe we should have all spent some time in the military making the contacts that you made.
ReplyDeleteI discovered Leonard in the last ten years. Living near Canada helped. He wrote wonderful songs. We will miss him.
ReplyDelete