Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen
- FaceOff - עימות חזיתי
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Written By: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 27.12.1967
“My mother sang songs all around the house. I know those melodies touched me deeply. When I took my guitar to a restaurant with friends, my mother would come along, and we would sing all night.”
Leonard Cohen was never meant to be a singer. He was a poet and novelist who received critical acclaim for his books, including: "Let Us Compare Mythologies", "The Spice-Box of Earth", and "The Favourite Game". But praise and good reviews do not pay the grocery bills. So Cohen left Canada, where he was born, and moved to the United States. By a twist of fate, he became a fringe figure in Andy Warhol’s Factory scene.
Warhol, who occasionally scouted promising artists and musicians from the crowd ("Velvet Underground"), heard Cohen perform "Suzanne", a song Cohen wrote about his unfulfilled relationship with Suzanne Verdal, the partner of Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. The song was first recorded and popularized by American singer Judy Collins.
Warhol brought Cohen onstage for his first performance in front of an audience, giving him the initial push he needed. Cohen went on to perform at several folk festivals, until John Hammond, a producer at Columbia Records, heard about him and signed him. From there, the path to his debut album "Songs of Leonard Cohen", released on December 27, 1967, was short.
Cohen was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Westmount, Quebec, in September 1934. When he was nine years old, his father, Nathan Cohen, passed away. At fourteen, he studied music and singing at Westmount High School, where he became particularly fascinated by the poetry of Spanish poet, playwright, and director Federico García Lorca.
During high school, he taught himself to play acoustic guitar and formed a country-folk band called “Buckskin Boys.”
As mentioned, Hammond signed Cohen and was initially meant to take him into the recording studio, but due to illness he was replaced by John Simon, who would later produce albums for "The Band", "Blood Sweat & Tears", and the group that launched the career of Janis Joplin, "Big Brother & the Holding Company".
Cohen’s intention was to record the songs in a minimalist fashion, accompanied only by guitar, relying primarily on his groundbreaking, beautiful songwriting. His lyrics avoid strict rhyme schemes and instead embrace a loose, creative structure.
Throughout the album, Cohen often leads the listener to the edge of an emotional moment, touching but not quite crossing it. At times this appears in his relationship with a woman (“Suzanne”), at others in the story of two women travelers he hosted in his hotel room during a snowstorm in Edmonton (“Sisters of Mercy”), and elsewhere in the image of a man reaching his hands toward the sky as if he could touch it (“The Stranger Song”).
Cohen also tells the story of a woman who loved him deeply, while he felt unworthy of her love (“So Long, Marianne”).
It can be said that much of the album carries a dark, even bitter atmosphere, tinged with sadness over things that were unattainable, or almost within reach.
The album appears on Colin Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums list and on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music