Leonard Cohen Can’t Sing

I never much liked the singing voice of Leonard Cohen.  This is ironic because anyone that knows me would tell you that he is one of my favorite artists of all time.  Leonard died yesterday.  I suppose if you clicked on this post you know this and you were probably annoyed at the impertinency of such a blog title.  Leonard Cohen first came into my consciousness in 1991.  I had just graduated from college when Atlantic records released a compilation of Leonard covers titled “I’m Your Fan” and included performances by everyone from R.E.M to the Pixies.  It was actually a redub of an overseas version put out by the French publication Les Inrockuptbles.  I don’t know what provoked me to pick it up.  It certainly wasn’t played on the radio and these were the days of record stores.  Maybe it was the R.E.M cover of “First We Take Manhattan” (which did get some play).  I fell in love with Leonard Cohen that day, listening to the CD over and over again.  I couldn’t get enough of James’ “So Long Marianne” and Lloyd Cole’s “Chelsea Hotel” and I started picking up other pieces and scraps of Leonard’s music.  Imagine my surprise when I actually heard the real Leonard sing.  I loved listening to him sing the way I’ve grown to love the burn in first sip of scotch whiskey or a bitter cup of piping hot coffee.  Not sweet but satisfying and stimulating.  His biblical references interweaved with feelings of passion and despair - all backed by a zippy beat and sometimes gospel singers and even a “wall of sound” at one point.  I don’t think the man who sang “I’m sorry for smudging the air with my song” would be offended by my title to this post.

Now, as I’ve said, this was the early 1990s and no iTunes or Google.  Imagine how happy I was to stumble across “Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen,” another tribute album in 1995.  This time, I had the treat of Willie Nelson singing “Bird on a Wire,” Peter Gabriel singing “Suzanne,” and Suzanne Vega singing the “Story of Isaac.”  About the same time, I came across “The Future,” which actually had come out a couple of years earlier, this time by the real Leonard.  By this point, I was indoctrinated to his bass voice and dead pan delivery – talk about biblical apocalyptic imagery.  I ate it up.  Since these early discoveries, Leonard had remained one of my favorites, leading me to make my own compilation CD (read: mixed tape) of every cover that I could find of “Hallelujah,” I think there are 13, with Brandi Carlile being my favorite.  Leonard Cohen is part of a very small cohort; so talented in their craft of song writing and poetry, they actually outpaced their ability to perform their own work.  Anyone can tell you of the brilliance of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or even Burt Bacharach.  In other words; people known for their verse, not their honey-coated voice.  I have followed Leonard, with his plunge into Buddhism and revival back into art.  You will see his influences in my writing (that is if I ever get published) and I even named one of my characters after him.  See if you can figure out which…

I’m listening to Tower of Song as I type and again the irony burns through:

“Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back

They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track

But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone

I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the tower of song.”