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Leonard Cohen:
Inside the Tower of Song 1991
page 2
Why did you take that out?
I didnt want to compromise the anthemic, hymn-like quality. I didn't want it to get too punchy. I didn't want to start a fight in the song. I wanted a revelation in the heart rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense.
There were a lot of verses like that, and this was long before the riots. There was:
From the church where the outcasts can hide
Or the mosque where the blood is dignified.
Like the fingers on your hand,
Like the hourglass of sand,
We can separate but not divide
From the eye above the pyramid
And the dollars cruel display
From the law behind the law,
Behind the law we still obey
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
There were a lot of verses like that. Good ones.
It's hard to believe you'd write a verse like that and discard it.
The thing is that before I can discard the verse, I have to write it. Even if it's bad -- those two happen to be good, I'm presenting the best of my discarded work -- but even the bad ones took as long to write as the good ones. As someone once observed, it's just as hard to write a bad novel as a good novel. It's just as hard to write a bad verse as a good verse. I cant discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.
You cant discover that in the raw.
I love the verse that has "I'm stubborn as the garbage bags that refuse to decay / I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet."
Most of us from the middle-class, we have a kind of old, 19th century idea of what democracy is, which is, more or less, to over-simplify it, that the masses are going to love Shakespeare and Beethoven. Thats more or less our idea of what democracy is. But that aint it. It's going to come up in unexpected ways from the stuff that we think are junk: the people we think are junk, the ideas we think are junk, the television we think is junk.
You also have the line "The maestro says It's Mozart, but it sounds like bubble-gum." That junk is sometimes promoted as great art.
Some stuff is being promoted as junk and it is great art. Remember the way that a lot of rock and roll was greeted by the authorities and the musicologists and even the hip people. And when people were putting me down as being one thing or another, it wasn't the guy in the subway. He didnt know about me. It was the hip people, writing the columns in the hip newspapers, college papers, music papers.
So it's very difficult to see what the verdict is going to be about a piece of work. And the thing that makes it an interesting game is that each generation revises the game, and decides on what is poetry and song for It'self. Often rejecting the very carefully considered verdicts of the previous generations. I mean, did the hippies ever think that they would be the objects of ridicule by a generation? Self-righteous and prideful for the really bold and courageous steps they had taken to find themselves imbued in the face of an unmovable society; the risks, the chances, the dope they smoked, the acid they dropped?
Did they ever think they would be held up as figures of derision, like cartoon characters? No.
And so it is, with every generation. Theres that remark: "He who marries the spirit of his own generation is a widower in the next."
You've written novels and books of poetry. And you once made a comment about having a calm, domestic life as a novelist before becoming a songwriter. Is the life of a songwriter entirely different than that of the poet or novelist?
It used to be. Because I used to be able to write songs on the run. I used to work hard but I didnt really begin slaving over them till 1983. I always used to work hard. But I had no idea what hard work was until something changed in my mind.
Do you know what that was?
I don't really know what it was. Maybe some sense that this whole enterprise is limited, that there was an end in sight.
An end to your songwriting?
No, an end to your life. That you were really truly mortal. I don't know what it was exactly, I'm just speculating. But at a certain moment I found myself engaged in songwriting in the same way that I had been engaged in novel writing when I was very young. In other words, It's something you do every day and you cant get too far from it, otherwise you forget what It's about
It wasn't that way for you prior to that time?
It was, but I'm speaking of degree. I always thought that I sweated over the stuff. But I had no idea what sweating over the stuff meant until I found myself in my underwear crawling along the carpet in a shabby room at the Royalton Hotel unable to nail a verse. And knowing that I had a recording session and knowing that I could get by with what I had but that I'm not going to be able to do it.
That kind of change I knew gradually was there and I knew that I had to work in a certain way that was nothing I had ever known anything about.
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In the early days, did a song such as "Suzanne" come easy to you?
No, no, I worked months and months on "Suzanne." It's just a matter of intensity. I was still able to juggle stuff: a life, a woman, a dream, other ambitions, other tangents. At a certain point I realized I only had one ball in my hand, and that was The Song. Everything else had been wrecked or compromised and I couldn't go back, and I was a one-ball juggler. Id do incredible things with that ball to justify the absurdity of the presentation.
Because what are you going to do with that ball? You don't have three anymore. you've just got one. And maybe only one arm. What are you going to do? You can flip it off your wrist, or bounce it off your head. You have to come up with some pretty good moves. You have to learn them from scratch. And thats what I learned, that you have to learn them from scratch.
There is some continuity between "Suzanne" and "Waiting for A Miracle" [sic]. Of course there is; It's the same guy. Maybe It's like you lose your arm, youre a shoemaker. Youre a pretty good shoemaker, maybe not the best but one of the top ten. You lose your arm and nobody knows. All they know is that your shoes keep on being pretty good. But in your workshop, youre holding onto the edge of the shoe with your teeth, youre holding it down and hammering with your other hand. It's quite an acrobatic presentation to get that shoe together. It may be the same shoe, It's just a lot harder to come by and you don't want to complain about it.
So maybe thats all that happened, is that I got wiped out in some kind of way and that just meant that I had to work harder to get the same results. I don't have any estimation or evaluation. I just know that the work got really hard.
Why did you move from writing novels and poems to songwriting?
I never saw the difference. There was a certain point that I saw that I couldn't make a living (as a poet or novelist). But to become a songwriter or a singer, to address an economic problem, is the height of folly, especially in your early thirties. So I don't know why I did it or why I do anything. I never had a strategy. I just play it by ear.
I just know that I had written what I thought was a pretty good novel, Beautiful Losers. It had been hailed by all the authorities as being a work of significance. Whether it is or not, who knows. But I had the credentials. But I couldn't pay my bills. It had only sold a couple thousand copies. So it was folly to begin another novel. I didnt want to teach, it just wasn't my cup of tea.
I didnt have the personal style for that. I was too dissolute. I had to stay up too late, I had to move too fast, it wasn't a good place for me.
Have you ever had the desire to write another novel?
You toy with it, but it's the regime that I like very much, writing a novel. I like that you really can't do anything else. You've got to be in one place. That's the way it is now with songwriting. I've got to have my synthesizer and my Mac. I can't really entertain a lot of distractions. [Otherwise] you forget what it's about very easily.
Is it more satisfying for you to write a song, something that you can enter again after writing and perform?
The performance of songs is a wonderful opportunity. It is a great privilege. It is a great way to test your courage. And to test the song. And even to test the audience.
Earlier you said that you could only write something that you would be able to sing, that --
I'm not trying to suggest that this has any dimension or hierarchy of better, worse. It's just a shape that It's got to have, otherwise I cant wrap my voice around it.
There are songs like "Dress Rehearsal Rag" that I recorded once and I will never sing. Judy Collins did a very beautiful version of it, better than mine. I would never do that song in concert; I cant get behind it.
But It's not a matter of excellence or anything but just the appropriate shape of my voice and psyche.
Earlier you said that you couldn't sing an early version of "Anthem" because it had a lie in it. Does this mean that the songs have to resonate in truth for you to be able to sing them?
They have to resonate with the kind of truth that I can recognize. They have to have the kind of balance of truth and lies, light and dark.
Jennifer Warnes said that you once told her that the most particular answer is the most unI'versal one.
I think so. I think thats advice that a lot of good writers have gI'ven me and the world. You don't really want to say "the tree," you want to say "the sycamore."
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Why is that?
I don't know. And it's not even true. But there is a certain truth to it. We seem to be able to relate to detail. We seem to have an appetite for it. It seems that your days are made of details, and if you cant get the sense of another persons day of details, your own day of details is summoned in your mind in some way rather than just a general line like "the days went by." It's better to say "watching Captain Kangaroo." Not "watching TV." Sitting in my room "with that hopeless little screen." Not just TV, but the hopeless, little screen.
I think those are the details that delight us. They delight us because we can share a life then. It's our sense of insignificance and isolation that produces a great deal of suffering.
It's one of the great things about your work, your rich use of details. So many songs we hear are empty, and have no details at all.
I love to hear the details. I was just working on a line this morning for a song called "I Was Never Any Good at Loving You." And the line was -- I don't think I've nailed it yet -- "I was running from the law, I thought you knew, forgiveness was the way it felt with you" or "forgiven was the way I felt with you." Then I got a metaphysical line, about the old law and the new law, the Old Testament and the New Testament: "I was running from the law, the old and the new, forgiven was the way I felt with you." No, I thought, It's too intellectual. Then I thought I got it: "I was running from the cops and the robbers too, forgiven was the way I felt with you." You got cops and robbers, it dignifies the line by making it available, making it commonplace.
Each of those three versions work well. And so many of your lines, though I understand how hard you work on them and revise them, have the feeling of being inevitable. They don't feel forced; they just feel like the perfect line.
I appreciate that. Somebody said that art is the concealment of art.
Is there much concealing?
Unless you want to present the piece with the axe-marks on it, which is legitimate, [to show] where the construction or the carving is. I like the polished stuff too.
At a certain point, when the Jews were first commanded to raise an altar, the commandment was on unhewn stone. Apparently the god that wanted that particular altar didnt want slick, didn't want smooth. He wanted an unhewn stone placed on another unhewn stone. Maybe then you go looking for stones that fit. Maybe that was the process that God wanted the makers of this altar to undergo.
Now I think Dylan has lines, hundreds of great lines that have the feel of unhewn stone. But they really fit in there. But they're not smoothed out. It's inspired but not polished.
That is not to say that he doesnt have lyrics of great polish. That kind of genius can manifest all the forms and all the styles.
When you're working on lines such as those that you mentioned, is that a process of working just with words, separate from music?
No. I don't remember the chicken or the egg, I know the song began. But I keep moving them back and forth between the notebook and the keyboard. Trying to find where the song is. I had it as a shuffle. I had it as a kind of 6/8 song like "Blueberry Hill."
So when working on a lyric, theres always a melody in your mind that accompanies the lyric?
Usually, yes, the line will have a kind of rhythm that will indicate, at the very least, where the voice will go up and where the voice will go down. I guess thats the rudimentary beginnings of what they call melody.
I asked that because your songs, unlike most, are always in perfect meter and perfect rhyme schemes. It seems it would be possible to work on them just as lyrics, without music.
It doesnt seem to work that way. Because the line of music is very influential in determining the length of a line or the density, the syllabic density.
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You mentioned working on a Mac. Is that musical work as well as lyrical work?
I like to set them up. They usually go from the napkin to the notebook to the Mac. And back and forth. And theres a certain moment when theres enough. I like to see it.
They say that the Torah was written with black fire on white fire. So I get that feeling from the computer, the bright black against the bright background. It gI'ves it a certain theatrical dignity to see it on the screen. And also work processing enables you to cut and paste. But I generally have to go back to the napkin and the notebook. But at certain periods during the making of the song, Ill mock it up as a song just to be able to study it in a certain way.
You mentioned that whole verse about the Jews in "Democracy" that you took out, and in "The Future" there is that line, "I'm the little Jew who wrote the Bible." There are so many great Jewish songwriters, yet It's so rare that any of them mention being Jewish in a song --
[Laughs] I smiled to myself when that line came. A friend of mine said, "I dare you to leave that line in."
You were tempted to remove it?
I'm tempted to remove everything. At any time. I guess I've got a kind of alcoholic courage. Most people are reluctant to remove things. My sin is on the other side. I'm ready to discard the whole song at any time and start over.
And I think it's just as grave a defect because probably, at some point down the line, I've thrown away some songs that were pretty good. And they're buried out there somewhere.
Do you ever construct songs from things you've discarded?
I continually recycle.
Do you think being Jewish affects your writing?
I have no idea. I've never been anything else. So I don't know what it would be like not to have this reference. This reference that you can reject or embrace. You can have a million attitudes to this reference but you cant change the reference.
You've studied the Torah and the Talmud?
Yeah, yeah, in a modest way.
When youre writing a song like "The Future," for example, which is in A minor, do you choose a key that will match the tone of the song?
Yeah. I choose a key not so much as Garth Hudson [of the Band] would, who has a whole philosophy of music based on keys and colors and what moods different keys produce. I think thats quite valuable, I just don't have the chops to be able to do that because I cant play in all the keys. So I cant really examine the effects of all the keys. With the synthesizer I could play in all of them but I don't try that.
Do you think that there are colors that coincide with each key?
I think there are but mostly for me It's range. Some keys will place the voice a little deeper than others. My voice has gotten very very deep over the years and seems even to be deepening. I thought it was because of 50,000 cigarettes and several swimming pools of whiskey that my voice has gotten low. But I gave up smoking a couple of years ago and It's still getting deeper.
You actually do sound like a different person on the earlier records.
Sounds like a different person. Something happened to me too. I know what it was. My voice really started to change around 82. It started to deepen and I started to cop to the fact that it was deepening.
That very low voice is such a resonant sound. Are you happy with how it has evolved?
I'm surprised that I can even, with fear and trembling, describe myself to myself as a singer. I'm beginning to be able to do that. I never thought I would but there is something in the voice that is quite acceptable. I never thought I would be able to develop a voice that had any kind of character.
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In terms of keys again, do you ever change keys while writing?
Oh, yeah. It's funny, today I was thinking about modulating in a tune which I have never done. I've never modulated a song in midstream.
Key changes can be quite corny. I cant think of a song of yours where you would want one.
No, I don't know. I think it could be nice. I've never tried it. I might find a way to do it -- maybe in the middle of a line except in the beginning of a verse. There might be some sneaky ways to do it.
I did it in a certain kind of way in "Anthem." When I went up to the B-flat from the F. It threw it into another key. So in a sense, that chorus is in another key and then it comes back through suspended chords and into the original key.
So I have looked into them.
Do you feel that minor keys are more expressive than major keys?
I think the juxtaposition of a major chord with no seventh going into a minor chord is a nice feel. I like that feel.
In "Famous Blue Raincoat" which is A minor, the chorus shifts into C major which is very beautiful.
Yeah. That's nice. I guess I got that from Spanish music, which has that.
You mentioned how much you discard of what you write. Is your critical voice at play while writing, or do you try to write something first and then bring in the critic?
I bring all the people in to the team, the work force, the legion. Theres a lot of voices that these things run through.
Do they ever get in the way?
Get in the way hardly begins to describe it. [Laughter] It's mayhem. It's mayhem and people are walking over each others hands. It's panic. It's fire in the theater. People are being trampled and they're bullies and cowards. All the versions of yourself that you can summon are there. And some you didnt even know were around.
When you finally finish a song, is there a sense of triumph?
Oh, yes. Theres a wonderful sense of done-ness. Thats the thing I like best. That sense of finish-ness.
How long does that last?
A long time. It lasts a long time. I'm still invigorated by having finished this last record and I finished it six months ago and I still feel, "God, I finished this record. Isnt it great?" You have to keep it to yourself after a while. Your friends are ready to rejoice with you for a day or a week. But they're not ready to rejoice after six months of "Hey, lets go get a drink, I finished my record six months ago!" It's an invitation people find easy to resist.
Does drinking ever help you write?
No. Nothing helps. But drinking helps performing. Sometimes. Of course you've got to be judicious.
Would it be okay with you if I named some of your songs to see what response you have to them?
Sure.
(continued ...)
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