Bits and Pieces
Leonard Cohen has always been one of those artists that I noddingly enjoy - but not to the point where I've developed a lifelong obsession.
Still, reading his biography, I was fascinated by this bit here:
War is an enduring theme of Cohen's work which in his earlier songs, as indeed in his early life, he approached ambivalently. In "Field Commander Cohen" he (perhaps metaphorically) imagines himself as a soldier/spy socializing with Fidel Castro in Cuba, where he had actually lived at the height of US–Cuba tensions in 1961—allegedly sporting Che Guevara-style beard and military fatigues. This song was actually written immediately following Cohen's front-line stint with the Israeli air force, the "fighting in Egypt" documented in an (again perhaps metaphorical) passage of "Night Comes On:" In 1973, Cohen, who had travelled to Jerusalem to sign up on the Israeli side in the 1973 war with Egypt, had instead been assigned to a USO-style entertainer tour of front-line tank emplacements in the Sinai Desert, at one of which he both came under fire and reportedly shared cognac with an unlikely self-professed fan, then-General Ariel Sharon. Claiming ambivalence from the start about the causes of the conflict, Cohen eventually left, disillusioned with combat by encounters with captured and wounded enemy troops.
His recent politics continue a lifelong predilection for the underdog, the "beautiful loser," whether the WWII French resister of Anna Marly and Hy Zaret's The Partisan (which he covered) or the royalist of his own "The Old Revolution," although Cohen's fascination with war is often as metaphor for more explicitly cultural and personal issues, as in New Skin for the Old Ceremony, by this measure his most "militant" album.
That's my favorite part about the internet; like my little
Sheila-esque trip through writing about
White Soul the other night, it gives one so much fuel for these serendipitous side-tracks.
Posted by Mitch at
February 28, 2006 06:58 AM
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That's grate, mitch.
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Posted by: PWannaBee at February 28, 2006 07:12 AMOne of my favorites is The Partisan. He didn't write it, but it is hauntingly beautiful.
Posted by: Hammerswing75 at February 28, 2006 06:40 PMI have to be careful when I listen to Leonard Cohen, because he's one of those singers who can turn me all wistful and brooding with just one turn of phrase. I don't know if I can pick out a favorite song of his, but I really like "Famous Blue Raincoat", "Take This Longing", and "Chelsea Hotel #2". Johnny Cash did a pretty good version of "Bird on a Wire" on one of his last albums, too...
It disappoints me that Cohen's new albums are such sterile, bloodless, New-Agey things. I feel he should be making gravelly-voiced, seen-it-all old-man albums instead of the synthesized stuff with the whimpery back-up singers he releases nowadays...
Posted by: Kevin-M at February 28, 2006 08:51 PM