Transcript of Pacifica Interview with Kathleen Kendall, WBAI Radio, New York City from December 4, 1974.
Transcript prepared by Paula Jenkins.
Many thanks to Tom Sakic of the Croatian fan site, A Thousand Kisses Deep, and Leonard Cohen Book of Longing for rescuing this transcript and sharing it here.
Leonard Cohen: Pacifica Interview with Kathleen Kendall
December 4, 1974
["You Know Who I Am"]
Kathleen Kendall
You are listening to the music of Leonard Cohen, author of the song "Suzanne" as well as two novels and several volumes of poetry. My name is Kathleen Kendal and on December 4th I had the honour of speaking to Mr Cohen. In this next hour or so we shall hear what he had to say then regarding his work and his feelings and we shall hear some of the music he has written exemplifying those feelings.
Leonard Cohen
I don't feel any compulsion just to stand under the spotlight night after night or year after year although it's, let me put it this way, unless I have something to say or something new to disclose about my own work. I don't feel that I just want to be a nightly entertainer. I don't think there is any need for that. There are a lot of good singers around. I think when one has something new and is in a particular kind of [???] condition when you feel you want to review or display, exhibit whatever the thing is that is the time to do it not out of habit, so I really haven't felt that there is anything I could say to Americans for a long time.
Kathleen Kendall
Why is that do you think that Americans -
Leonard Cohen
I am not saying I have anything momentous to say at all, do you know what I meant, this is just like sometimes you just don't feel like going down to the market place because you just don't feel you can handle the market place. I have felt that way for some years in the United States and it seems to be now that there is just a fortunate gathering of circumstances, the band and the new record and a feeling of energy and the desire to get out of the house and er -
Kathleen Kendall
Did you feel like Americans were hostile to you?
Leonard Cohen
Not at all, not at all.
Kathleen Kendall
A lot of people I speak to don't even know who you are, which led me to believe, I was very shocked when I went to the concert and found you were like sold out for several days, a week, and, I mean, I live in my little world of Leonard Cohen and a lot of people don't know who he is and felt that you would not draw such a large crowd. Were your surprised?
Leonard Cohen
I was surprised and of course very pleased that there are people who remembered the work and were still interested in it. I never reached for a mass audience in America. I know there are many many people who have never heard of the work. In Europe of course, where there is a different tradition of music and different kinds of interest and where I have toured more frequently, there is a different sort of audience but in America, I knew there was a small audience of people who were interested and one of the reasons for this tour is to make contact with that audience just to see them and to experience the audience and let them see what has become of me.
["There Is A War"]
Leonard Cohen
Well, the years go by and you change, I think in terms of the actual musical style of the record a great deal of it is due to, whether it is a success or not, it is of course a matter of taste. I think it is quite successful that comes from working with a man named John Lissauer who did the arrangement and was playing piano at the gig and certainly to my mind the most interesting musical mind I have come across in many years and is a very young man.
Kathleen Kendall
That album was very exciting. The arrangement to the music behind, it was really quite a change.
Leonard Cohen
I think his work is going to be very important and will certainly surpass what he has done for me. This is a man who is extremely well acquainted with the music of all ages and all times and is completely fluent in all the idioms that you could want and I am very pleased to work with him.
["Who By Fire" "Stories Of The Street"]
Leonard Cohen
It is very hard to really untangle the real reasons why you do anything. I was always interested in music. It seemed to me I always played guitar. I always associated song and singing with some sort of nobility of spirit. The first songs I learnt were of the Workers Movement and I always thought that this was the best way to say the most important things, even though these things, I don't mean the most ponderous or pompous things, I mean the important things like how you feel about things, how you feel about someone else. I always thought this was the way to do it.
["Teachers"]
Kathleen Kendall
Who are the poems and artists that you respect or who influenced you, or both?
Leonard Cohen
I think that is also very difficult to untangle influences because you represent the sum of everything you have seen or heard or experienced. The kind of language that I have liked, I have been influenced by the Bible and by Cervantes and by the Old Masters. The kind of sensibility I have been influenced of course a great deal by the French writers Sartre and Camus, the Irish poets, Yeats, the English poets and of course we had our own little group of poets in Montreal years back all very fine. One man especially standing out I think one of the finest writers in language Irving Layton. I don't think he is known down here at all.
Kathleen Kendall
I have only heard of him because of the things you have written, the poetry you have written. I often wondered who Layton was.
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, Layton is probably the most accomplished master of verse living today in English. Quite unknown down here.
Kathleen Kendall
I didn't know the name and you wrote a few poems referring to Layton and I wondered who he was. I often wondered who Suzanne was and who Marianne was. The people whose names repeat often. I wonder who they are.
Leonard Cohen
Well, Suzanne and Marianne are real women and Irving Layton, he's real name.
Kathleen Kendall
Would you relate the story of the "Sisters of Mercy" again. You told us a story before you sang it.
Leonard Cohen
That's right. I always remember to dedicate this song to the girls for whom I wrote it and like a lot of my material it just completely documentary. It doesn't concern higher metaphysical questions but it is an accurate reportage as authentic and precise as I can make it. A description of exactly what happened on the interior landscape. I was in Edmonton doing a tour by myself of Canada, I guess this was around '67, and I was walking along one of the main streets of Edmonton. It was bitter cold and I knew no one and I passed these two girls in the doorway and they bade me stand in the doorway with them, and of course I did and sometime later we found ourselves in my little hotel room in Edmonton and the three of us were gonna go sleep together. Of course I had all kinds of erotic fantasies of what the evening might bring.
Kathleen Kendall
How old were you at the time?
Leonard Cohen
Oh I was an adult. I guess I was around my early 30s. And we went to bed together and I think we all jammed into this one small couch in this little hotel and it became clear that wasn't the purpose of the evening at all and at one point in the night, I found myself unable to sleep. I got up and by the moonlight it was very very bright and the moon was being reflected off the snow and my windows were very bright I wrote that poem by the ice reflected moonlight while these women were sleeping and it was one of the few songs that I ever wrote from top to bottom without a line of revision. The words flowed and the melody flowed and by the time they woke up the next morning it was dawn I had this completed song to sing for them.
Kathleen Kendall
Did they like it?
Leonard Cohen
They did.
Kathleen Kendall
I'm glad.
["Sisters Of Mercy"]
["Sisters Of Mercy" (Judy Collins?)]
Leonard Cohen
I am always pleased when somebody sings a song of mine, in fact I never get over that initial rush of happiness when someone says they are going to sing a song of mine, I always like it.
Kathleen Kendall
Do you think they all do a good job of it? Is there any particular one you like?
Leonard Cohen
I like the way Judy Collins does some of my songs. I can't honesty say that I have heard my songs done in a way that totally satisfies me I think with the exception perhaps of "Suzanne" by Judy Collins. And her treatment of the other songs are also very delicate and sensitive but I don't know if there are really versions of the songs that strike me the way I would like to be struck. Not that my own are that way either.
Kathleen Kendall
How do you feel when lines are changed. Do you change the line or does someone else do that?
Leonard Cohen
Sometimes a line gets changed, sometimes one changes a line, sometimes another singer is not comfortable with a certain version of a song and they will change it. For instance Joan Baez, I have heard her sing "Suzanne" and she completely changes the song. She doesn't like the metaphysical possibility of somebody having their body touched with somebody else's mind. That offends her anti-clerical position. It sounds religious to her, it smacks of something that she doesn't embrace. So she changes it around to, like, I don't know, touched your perfect body with my thumb or something. I don't know exactly what it is, but she moves it around that way. But that's OK.
Kathleen Kendall
It's OK?
Leonard Cohen
It's OK, you know, because a song enters the world and it gets changed like everything else, that's OK as long as there are more authentic versions. But a good song I think will get changed.
["Bird On The Wire"]
Kathleen Kendall
Did you change some lines in "Bird On A Wire" from the first recording?
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, I did that with a great deal of thought.
Kathleen Kendall
I kinda preferred the previous lines.
Leonard Cohen
You liked the earlier ones?
Kathleen Kendall
It meant more to me, that's why. But I figured Leonard Cohen wouldn't have changed if it didn't mean -
Leonard Cohen
No, I thought about that very very carefully. But I am not certain whether I made an improvement. It's just at some certain moments in one life that one is more comfortable with certain kinds of statement than not and...but there is no reason and no guarantee that those changes are for the better. I will certainly review that song.
["Bird On The Wire"]
Kathleen Kendall
One thing struck me when you were talking between the songs you were doing, someone asked you to do "Dress Rehearsal Rag" and you refused to do it.
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, well there are some songs which I never sing in public. I am not trying to be super-sensitive or coy about it just that particular song I very rarely sing, to myself to friends or any time. I wrote it, I taught it to Judy Collins and she recorded it and I have never sung it in public and maybe I have sung it three or four times to myself in that last time. It comes out of... It is an authentic song I think, it comes out of my own experience but I am not interested in, I can't somehow that I, I haven't been able to release that song from its private area. I recorded it, I was surprised, I surprised myself that I recorded it. I am not happy with the recording. I think it has a number of flaws in it as a recording but I certainly, I don't think I could ever do that under the spotlight.
Kathleen Kendall
You refer to yourself as a closet suicide.
Leonard Cohen
Well I,one speculates about these things in private. I no longer do and that is a song about suicide and I certainly don't want to present myself as a potential suicide for any reason whatsoever, so it has dropped out of my singing landscape. I just don't think about a song like that.
["A Singer Must Die"]
Kathleen Kendall
I had an impassioned argument with a woman who said that "Joan Of Arc" was a sexist song.
Leonard Cohen
It might be but I think it is on the side of women. But more accurately I think it is just a song about the total gift of total giving and the total consummation of the spirit in that kind of experience. It takes in the whole shot to be man and woman.
Kathleen Kendall
That's what I felt about the song. I tried to get her to listen to the song more carefully.
Leonard Cohen
Well, how did she feel that it violated the feminist point of view?
Kathleen Kendall
Well, she felt it was just another lusting man after a woman's body. The fire wanting her body and becoming the bridegroom and enslaving her in marriage when she had been free as the solider.
Leonard Cohen
Oh yeah... I suppose when you have a very strong political position that you can find enemies everywhere... It certainly was not the intention and I don't think the effect really of that song... I don't think someone like Judy Collins for instance, who is very aware of the situation of women and of the complex problems of women's liberation is going to sing a song of the viewpoint of your friend.
["Joan Of Arc" (Judy Collins)]
Kathleen Kendall
Are you writing more poetry or music?
Leonard Cohen
I have written a chunk of a novel.
Kathleen Kendall
Oh that's wonderful.
Leonard Cohen
And that novel includes a full book of poems within the novel and I would like to finish that by next year.
Kathleen Kendall
Do you have anything in particular that you are especially fond of. A favourite poem or something that you wrote. Something of your own that especially moved you?
Leonard Cohen
Nothing comes to mind. One has a changing relationship with one's own work, you know, pieces, pieces are favoured for some years and then are rejected or abandoned. Sometimes you feel you betrayed yourself, sometimes you feel this really stands for, you know, like children. Sometimes you are happy to see them represent you, sometimes you are really humiliated by what they do.
Kathleen Kendall
Would you read something?
Leonard Cohen
Something new?
Kathleen Kendall
Something new, that would be nice.
Leonard Cohen
Sure, let me get it.
Kathleen Kendall
OK.
Leonard Cohen
I went down to the port with my wife, on the way down I accused her of continuing her relentless automatic assault on the centre of my being. I knew this was not wise, I meant only to rap her on the knuckles and direct her attention to her habitual drift toward bitchiness but I lost control, there is no control in these realms. I became a thug I attacked her spirit. Her spirit armed itself and retaliated massively, I think we were talking about valises or which of us travelled the lightest. A truce was investigated briefly by shabby deputies neither of which had the authority to begin the initiative. You always carry something extra a shopping bag, something of string and paper that can't be checked. I am glad you didn't pack for me. You always slow me down. I can't be an acrobat when you are around. You are sandpaper. I can't be a dancer. I am dead when you are around, you kill, it is your nature, it is your nature, observe your nature, observe your nature. The shoemaker looked up at us as we passed his open doorway. This humiliation made me furious. I shoved a razorblade into her nerves, her eyes changed colour, this was done by saying Jesus Christ, quickening my step slightly and minutely moving my jaw, rejecting the essence of her totally and forever. If she went down quickly I would nurse her back to love in time to get her blessings before the boat came in. But why should I. She didn't rub my back when I threw my shoulder out, even when I asked her three times and why should she since I had defeated her smile over and over and why should I, since she was the enemy of my freedom and the smiling moon over my gradual death and why should she, since I hated her because her beauty died, why should I because there must be a woman in Jerusalem or beside me on the aeroplane. Half asleep old John saw us but there was no humiliation since he didn't recognise me any more and I no longer greeted him. Captain Madbody saw us but it didn't matter because he was mute and crazy and lived on the port and knew the shames of everyone. We were on the port in plain sunlight between the masts and the shops the shit piled up in the one heart which is the engine of our energy. We are married. There is only one heart. On common ground the armoured spirits tried to embrace but they both fell down paralysed. Pain removed the world, they felt for the organs of sex but they were gone, they reached for the postcard of old beauty but it was gone. There was no war, no peace, no world. The punishment of marriage spoilt. There is no Armageddon here then fuck you, and fuck you, the horn, the boat was coming. I would have to travel without blessings in the collapsed world, that's the boat, I won't accuse you of ruining my trip. I won't accuse you of ruining your absence.
Kathleen Kendall
That from your new novel?
Leonard Cohen
Yes I think so. Just something in the midst of all those blackened pages.
Kathleen Kendall
It's really nice, it reminded me of a poem that you wrote a long time ago, I guess, called "Two Slept Together".
Leonard Cohen
Oh yes, very good, very good.
Kathleen Kendall
Which is one of my favourite things. It reminded me of that very much.
Leonard Cohen
Very good, very good. That's good pinpointing.
Kathleen Kendall
It also reminded me in a way of one of the songs on your new album, "I Tried To Leave You."
Leonard Cohen
That comes out of that, I am very - That's the arena that I am working in, really what happens between men and women.
Kathleen Kendall
It's a very topical poem in a way.
Leonard Cohen
Yeah. I didn't write it for that reason those things just come out of experience.
Kathleen Kendall
Would you read "Two Slept Together"?
Leonard Cohen
OK. I don't have it here. Do you have it?
Leonard Cohen
Two went to sleep almost every night, one dreamed of mud, one dreamed of Asia. Visiting a Zeppelin, visiting Nijinsky, two went to sleep. One dreamed of ribs, one dreamed of senators, two went to sleep, two travellers, the long marriage in the dark, the sleep was old, the travellers were old, one dreamed of oranges, one dreamed of ????, two friends asleep years locked in travel, goodnight my darling as the dreams waved goodbye. One travelled lightly, one walked through water, visiting a chess game, visiting a booth, always returning to wait out the day, one carried matches, one climbed a beehive, one sold an earphone, one shot a German. Two went to sleep every sleep went together, wandering away from an operating table, one dreamed of grass, one dreamed of spokes, one bargained nicely, one was a snowman, one counted medicines, one tasted pencils, one was a child, one was a traitor, visiting heavy industry, visiting the family. Two went to sleep, none could foretell, one went with baskets, one took a letter, one night happy, one night in terror, love could not bind them, fear could not either. They went unconnected they never knew where always returning to wait out the day, parting with kissing, parting with yawns, visiting death 'til they wore out their welcome, visiting death 'til the right disguise worked.
["I Tried To Leave You"]
Leonard Cohen
I love hearing my songs on the radio.
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