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Leonard Cohen...What's Your Problem?
Doom and Gloom
Interview by Patrick Humphries
Born in Montreal in 1934,
Cohen was already an established poet and novelist--The Favourite Game
('63), Beautiful Losers ('66)--by the time he released his debut album
The Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1968. His subsequent two albums (Songs
From A Room ('69) and Songs Of Love And Hate ('71), with Cohen's
lugubrious delivery and mournful lyrics) established him as the darling of
the bedsits. He continued recording throughout the '70s and '80s. Nick Cave
and Ian McCulloch sang his praises; REM and James contributed covers to a
recent Cohen tribute album. I'm Your Man ('88) brought him a whole
new audience, and his latest album, The Future, has proved his most
successful to date.
Confident, assured, talented--is it true that Leonard
Cohen still has a problem with his image of Mr. Doom & Gloom?
"The image of gloom is one that's just got into the computer, you know?
You got gloom, suicide, bedsitter depression, razor-blades, and also, curiously
enough, ladies' man--as if women found those other characteristics attractive.
They don't.
People have this image of you. If somebody says 'Bob Dylan', you think
'Blowin' In The Wind'. I don't resist it, I tell you, I feel lucky to have
any kind of image, because the scene is ferociously competitive; there is
so much good stuff around. To be able to have any kind of identity at all,
and one which enables you to make a living--that's always been a concern
of mine. My records have never sold in those vast quantities; until very
recently, they sold very modestly, and they still sell modestly in relationship
to the people who are considered pop icons. So, yes, 'Suzanne', 'melancholy',
whatever the designations are, I'm ready to live with them, even embrace
them.
People say my vision of the future is bleak. The future is here. I think
the landscape that I describe in all the songs is here. It is that landscape
which provokes these cries. Those are not my personal politics, these are
the kinds of cries that arise in response to the catastrophe in which we
find ourselves. Human beings have always found themselves in a catastrophe.
The human predicament is catastrophic, but these are the cries: 'Give
me back the Berlin Wall, give me Stalin and St. Paul...lie beside me baby,
that's an order'. This is the mind shattered by the predicament. So that
mind which says 'give me crack and anal sex', also says 'I'll be loving you
always'. In other words, all kinds of expression, irresponsible, shattered,
broken, fragmented, passionate, indifferent; all these cries arise from this
shattered heart, that is the heart that I confess I have, and in bars, guys
occasionally confess they have.
I've been producing this dismal conversation for a long time. Back in
'75 there were lines in songs that went 'These are the final days...this
is the darkness...this is the flood'. In other words, the catastrophe is
interior, it's already happened, you don't have to wait for it. Somehow the
landmarks are overturned, the lights are out, and we are holding on to our
bits of orange crate and floating on flagstaffs in this torrent, and when
we pass each other, what is the appropriate greeting? Is it hopeful, is it
pessimistic? These seem to be completely inappropriate to the gravity of
the situation.
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. The next
time one of these great historic, liberating events takes place, like the
Berlin Wall coming down, your enthusiasm will have a certain edge.
Much of this record was occasioned by the collapse of the Berlin Wall,
because even though it is impossible not to rejoice with those who are rejoicing,
I alone among my friends produced a gloomy prediction. People were saying
democracy is coming to the East--fat chance! If it's coming anywhere, it's
coming to the United States. I had 50 verses for that song 'Democracy'; one
of them went: "It ain't coming to us European style, concentration camp
behind the smile. / It ain't coming from the East with its temporary feast.
/ Count Dracula comes strolling down the aisle".
I started to get the news that I was being resurrected from my daughter,
who was about 14 at the time. She was telling me: 'You know, dad, a lot of
garage bands are playing your stuff'. I started to get the news that I was
beginning to be taken seriously again, because for a long time I was a
joke.
When Jennifer Warnes proposed to record company after record company
that she do an album of my songs, she was laughed out of their offices...
The former President of CBS Records, Mr. Yetnikoff, said to me with refreshing
frankness: 'Leonard, we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any
good!'
I didn't find it depressing that I wasn't selling records. They were
selling sufficiently so that I could take care of my needs, send my kids
to school, pay the bills. I was able to satisfy my dictum that I set myself:
to be paid for my work, but not to work for pay.
I feel that, more and more, I need to be strong and cheerful, to greet
the daily events, the daily abrasions that seem to greet me."
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