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Everything’s Coming Up Cohen: Expanded Editions of First Three Leonard Cohen Albums Due in April
Zachary Herrmann
February 19, 2007

“If Leonard Cohen had only recorded this extraordinary debut album and then disappeared, his stature as one of the most gifted songwriters of our time would still be secure” (—from the new liner notes to Songs of Leonard Cohen, by Anthony DeCurtis)

In the competition for the greatest lyricist of all time, there is a daunting gap between Bob Dylan and the large pack of second-place contenders. But somewhere towards the front of that pack stands the man once dubbed (unfairly) the “Canadian Dylan”—Leonard Cohen. To commemorate Cohen’s 40th year as a Columbia artist, his record label announces they will release expanded, remastered editions of his first three albums on April 24th through Columbia/Legacy.

Each album will come in hardcover packaging (similar to Legacy’s June Carter retrospective Keep On the Sunny Side), complete with newly commissioned liner notes from journalist Anthony DeCurtis.

The debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen, will feature two tracks unearthed from the original album sessions. “Store Room” and “Blessed Is the Memory” were recorded in early 1967 when Columbia A&R staff producer John Hammond (the man who brought Dylan to Columbia as well as Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin and countless others) was still at the helm. Hammond fell ill during the sessions, and John Simon (uncredited producer of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills) swooped in to finish the album. The two tracks are all that survive from the Hammond sessions.

In similar fashion, Cohen’s second album Songs From a Room began under the production of David Crosby in Hollywood in May 1968. Things with Crosby didn’t work out, and the recording moved to Nashville with Bob Johnston (Dylan, Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel) producing. The expanded edition will feature two tracks from Crosby sessions: “Like a Bird,” an early version of the Cohen classic “Bird on the Wire,” and “Nothing to One,” an early version of “You Know Who I Am.”

On his third album, the final of the reissue series (one can only hope Columbia will continue through New Skin for the Old Ceremony), Cohen returned with Johnston to Nashville. The Songs of Love and Hate reissue features one bonus track, an early version of “Dress Rehearsal Rag” from the previous LP, also pulled from the Crosby sessions.

The three reissues will coincide with Columbia’s release of Anjani’s major label debut album Blue Alert, co-written and produced by none other than Mr. Cohen himself.

“Anjani has always been known as a great singer, a musician’s singer,” said Cohen, of his protege and partner. The two first met in 1984, when Anjani Thomas supplied vocals to the oft-covered “Hallelujah” from the Various Positions album. She accompanied Cohen on his following world tour on keyboards/vocals, later appearing on three more subsequent Cohen albums.

And in other Leonard Cohen news, Philip Glass will unveil “Book of Longing,” a concert, visual, and spoken-word performance composed from Cohen’s poetry book of the same name. The production premieres June 1-3, 2007 at the Luminato Festival in Toronto.

Additionally, the 50th anniversary edition of Cohen’s early book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, will be published by ECCO/HarperCollins on May 29.

Also, the acclaimed documentary Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man is out on DVD. The film contains footage from a 2005 Cohen tribute concert in Australia (featuring U2, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Antony, Beth Orton and many others) spliced with interviews with and about Cohen.

Where did you get this from?

Anthony DeCurtis is one of the writers for Rollingstone Magazine and he is on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame voting committee.

Do you smell something?

timnor wrote: In the competition for the greatest lyricist of all time, there is a daunting gap between Bob Dylan and the large pack of second-place contenders. But somewhere towards the front of that pack stands the man once dubbed (unfairly) the “Canadian Dylan”—Leonard Cohen.

this guy's an idiot - Leonard Cohen a 'second-place contender' after Bob Dylan.....pah!!!!!!!!!!!

Zachary Herrmann wrote:
>In the competition for the greatest lyricist of all time, there is a daunting gap between Bob Dylan and the large pack of second-place contenders. But somewhere towards the front of that pack stands the man once dubbed (unfairly) the “Canadian Dylan”—Leonard Cohen.


Is it right to equate popularity with quality, or is this gentleman making the mistake of over-estimating the cultural taste of the general public? It's certainly true that Dylan's lyrics are excellent - in every way. The guy's a genius and I love most of his work. But, just because Cohen has written fewer songs, and sold less songs - is it fair to say that Dylan is the greater? Well, not necessarily. 'Coronation Street' has been running on British TV non-stop for decades - it's one of the most famous and popular programmes of all time - because it appeals to uneducated working-class people - and Britain has an abundance of such viewers. In Sweden 'Donald Duck & Co' is the greatest selling periodical of all time - there is almost no Swedish home that does not have this Disney comic lying on a shelf. Does that make it greater than Shakespeare or The Bible? There are Spanish flamenco guitarists on Madrid pavements who play more original and superior pieces of music than Paco Pena, Manitas De Plata or Segovia put together - but they will never be famous. You simply cannot say of lyricists Dylan and Cohen that one is greater than the other because of popularity. I was walking past an old people's home yesterday and could hear one of the nurses strumming a guitar and leading everybody in the communal room through the chorus of Cohen's 'Hallelujah' - and they were loving it. They may have had dementia or Alzheimers I don't know - but they were singing 'Hallelujah' at the tops of their voices and in perfect melody. Maybe it wasn't all that harmonious, but they knew the melody - and they sung it beautifully. It was so moving. Dylan could never touch anything near that.

Dear Geoffrey ~

I was walking past an old people's home yesterday and could hear one of the nurses strumming a guitar and leading everybody in the communal room through the chorus of Cohen's 'Hallelujah' - and they were loving it. They may have had dementia or Alzheimers I don't know - but they were singing 'Hallelujah' at the tops of their voices and in perfect melody. Maybe it wasn't all that harmonious, but they knew the melody - and they sung it beautifully. It was so moving. Dylan could never touch anything near that.

As I know you know, this is worth its weight in gold, nay, platinum. Thank you so much for sharing it. I know this is the very kind of thing that will bring Leonard much satisfaction and pleasure.


~ Lizzy

Geoffrey,
While I agree with much of your thesis I would have serious questions about your equating working class with uneducated. To be unschooled is not necessaily to be uneducated and nor is to be working class to be necessarily uneducated.
Many of the people I know who are avid Coronation Street fans would definitely rate themselves as middle class and many of my friends who are working class (and educated) would never watch Coronation St.

Red Poppy wrote:
>Geoffrey, while I agree with much of your thesis I would have serious questions about your equating working class with uneducated . . .


Hello Red Poppy. And thank you for joining this discussion about the educated and the uneducated, or Cohen versus Dylan. Let me put it this way; an intelligent man can act like an imbecile, but an imbecile cannot act intelligent. In other words: a person who likes Cohen's work most of all can also appreciate Dylan's work, but a person who likes Dylan's work most of all cannot really appreciate Cohen's work. Listen to Perry Como: 'It's impossible!'

In other words: a person who likes Cohen's work most of all can also appreciate Dylan's work, but a person who likes Dylan's work most of all cannot really appreciate Cohen's work.

Oh, brother.

Despite all the blathering on this site about getting the Cohen oeuvre out into the wider world and all the hysteria revolving around the current attention to his work....I am persuaded that some fans here would just as soon keep LC to themselves. There has always been a self-congratulatory halo of exclusivity emanating from the FOL's combined with a supercilious pity towards the rest of the great unwashed and unCohenized humanity.


YdF

Young dr. Freud protested:
>Despite all the blathering on this site about getting the Cohen oeuvre out into the wider world and all the hysteria revolving around the current attention to his work....I am persuaded that some fans here would just as soon keep LC to themselves. There has always been a self-congratulatory halo of exclusivity emanating from the FOL's combined with a supercilious pity towards the rest of the great unwashed and unCohenized humanity.


Red Indians gladly handed over nuggets of pure gold in exchange for a few coloured beads, and tramps are happier eating a hamburger than caviar. There is probably nobody in this forum who doesn't agree that Dylan most eximiously possesses brilliance in as much abundance, or even more so, as you so desperately appear to have convinced yourself. He is good, absolutely fantastic - there is no question about that. But Cohen is better. Look at their brows in profile and you wil see that while Cohen's forehead goes straight up Dylan's sort of slopes back a bit. Not a lot, but enough to allow Cohen to score higher in a MENSA examination than Dylan.

Geoffrey said:

But Cohen is better.

Yes. It's that simple.




~ Lizzy

I'm not sure, Lizzytish, that it's as simple as Geoffrey is either bombastically or sarcastically suggesting (and I hope it's the latter, I suspect it is????).
I prefer Cohen but what is this stuff about caviar and tramps.
I really do hope you are taking heavy doses of irony, Geoffrey - otherwise you are sailing close to the wind with a lot of questionable theories.
I'll put it down to British/European sarcasm unless I hear otherwise!

Apples & oranges.

Perhaps I should clarify:

I was wondering when the inevitable comparison between these 2 figs was going to crest. I guess I figured it had been debated to extinction in this forum something like eons ago.

Lenny is a traditionally sad Jew, Bobby is a traditionally pissed-off Jew. I think more people can relate to anger than can really relate to the intense sadness of our Guy.

Another thing is that Lenny does a lot of slow, undanceable songs (unless you only know how, and prefer to always waltz), while Bobby lets you get a little more jiggy. I think this has also lent Bobby a higher level of popularity. I love them both equally. They each have their gems and (let's be honest, now) they each have their dross.

So the heart questions are these: Does being more popular make you more worthy of popularity? The answer is probably yes. But does being more popular mean that you're "better?" The answer is probably no. The reason is because of the bell curve of everything or anything. Intelligence comes to mind, but things like depth of heart, generosity and I guess all personality traits probably also follow a bell curve. For this reason, I can recognize that Leonard is "better," but I can also understand why Dylan is more popluar without holding it against him. I love them both for refusing to pander to the populace, and for being interesting.

Geoffrey wrote:Zachary Herrmann wrote:
>In the competition for the greatest lyricist of all time, there is a daunting gap between Bob Dylan and the large pack of second-place contenders. But somewhere towards the front of that pack stands the man once dubbed (unfairly) the “Canadian Dylan”—Leonard Cohen.

Is it right to equate popularity with quality, or is this gentleman making the mistake of over-estimating the cultural taste of the general public?

Imagine if Zachary placed Dylan with a large pack of second-hand contenders in comparing him to Cohen, even if it was somewhere toward the front of the pack. Add to that the suggestion of a daunting gap and he probably would be looking for a new job.

Jack

Hi Red Poppy ~

My own comment restricted itself to what I quoted. I really don't compare. For me, it's a settled issue.


Manna ~ Oh, yes... debated multiple times over the years here.


~ Lizzy