Music

Looking for the Veedon Fleece – Van Morrison, Part One

How do I write about Van Morrison? Fiercely individualistic, he’s unlike anyone else I can think of. I first became aware of him from his infectious 60s hit single “Brown-Eyed Girl,” though I’d heard his classic “Gloria” in the version by the Shadows of Knight on radio. He then had a hit single with “Domino,” which was exhilarating and fun. But I wasn’t very familiar with his music until I read Greil Marcus’ 6-page rave-up on him in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, an exhaustive review of his music and its antecedents in blues, jazz, country, and gospel – even folk music. I’m not sure whether I bought his album Moondance before or after reading that. Moondance is a classic album of great songs without a miss-hit on it. The jazz-flavored ballad “Moondance” got a lot of airplay on radio:

You know the night's magic, seems to whisper and hush

You know soft moonlight, seems to shine in your blush

Can I just have one more Moondance with you, my love?

Can I just make some more romance with a-you, my love?

“Into the Mystic” is perhaps the most quintessential Morrison song, although Morrison has so many sides to him that it’s hard to say that about any song. The “Mystic” is a territory for Morrison that has to do with romance, soul, and ultimately identity. In his early albums it’s a nonreligious territory of the spirit that he continually reaches for, something suggestible but undefinable.

We were born before the wind

Also younger than the sun

Ere the bonnie boat was won

As we sailed into the mystic

Hark, now hear the sailors cry

Smell the sea and feel the sky

Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

And when that fog horn blows

I will be coming home

And when that fog horn blows

I wanna hear it, I don't have to fear it

And I wanna rock your gypsy soul

Just like way back in the days of old

Then magnificently we will float

Into the mystic

“Caravan” is probably my favorite song on the album, a celebration of a gypsy-like group of “all my friends,” presumably musicians and fellow-travelers roaming the countryside:

And the caravan is on its way

I can hear the merry gypsies play

Mama, Mama look at Emma Rose

She's playin' with the radio

Turn up radio and let me hear the song

Switch on your electric light

Then we get down to what is really wrong

I long just to hold you tight, so baby I can feel you

Sweet lady of the night, I shall reveal you

If you will turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, radio

Turn it up, that's enough, so you know, it's got soul

Radio, radio, turn it up

The song builds in intensity that gets under your skin until it ends in extended la-la’s with a pulsing backbeat that lifts you into the air. Morrison can do more with la-la’s than any singer I know.

“Brand New Day” is a soaring account of suffering and redemption from suffering:

I was lost and double crossed

With my hands behind my back

I was long time hurt and thrown in the dirt

Shoved out on the railroad track

But I stood and looked, and my eyes got hooked

On that beautiful morning sun

And the sun shines down all on the ground

Yeah, and the grass is oh so green

And my heart is still, and l’ve got the will

And I don’t really feel so mean

Here it comes, here it comes

Here it comes right now

And it comes right in on time

Well it eases me, and it pleases me

And it satisfies my mind

And it seems like, and it feels like

And it seems like, oh yes it feels like

A brand new day, yeah

A brand new day

The rest of the songs are all good. It’s his most completely realized and accessible album.

I went on to buy His Band and Street Choir, St Dominic’s Preview, Astral Weeks, Veedon Fleece, Tupelo Honey, and Hard Nose the Highway in fairly quick succession over the next several years. Every time I got familiar with the latest album I’d bought I’d want still more of his music. I still listen to them often 50 years later, except for the one-of-a-kind Astral Weeks, which occupies an ethereal and unclassifiable musical territory for me and is considered by some to be his best album. I love its songs “Cypress Avenue,” “Beside You,” and even “Madam George,” a 9 ½ minute song about a transvestite caught in the police raid of a party:

Down on Cyprus Avenue

With a child-like vision leaping into view.

The clicking clacking of the high-heeled shoes . . .

Marching with the soldier boy behind . . .

And the smell of sweet perfume comes drifting thru

On the cool night breeze like Shalimar

In the corner playing dominoes in drag

The one and only Madam George . . .

She says “Be cool, I think that it’s the cops”

Stands up, immediately drops everything she gots

Down into the street below

It’s a song about a scene far from anything most of us know, but it gets under your skin, painting a picture of a bold, almost larger than life character. "Beside You” has some of Morrison’s most passionate singing, where he breaks free from restraints and pours his whole self into the song. He draws out the words “beside you” and just wails.

How does it get you when it gets you

When it gets ya

You may not know it's got you until you turn around

And I'll point a finger at you, point a finger at you

You say which way, which way

That's alright, we've gotten hip to it

Goin' to do it right now

Behind you, beside you, beside you

Oh child to never wonder why

To never, never, never, never wonder why at all

Never, never, never, never wonder why at all

My personal favorite Morrison album is his 1974 Irish-flavored roots album Veedon Fleece, described as “incandescent” by Greil Marcus. It was written mostly over three weeks back in Ireland after a three-month tour that left him exhausted and emotionally spent. The cover shows him sitting on the grass with two huge Irish wolfhounds, backed in the distance by an old Irish castle or mansion on a hill and an overcast sky. As with Moondance, it’s full of great songs with no misses, but there’s no attempt to score with songs likely to make the Billboard charts. The album didn’t sell well and was initially panned by Rolling Stone, but a raft of critics and musicians since have praised it to the heavens, some considering it his apex. It’s his most personal album, starting off with the mellow and mesmerizing “Country Fair,” followed by “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights” about a hard-drinking San Francisco Irishman who revenges himself on his enemies:

Linden Arden stole the highlights

With one hand tied behind his back . . .

Loved to go to church on Sundays

Even though he was a drinkin man

When the boys came San Francisco

They were looking for his life

But he found out where they were drinking

Met them face to face outside

Cleaved their heads off with a hatchet

Lord, he was a drinkin’ man . . .

And when they tried to get above him

He just took the law into his own hands . . .

And he loved the little children like they were his very own

The vocals are accompanied by a lilting and wistful piano that contrasts with the story of a Jekyll and Hyde lost soul. It ends with “He said ‘Someday it may get lonely’/Now he’s livin’, livin’ with a gun.” It’s immediately followed by “Who Was That Masked Man,” which starts in falsetto with

Oh, ain’t it lonely, when you’re livin’ with a gun

When you can’t slow down

And you can’t turn around

And you can’t trust anyone

You just sit there like a butterfly

You’re all encased in glass

You’re so fragile you just may break

And you don’t know who to ask . . .

You’re such a rare collector’s item

When they throw away what is trash . . .

When the ghost comes round at midnight

Then you both can have some fun

He can drive you mad, he can make you sad

He can keep you from the sun . . .

And no matter what they tell you

There is good and evil in everyone

It’s a very enigmatic song, impressionistic, mysterious, and haunting. Both “Linden” and “Masked Man” seem to burrow deep in my soul so that the lyrics and the melodies replay in my mind a lot. Streets of Arklow” has a moody tone but, like “Caravan,” describes a joyful journey of a band of “gypsies” walking “in gay profusion in God’s green land.”

And our heads were filled with poetry . . .

And the gypsies rode with their hearts on fire. They said

We love to wander, Lord we love, Lord we love to roam . . .

And our souls were clean, and the grass did grow.

It’s a romantic picture with a beautiful and somewhat haunting melody that underscores the rapture a roving band feels for their landscape. Gypsies are a favorite symbol of freedom of spirit for Morrison. Gentle cascading piano and flutes provide the dominant instrumentation here as on most of the songs, with understated acoustic guitar -- unusual accompaniment for an album by Morrison, without the usual horns. Except for "Bulbs," it doesn't have the rock and roll punch, but it's expressive and a feast for the ears.

“You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push the River” is another moody but not melancholic tune with a philosophy summed up in the title, a nine-minute song describing a balancing act between being assertive and forceful but also humble enough to recognize you can’t push the world around. It’s a musical and lyrical statement I love of an attitude I’ve used as a touchstone to check myself on, and frequently quoted the title. But the song is an expression of a mystical journey “searching for the Veedon Fleece,” which seems to be a symbol of Morrison’s Holy Grail of all things spiritual and aesthetic, his expression of Joseph Campbell’s “treasure hard to attain.” It's backed by a lovely recorder accompaniment. Morrison keeps repeating lines and phrases over 8 minutes and 48 seconds until he mines everything emotional he wants to get out of the song.

We're goin out in the country to get down to the real soul,

I mean the real soul, people,

We're goin out in the country, get down to the real soul

We're gettin out to the west coast

Shining our light into the days of bloomin wonder

Goin as much with the river as not, as not, yeah, yeah

An' I'm goin as much with the river as not

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Blake and the Eternals oh standin with the Sisters of Mercy

Looking for the Veedon Fleece, yeah

William Blake and the Eternals oh

Standin with the Sisters of Mercy

Lookin for the Veedon Fleece, yeah

You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river

The album also contains “Bulbs,” a rocker with a catchy and invigorating tune with a restrained but tasty electric guitar.

I'm kickin off from center field

A question of being down for game

The one-shot deal don't matter

And the other one's the same . . .

She's screamin through the alley way

I hear the lonely cry, why can't you?

And the batteries are corroded

And the hundred watt bulb just blew

Most of his albums have at least one uptempo rock and roll song like “Bulbs” that sticks in your mind and infectiously plays over and over. On 1972’s Saint Dominic’s Preview, it’s “Redwood Tree,” a poignant tale of a boy and his dog who “went out looking for the rainbow,” when the dog disappears.

Oh, redwood tree

Please let us under

When we were young we used to go

Under the redwood tree

And it smells like rain

Maybe even thunder

Won't you keep us from all harm

Wonderful redwood tree

The boy and his father

Went out, went out looking for the lost dog . . .

They did not bring him back

He already had departed

But look at everything they have learned

Since that, since that very day

It starts with the boy and his dog “running like a blue streak/Through the fields and streams and meadows/Laughing all the way,” proceeds to the boy’s heartbreak, and ends with innocence lost but wisdom gained, all expressed effectively in three short verses and a refrain with simple words and a jaunty, captivating melody. It’s a simple, touching song that often runs a poignant refrain in my head.

Brett Nelson

Looking for the Veedon Fleece – Van Morrison, Part Two

The anchor of St Dominic’s Preview is in two ten- and eleven-minute songs. “Independence Day” is a dreamy and jazzy evocation of watching fireworks over boats in the harbor of San Francisco Bay, becoming a summer evening meditative ride that grew on me the more I listened to it until it became a favorite. “And it’s almost, and it’s almost Independence Day-y-ay.” The best song on the album is “Listen to the Lion,” a description and demonstration of his effort to reach down into his deepest well to pull out his most passionate expression, and an entreaty to his audience to listen for it. Greil Marcus had this to say about it in his article on Morrison in The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll:

"Across eleven minutes he sings, chants, moans, cries, pleads, shouts, hollers, whispers, until finally he breaks away from language and speaks in Irish tongues . . . until he has loosed the lion inside himself. He has that sound, the yarrrrrgh, as he has never had it before. He is not singing it; it is singing him."

But Morrison can be sweet and mellow, as on “Tupelo Honey,” from his album of the same name.

You can take all the tea in China

Put it in a big brown bag for me

Sail right around the seven oceans

Drop it straight into the deep blue sea . . .

You can't stop us on the road to freedom

You can't keep us cause our eyes can see

Men with insight, men in granite

Knights in armor bent on chivalry

She's as sweet as tupelo honey

She's an angel of the first degree

She's as sweet as tupelo honey

Just like honey, baby, from the bee

It's his most beautiful love song, maybe the most beautiful love song I know – mellow but with an intensity of feeling that transports the listener to some intergalactic space. I ran across a YouTube video of a well-oiled Robbie Robertson playing the song for film director Martin Scorsese and a couple other people. As they listen silently, they all look transfixed, Robertson with his eyes closed and moving his head side to side with the music. Scorsese can’t stop beaming as if he’s never heard anything like this before. The beautiful woman in the video, perhaps Robertson’s wife, listens with eyes so intent and alert she looks like every note is filling her whole being. It’s as mesmerizing as “Listen to the Lion.” Morrison is a romantic in the broadest sense, not just in the love song sense: “You can’t stop us on the road to freedom/You can’t keep us cause our eyes can see/Men with insight, men in granite/Knights in armor bent on chivalry.” Chivalry wasn’t just about love but a code of behavior.

Tupelo’s uptempo rocker is “Wild Night,” a top 40 hit about going out to strut on the street in high fashion that Morrison elevates to the exuberant celebration that rock and roll is at its infectious best.

All the girls walk by

Dressed up for each other

And the boys do the boogie-woogie

On the corner of the street

And the people, passin' by

Stare in wild wonder

And the inside juke box

Roars out just like thunder

And everything looks so complete

When you walk out on the street

And the wind catches your feet

And sends you flyin, cryin

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh-wee

The wild night is callin

Hard Nose the Highway is a somewhat uneven album that has some wonderful gems on it, especially “Purple Heather,“ Morrison’s nearly six-minute version of the folk classic “Wild Mountain Thyme” in which a smitten young man asking a young woman

Will ye go, lassie, go

To the wild mountain thyme

All along the bloomin heather

If ye will not go with me

I will surely find another

And we’ll all go together

To the wild mountain thyme

All along the bloomin heather

Will ye go, lassie, go

The song builds in intensity with a power absent in any other singer’s version I’ve heard, including a beautiful cover by Roger McGuinn, driven by a galloping piano that almost thunders and pulsing violins that carry the song to a soaring climax. Every time I hear it, I don’t want the song to end. “Autumn Song” is another of Morrison’s tasty forays into jazz, a mellow reverie about building a fire in the hearth and roasting chestnuts with friends coming round to sing with in the evening.

A little later friends will be along

And if you feel like joining the throng

You just may feel like singing autumn song . . .

You'll be smiling, eyes beguiling

And the song on the breeze

Calls my name out in your dreams

Chestnuts roasting outside

As you walk with your love by your side

And the old accordion man plays mellow and bright

And you go home in the crispness of the night

The album also contains a jazzy cover of “(It Ain’t Easy) Bein Green,” the Kermit the Frog song with its initial lament about not being something more colorful than green but ends up finding beauty in what he is. Morrison elevates the song to prime jazz.

It's not easy bein' green

It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things

And people tend to pass you over

'Cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles

On the water or stars in the sky

But green is the color of spring

And green can be cool and friendly

And green can be big like an ocean

Or important like a mountain or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be

It could make you wonder why

But why wonder, why wonder?

I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful

And I think it's what I wanna be

I just want to be what I wanna be

Morrison’s timing on the song is delightful. The musicians on both these jazzy songs as well as “Independence Day,” like always with Morrison’s music, are superb. Taken together, they’re a wonderfully soothing listen, but with energy that keeps you feeling alive and awake.

After Hard Nose the Highway Morrison had a long string of albums of uneven quality with flashes of excellent music, including one top 40 hit with the soaring “Wavelength” and the dynamic exception of No Guru, No Method, No Teacher with its spiritual/religious overtones. But 1988 saw the release of Irish Heartbeat by Morrison and the great Irish band The Chieftains, melding his songs with traditional Irish music, all backed by The Chieftains’ sound. The exception to that mix is the achingly beautiful and deeply soulful “Raglan Road,” a 1964 poem by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh which set to music sounds for all the world like a 200-year-old traditional Irish ballad.

On Raglan Road on an Autumn Day,

I saw her first and knew

that her dark hair would weave a snare

that I may one day rue.

I saw the danger, yet I walked

along the enchanted way

and I said let grief be a falling leaf

at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November,

we tripped lightly along the ledge

of a deep ravine where can be seen

the worth of passions pledged . . .

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet,

I see, I see her walking now

away from me, away from me so hurriedly

my reason, my reason, my reason must allow.

For I have wooed not as I should

a creature made of clay.

When the angel woos the clay he’ll lose

his wings at the dawn of the day.

I feel a sweet heartache every time I hear it. The song has a beautiful melody with a melancholic accompaniment. The lines “and I said let grief be a falling leaf/at the dawning of the day” may be the best lines of poetry I know. His singing on the song and on a traditional ballad titled “Cerrickfergus” touch depths of sadness rarely reached on any songs I’ve heard – especially in the last two lines of “Carrickfergus,” the lament of a rover who is “rarely sober” who’s lost at love and whose friends have all passed away. It hits you as Morrison’s voice drops after the briefest of pauses when he sings “down”.

But I am sick now and my days are numbered

Come all ye young men and lay me down.

In 1990 he came out with Enlightenment, which I think is his best album since the 70s, although a long Wikipedia article on Morrison inexplicably doesn’t even mention it. The songs on it are all good, led by “Enlightenment,” a song that turned the subject of Zen Buddhism and meditation into an unlikely radio hit, his first since 1978’s “Wavelength,” with words that linger in your mind like a soothing massage:

Chop that wood

Carry water

What's the sound of one hand clapping

Enlightenment, don't know what it is

Every second, every minute

It keeps changing to something different

Enlightenment, don't know what it is

It says it's non-attachment

Non-attachment, non-attachment

I'm in the here and now, and I'm meditating

And still I'm suffering but that's my problem

Enlightenment, don't know what it is

“Chop wood, carry water” as the prescription for what you do after enlightenment just like before enlightenment and the classic koan “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” are cliches in our Buddhist-influenced world now, but Morrison always seems to have a way of making cliches seem fresh with recovered potency, something I can’t explain but have repeatedly felt in many of his lyrics. The song’s relatable because he’s nowhere near enlightenment, “but that’s my problem.” He’s on the path and has a purpose, a labor of love. The song is followed by the lovely “So Quiet in Here,” an evocation of a meditative state, though not overtly about meditation. It’s accompanied by supremely soothing music that rises and falls but isn’t Lawrence Welk.

Foghorns blowing in the night

Salt sea air in the morning breeze

Driving cars all along the coastline . . .

The warm look of radiance on your face

And your heart beating close to mine

And the evening fading in the candle glow

This must be what it's all about

Oh this must be what it's all about

All my struggling in the world

And so many dreams that don't come true

Step back, put it all away

It don't matter, it don't matter anymore

Oh this must be what paradise is like

This must be what paradise is like

It's so quiet in here, so peaceful in here

“Youth of a Thousand Summers” is infectious uptempo rock and roll accompanied by mellow horns and British rocker Georgie Fame on a lively organ. It seems to be an evocation of some sort of archetypal youth figure with reference to Tennessee Williams’ “sweet bird of youth.” It’s followed by the eight-minute ode “In the Days Before Rock ’n’ Roll” with a spoken word intro by someone with an upper class British accent, all about listening to the American blues of Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry, Lightning Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, and Fats Waller from Radio Luxembourg on the “wireless,” as well as Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and other rock’n’rollers. It’s a delightful song.

I could go on, with Period of Transition, Into the Music; Poetic Champions Compose, Avalon Sunset. Twelve of his eighteen top 40 albums were issued between 1997 and 2017, but the two I bought from that stretch, Too Long in Exile and Three Chords and the Truth, were disappointing to me. However, Morrison’s career, like that of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tony Bennett, Neil Young, Buddy Guy, Paul Simon, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, John Lee Hooker, and Paul McCartney, spans over fifty years of quality music. It’s rare for any musician to remain creative over that long a stretch. He’s one that has, widely respected by other musicians and still making albums that get praise in reviews, still looking for the Veedon Fleece.

Brett Nelson

Ain’t No Cure for Love – The Long Quest of Leonard Cohen, Part I

Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan in very different ways exploded the lyrical scope of modern popular, as opposed to classical, music. While I dived into Dylan, I resisted Cohen for a long time after disliking Songs from a Room in the early 1970s, although I loved covers of his songs “Suzanne,” “Sisters of Mercy,” and “Bird on the Wire” by Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Rita Coolidge. I also loved his moody “The Stranger” from the movie McCabe and Mrs Miller. And somewhere along the line I heard “Hallelujah.” About a dozen years ago I bought a double CD of Cohen’s songs that opened my eyes to how good he was when he had good musicians backing him, instead of just singing with acoustic guitar as on Songs from a Room

His concerts in his later years always started with ”Dance Me to the End of Love,” from 1984’s Various Positions.

Dance me to your beauty

With a burning violin

Dance me through the panic

Till I’m gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch

And be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

Let me see your beauty

When the witnesses are gone

Let me see you moving

Like they do in Babylon

Show me slowly what I only

Know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love

It’s a quintessential Cohen song that’s an audience favorite. Cohen is half spiritual seeker, even ascetic, and half ladies man and hedonist, though one of his early albums is titled Death of a Ladies Man. He was a practicing Jew who didn’t play concerts on the Sabbath and an ordained Zen Buddhist monk who said there was no contradiction between the two because Buddhism has no theology. It’s interesting that he sings “Let me see you moving/Like they do in Babylon,” because Babylon is where some 7,000 Jews were taken into captivity in the sixth century BCE. It was the symbol of the Jews’ separation from their homeland and the temple in Jerusalem that was the capitol of the Jewish civilization and spiritual center of Jewish life and of the Jewish diaspora, until the state of Israel was established in 1948. Babylon was characterized as a city where sexual license prevailed. Cohen celebrated sex as well as romantic love in his songs. He doesn’t vacillate between the spiritual and romantic/carnal sides of his nature but seems to embrace them both in equal measure.

“Suzanne” captures the almost mystical approach Cohen takes toward women and love as he sings:

Suzanne takes you down

To her place near the river

And just when you mean to tell her

That you have no love to give her

Then she gets you on her wavelength

And she lets the river answer

That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that she will trust you

For you've touched her perfect body with your mind

The last four lines are a chorus that changes slightly after each verse:

And Jesus was a sailor

When he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching

From his lonely wooden tower . . .

And you want to travel with him

And you want to travel blind

And you think maybe you'll trust him

For he's touched your perfect body with his mind

And the sun pours down like honey

On our lady of the harbor

And she shows you where to look

Among the garbage and the flowers . . .

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that you can trust her

For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

For Cohen there’s always this yin/yang interplay in love between the heart and mind that’s poetically expressed in this song. I’m Your Man was the first album I bought after my Starbucks album. The title song expresses a frank willingness to be anything a woman wants him to be in order to win her affection, coupled with a clear recognition that begging won’t win a woman’s heart, or he’d be on his knees:

If you want a lover,

I'll do anything you ask me to.

And if you want another kind of love,

I'll wear a mask for you.

If you want a partner, take my hand, or

Want to strike me down in anger

Here I stand I'm your man

If you want a boxer

I will step into the ring for you

And if you want a doctor

I'll examine every inch of you

Refrain:

Ah, the moon's too bright

The chain's too tight

The beast won't go to sleep

I've been running through

These promises to you

That I made and I could not keep

Ah, but a man never got a woman back

Not by begging on his knees

Or I'd crawl to you baby

And I'd fall at your feet

And I'd howl at your beauty

Like a dog in heat

And I'd claw at your heart

And I'd tear at your sheet

I'd say please I'm your man

It's a classic Cohen song, whose lyrics chronicle the chase for love and continuing failure to find a lasting relationship. But Cohen is never self-pitying or complaining – he’s just committed to the pursuit as if it’s destiny, and he chronicles the ups and downs of relationships with unflinching honesty, often with a wink and a smile, mostly at himself. He also chronicles his growth and developing maturity in the process.

That maturity is eloquently expressed in “Waiting for the Miracle” from his 1992 album The Future. It’s his acknowledgement of the unreality and emptiness of the prince/princess illusion, the perfect someone who will be everything you ever wanted, and we’ll never hurt each other and live happily ever after – the miracle he’s waiting for that keeps him from seeing the real person he could have loved. The instrumental accompaniment is almost like a dirge, mournful but beautiful and compelling with a Middle Eastern flavor.

Baby, I've been waiting,

I've been waiting night and day.

I didn't see the time,

I waited half my life away.

There were lots of invitations

I know you sent me some,

but I was waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

I know you really loved me.

but, you see, my hands were tied.

I know it must have hurt you,

it must have hurt your pride

to have to stand beneath my window

with your bugle and your drum,

and me I'm up there waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

If anything sums up his attitude toward love, it’s “Ain’t No Cure for Love,” originally a prose poem that as a song with a good band behind him could have been a top-40 hit in the 60s:

I loved you for a long long time. I know this love is real.

It don’t matter how it all went wrong. That don’t change the way I feel.

And I can’t believe that time can heal this wound I’m speakin of.

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure for love.

I see you in the subway and I see you on the bus.

I see you lyin down with me and I see you wakin up . . .

And I call to you, I call to you, but I don’t call soft enough.

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure for love.

Love is Cohen’s Sysiphean rock that he keeps rolling up that hill, but he can never get it to the top where it will stay, and it just keeps rolling back down for him to start all over again. But he’s not deterred. He accepts it as fate and is committed to the quest like a Don Quixote. In “Tower of Song,” from I’m Your Man, he seems to have come to a degree of acceptance of his situation:

Well my friends are gone, and my hair is gray

I ache in the places where I used to play

I’m crazy for love, but I’m not comin on.

I’m just payin my dues every day in the Tower of Song . . .

I loved you baby, way back when.

And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed,

but I feel so close to everything that we lost –

We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again

Cohen doesn’t just write about love, and sex, which he is very frank about. His most covered song, “Hallelujah,” starts with biblical references to David and Bathsheba and Samson and Delilah in the first two verses, then moves into relationship territory before ending with themes of spirituality and honesty:

You say I took the name in vain

I don’t even know the name

But if I did, well really, what’s it to ya?

There’s a blaze of light in every word

It doesn’t matter which you heard

The holy or the broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much

I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch

I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya

And even though it all went wrong

I’ll stand before the lord of song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

In spite of the fact that it talks about what “went wrong,” it’s a spirit-lifting and exuberant affirmation and celebration of life as life is. Cohen said of the song that "there is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones. When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's hallelujah.” The chorus is sung by a choir of voices that gives it the feel of a whole people rejoicing.

“Democracy” from 1992’s The Future is another exuberant celebration, of exactly what the title says.

It's coming to America first,

the cradle of the best and the worst.

It's here they got the range

and the machinery for change

and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

It's here the family's broken

and it's here the lonely say

that the heart has got to open

in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the U – S – A!

Sail on, sail on

O mighty Ship of State!

To the Shores of Need

Past the Reefs of Greed

Through the Squalls of Hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean

I love the country but I can't stand the scene . . .

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags

that Time cannot decay,

I'm junk but I'm still holding up

this little wild bouquet:

Democracy is coming to the U – S – A!

The song is actually a march that starts with a martial drum line which continues throughout the tune with an almost joyous quick pulse that sounds like a victory march, recalling the spirit of Bob Dylan’s “Paths of Victory.” It’s uplifting in spite of the honest assessment of the state of the union: “the cradle of the best and the worst,” “It’s here the family’s broken,” “I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.” It’s full of hope and a tentative optimism “I’m stubborn as those garbage bags/that Time cannot decay/I’m junk but I’m still holding up/this little wild bouquet/Democracy is coming to the U – S – A!

Part II next month

Brett Nelson

Ain't No Cure for Love -- The Long Quest of Leonard Cohen, Part 2

Cohen recorded plenty of darker songs as well. He suffered from deep depressions at times until his later years, crediting Zen Buddhism with helping him leave that behind. “The Darkness” is a poem, as all his songs are, about exactly that condition.

I got no future,

I know my days are few.

The present’s not that pleasant,

Just a lot of things to do

I thought the past would last me

But the darkness got that too

I should've seen it coming

It was right behind your eyes.

You were young and it was summer

I just had to take a dive.

I don't smoke no cigarette,

I don't drink no alcohol

I ain't had much lovin yet

But that's always been your call.

Hey I don't miss it baby

I got no taste for anything at all . . .

I caught the darkness baby

And I got it worse than you.

I caught the darkness,

It was drinking from your cup.

I said Is this contagious?

You said just drink it up.

He’s got it, in spades. He sings with a low, dark voice, but there’s no self-pity. He knows where he got it, but he’s not into the blame game. It’s the hand he’s been dealt, and he’s playing it as well as he can. There’s even a little humor – “I said Is this contagious/You said just drink it up.” The implication is he knows he could have refused the cup, so he’s an accomplice in his own demise. He doesn’t feel pleasure at anything, a classic symptom of depression. Another verse says he used to enjoy the rainbow and the view, but the darkness from his lover took that all away.

“The Future” from the album of the same name is the apocalyptic vision of a psychopath:

Give me back . . . my secret life

It’s lonely here

There’s no one left to torture

Give me absolute control

Over every living soul

And lie beside me, baby

That’s an order!

. . . Take the only tree that’s left

and stuff it up the hole in your culture

Give me back the Berlin Wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

I’ve seen the future, brother

It is murder

When they said Repent Repent Repent Repent

I wonder what they meant

There’ll be the breaking of

the ancient western code

Your private life will suddenly explode

There’ll be phantoms

there’ll be fires on the road

and the white man dancing . . .

and all the lousy little poets coming round

trying to sound like Charlie Manson

That is about as bleak and ominous as you can get, but in the middle of all this he sings “I’m the little Jew who wrote the Bible” and “Love’s the only engine of survival,” which sounds like he’s stepping out of the psychopath voice and speaking as himself. It’s an enigmatic and puzzling song to come from such an empathetic and sensitive soul, but he’s also an unblinking one. He knows the depth of humanity’s shadow. The song beats out a rhythm that’s like a pounding hammer. “The Future” contrasted with “Democracy” and “Suzanne” makes it clear that Cohen speaks with many voices.

Cohen is a serious man that writes songs with weight, but his sense of humor is one of the pleasures of his music. Usually self-deprecating but only self-disparaging when it feels like he’s puncturing his own inflated ego, it’s delightful in “Going Home,” from 2013’s Old Ideas.

I love to speak with Leonard

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd

He’s a lazy bastard living

In a suit

But he does say what I tell him

Even though it isn’t welcome

He just doesn’t have the freedom

To refuse

He wants to write a love song

An anthem of forgiving

A manual for living with defeat

But that isn’t what I need him to complete

I want him to be certain

That he doesn’t have a burden

That he doesn’t need a vision

That he only has permission

To do my instant bidding

Which is to say what I have told him

To repeat

Going home without my sorrow

Going home some time tomorrow

Going home to where it’s better

Than before

Going home without my burden

Going home behind the curtain

Going home without the costume

That I wore

He's apparently speaking as the artist who directs “Leonard,” a “sportsman and a shepherd,” to write what he is told to submissively and a bit grudgingly until he’s done and Leonard Cohen can go home relieved of his burden and his sorrow and take off his songwriter costume to be himself. Or is “Leonard” the actual Cohen who submits grudgingly to the artist to do his “instant bidding” until he can get off work and go home and relax without the burden of all this sorrow that he has to record for his taskmaster? Either way, it’s a delightful and humble song about a likeable “lazy bastard living in a suit.” I love and admire Cohen, but I also like Leonard a lot and I’m always glad to hear he’s “going home to where it’s better than before.”

“Never Any Good” is the mea culpa of a lover admitting he was never good “at doing what a woman really wants a man to do.”

I was dying when we met, I bet my life on you

But you called me and I folded like you knew I'd do

You called my ace, my king, my bluff

Okay, you win, enough's enough

I was never any good, never any good

I was never any good at loving you

I was pretty good at takin out the garbage

Pretty good at holdin up the wall

Dealin with the fire and the earthquake

That don’t count, that don’t count, that don’t count

That don’t count for nothin much at all . . .

I'm sorry for my crimes against the moonlight

I didn't think, I didn't think, I did not think

I just did not think the moon would mind at all

I was never any good at loving you

At doing what a woman really wants a man to do

You're gonna feel much better

When you cut me loose forever

I was never any good, never any good

I was never any good at loving you

He's likely overstating the case a bit, but he makes his point, conceding his defeat with a subtle humor. With a steady, relaxed drumbeat and electric slide guitar, he sings it like an “OK, you got me” confessional that’s fun to listen to. “Different Sides” is a more serious song that captures the feel of what relationship conflicts between men and women can be like.

We find ourselves on different sides

Of a line nobody drew

Though it all may be one in the higher eye

Down here where we live it is two

I to my side call the meek and the mild

You to your side call the Word

By virtue of suffering I claim to have won

You claim to have never been heard

You want to live where the suffering is

I want to get out of town

Come on, baby, give me a kiss

Stop writing everything down

Refrain:

Both of us say there are laws to obey

But frankly I don't like your tone

You want to change the way I make love

I want to leave it alone

“We find ourselves on different sides/Of a line nobody drew” sounds like a good description of something that ofen happens in relationships. It’s like a divide between the man and woman appears that neither suspected was there. “You claim to have never been heard” is a common complaint many women have about their men. “Come on, baby, give me a kiss” is how some men respond when a woman wants to “talk about our relationship.” And “Both of us say there are laws to obey,” but we find out we have different laws. And sometimes one partner wants to change how they make love and the other likes it the way it is. The particular conflicts may be different than the specifics in the song, but to me there’s a universal quality that it captures about the feel of relationship conflicts, even if they’re unspoken. The song has a slightly staccato reggae beat to it with an organ accompaniment that fits it nicely.

My favorite Cohen song is “Bird on the Wire,” originally from Songs from a Room.

Like a bird on the wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free

Like a baby stillborn

Like a beast with his horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me

It’s a sober reflection on life written in Cohen’s mid-thirties by a man who recognizes his faults, owning damage done with a willingness to make amends, but uncertain how selfish he is in his quest for freedom. I’m quoting the lyrics as sung with slight changes by Judy Collins on Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, which is the best version, lyrically and musically, of many that I’ve heard.

There was a man, a beggar leaning on his crutch

He said to me “Why do you ask for so much?”

There was a woman, a woman leaning in a door

She said “Why not, why not, why not, why not ask for more?”

It ends by repeating the first three lines ending with the last line that’s the core of the song: “I have tried in my way to be free.” It’s a slow, wistful song that honestly assesses a life, autobiographical or not, and accepts responsibility but acknowledges the uncertainty of whether he should expect less or ask for more. It’s accompanied in later concert versions by wonderful electric guitar and organ plus Javier Mas on the bandurria. It’s been covered by many other musicians, including Rita Coolidge and Jennifer Warnes as well as Collins.

My favorite Leonard Cohen song after “Bird on the Wire” and “Hallelujah” is “Anthem,” a song from The Future that’s a hopeful call to peace and humane relations between people. Along with “Democracy” it’s a counterweight to the apocalyptic vision of “The Future,” which is still a perplexing song to me.

The birds they sang

At the break of day

Start again,

I heard them say,

Don’t dwell on what

Has passed away

Or what is yet to be.

The wars they will

Be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

Bought and sold

And bought again;

The dove is never free.

. . . the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud

But . . . they’ve summoned

They’ve summoned up a thundercloud

They’re gonna hear from me . . .

Every heart – every heart

To love will come

But like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack – a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

That the light gets in through an opening where something is cracked and broken is a paradox that contains a kind of wisdom we need, as opposed to trying to be perfect. On an individual level it’s a crack in one’s ego allowing light to shine on something that one couldn’t see before. I’ve experienced that clearly in my life more than once. It’s through the cracks in a society that light and a new vision can enter – if you read much history you see it happen over and over. It’s the breakdown of an existing order that often leads to a better society with an adjustment to changing conditions.

“Anthem” is an appropriate title for the song, because it has an anthem-like quality with a weighty theme but a lightness in the song’s mood of hope and how the pitch rises and falls and then rises again. The song has a determined tone that lifts the listener’s spirit. I love the lines “There is a crack – a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” A poem of mine inspired by the song titled “It Was the Crack in My Soul” ends with these lines:

May I stay cracked, just a little,

so I don’t die in the prison of my own wisdom.

Feed me now, and again and again

with always just a little more light than I have.

“Come Healing” is a hope and a plea, almost like a prayer, but not addressed to any deity.

Behold the gates of mercy

In arbitrary space

And none of us deserving

The cruelty or the grace

O solitude of longing

Where love has been confined

Come healing of the body

Come healing of the mind

O see the darkness yielding

That tore the light apart

Come healing of the reason

Come healing of the heart

I love the first stanza, especially the lines “And none of us deserving/The cruelty or the grace” – either one.

There are many more songs I could have written about, including “Boogie Street,” “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” “Everybody Knows,” “Tower of Song,” “My Secret Life,” “Alexandra Leaving,” and “First We Take Manhattan.” He had a huge output of music over fifty years, even though he wrote and rewrote songs/poems interminably at times. There are estimates of how many verses of “Hallelujah” he discarded that run to 80 and 180. The richness of his lyrics is unmatched, perhaps even by Dylan. He wrote eloquently about the simplest of emotions and desires in a way that is never sentimental. Despite his sober realism about love and life and writing a few dark songs-poems (they’re all poems), he was ultimately an optimist, always capable of hope.

Brett Nelson