13 f Ranting & Reeling D
eath where is thy sting? Where did thou last see it? It’s probably in thine jacket pocket. No not that jacket the other one.
That’s as far as I’ve got with my attempt at a poem in tribute to Leonard Cohen. I felt like he deserved a poem since I made him the benign butt of a joke in my last column, shortly before he passed away. Terrible timing on my part and death’s.
Not that I think he would’ve minded my Nobel-oriented joshing. He liked a laugh did Leonard. True, it’s not what he’ll be most remembered for. It’s not even in the top five things they’ll mention in his section of the book called 2016 – Have You Tried Switching It Off And On Again?
But Cohen was funny. His live intro- ductions in particular were an existential hoot. In 1970 at a show in Frankfurt he introduced the song Bird On A Wire by telling the audience, “You know people have asked about how the song was writ- ten. And it’s very hard to decide. But this song was written looking at a bird on a wire.” He recycled that joke eighteen years later in Antwerp before performing what was then the brand new First We Take Manhattan, announcing: “It’s a curi-
ous song. I used to know what it means but I don’t remember what it means any- more. And I think it was just a moment ago that I wrote it. I think I intended to take Manhattan and then Berlin.”
It’s a gimmick he most likely learnt on the folk club and coffee bar circuit of the late ’60s. The requirement that a per- former must make the punters laugh between songs of love and hate persists today. As a singer of traditional ballads, picker of old time tunes or their accepted contemporary spinoffs, it is incumbent upon you to have them rolling in the aisles both before and after the raffle. And I wonder if it’s something musicians are entirely comfortable with. No-one ever insisted Picasso share an amusing anec- dote about what happened on the way to paint Guernica.
Some acts are so good at what I hate myself for calling banter that they report being asked by one gig goer to record an album entirely consisting of their between-song gags. I wince at the back- handed compliment whilst knowing there are some groups I wished never stopped talking. And I’ve heard from singers whose humorous interludes grew from an uncer- tainty about how their sombrely poetic
material might be received, who now can- not stop; their fans expect it.
Because it’s you who’ve cre- ated this pecu- liar juxtaposi- tion of art and arseing about that’s unique to the folk singer’s repertoire. You,
the fans who see the exchange of money for a ticket as a contract between your- selves and the talent that states there can be no on-stage silence where there could be a self-deprecating reference to the amount of deaths in the next song, and no dramaturgical pause when you should be recounting an amusing tour van-based calamity.
But it’s all about timing. And the most important timing of all is knowing when not to joke. In 1985 in Montreux, Leonard Cohen began a rendition of his sacred and profane masterpiece Hallelujah with the words, “This is a song about the broken.”
Tim Chipping
he coda to Leonard Cohen’s mar- vellous song to his love Marianne Ihlen – all sing now: “So long Marianne, it’s time we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again” – came in his beautiful letter to her written around fifty years later as she lay dying.
The Elusive Ethnomusicologist T
His songs are always relevant. They are not “music to walk under a bus to, get out of your room and eat your bloody dinner” – thanks, mum – they are in fact continuously contemporary poetic masterpieces.
“Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”
“And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more… because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good jour- ney. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
With his usual poetic prescience the completely gorgeous Leonard Cohen takes his leave just three months later, vacating the premises two days before it’s announced Trump is to take up residence in the White House.
I’ve loved Leonard Cohen with unabat- ed teenage passion since a neighbour intro- duced me to his music when I was fourteen.
Hallelujah, one of the most covered songs of all time, resides in the hearts of millions worldwide, despite his record company thinking it was pants and refus- ing to release it when they first heard it. In fact the record company rejected the entire album, 1984’s Various Positions because of what can only be described as their cretinous stupidity. That same album contained the fabulous Dance Me To The End Of Love.
Obviously ‘dance’ has to bring me to Ed Balls and his terpsichoral turn on Strict- ly. Here he displays the self-deprecating wit, verve, grace and style that were mostly absent from his tenure as a politician, in a fab re-interpretation of Psy’s Gangnam Style.
Though it strikes me that if Psy should want to reprise his global hit in the US come January, he may find himself put to work building a wall along with everyone else who isn’t a white racist moron.
Leonard Cohen sang: Dance me to the children who are asking to be born/Dance
me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn/Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn/Dance me to the end of love.
End of love,
end of times. Trump. What hope can we offer those children? Let me hang back and hide behind those curtains in this dark dawn – foreshadowed by lovely Len in Hallelujah’s last verse:
Maybe there's a God above/All I've ever learned from love/Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you/And it's not a cry that you hear at night/It's not some- body who's seen the light/It's a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.
It’s no wonder wonderful Leonard Cohen has moved on. No doubt in an upward direction. Though of course the world moves on too. But I’m sure the sign shows we’re not going the right way.
Elizabeth Kinder
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