Reaction: Leonard Cohen – Songs of Leonard Cohen

The History and Popular Music of the ’60s class learned about Leonard Cohen’s acclaimed debut record from 1967. Here are their reactions.

Conor McGeady:

I have a personal history with this album. My father grew up listening to ‘60s artists such as Bob Dylan, The Who and Leonard Cohen. He often played this album in the car for me, whether we were on our way to school, or on a road trip. Because of that, I have the first half of the songs ingrained into my head, and the rest of the tracks are familiar to me. We didn’t have time to listen to the full album on the way to school, so the first half is usually all I heard. As such, this is less of a review due to my bias, and more of an appreciation letter for it.

I think that the lyrics are the heart of this record. Obviously, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the poetic side as a child, as I mainly just heard pleasant guitar sounds and was satisfied at that. I was excited to listen to it again more in-depth for this class, because I really have never listened to the lyrics in specific, and I was really blown away by the poeticism and depth of the words. My favorite verse across the entire album was probably verse two from “Suzanne”, it was one of the only ones that made me pause the song, look up the lyrics, and then re-listen to it in order to fully take in what the words meant. The verse goes, “And Jesus was a sailor/ When he walked upon the water/ And he spent a long time watching/ From his lonely wooden tower/ And when he knew for certain/ Only drowning men could see him/ He said ‘All men will be sailors then/ Until the sea shall free them’/ But he himself was broken/ Long before the sky would open/ Forsaken, almost human/ He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”

There are tons of other great examples from the record but personally I couldn’t top that one verse. Overall, while I can’t say that this is a perfect album, I think it’s one of the most thought-provoking albums I’ve heard in a long time. It made me question what Leonard Cohen was thinking and going through at the time, and while the music shares similar tones with that of Dylan, I found this album to be even more serious and dark than most of Dylan’s work. All in all, this is definitely an album I’ll be coming back to whenever I sit down and just want to listen to some instrumentally calm but lyrically intense music. It’s not for every mood, but I think when you’re in the mood to just sit back, close your eyes, and indulge in music, Songs of Leonard Cohen is one of the best options you can have.

Alex Skiles:

This is an artistic response to the song “Suzanne.” Much of the song is is associated with rivers and the sea. Suzanne is “our lady of the harbor.” Suzanne seems to have such a connection to the river that Cohen can hear her in it. Water is pensive, and reflects Cohen’s lyrical style, who makes his melancholy reflections comforting. I initially wanted the viewer to look hard for the woman in the shapes of the water and weeds, but decided to add in the lashes and the lips to make it clearer what the piece was supposed to be. The image is Suzanne looking out amongst the garbage and the flowers.

Gibson McCoy:

Leonard Cohen spent much of his time on this island called Hydra in Greece in the ’60s. While he was there, he created songs, wrote books and fell in love. Some of the things that he created while he was on the island were not always the happiest topics even though he says he was at his happiest when he was there. He was not the only artist on the island that was experimenting with love, drugs and writing. Cohen tried so hard to escape this place but then he kept trying to go back. For my AR I went off of the saying “there’s something in the water.” The lyrics in the ocean and the mountains are from “Winter Lady” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He would always link his times when he was in Hydra to the music that he was writing and producing. He would write about the love that he found there and he would write on the things he experimented with. Specifically, I chose these two songs because they both reference the love of his life that he found during his time on the island. Even though he gave her up, he never stopped thinking about her and would put her in his songs. That’s why I chose to put these songs on my painting to show that he was always talking about this connection in his first album. Arguably when he was on this island he was going crazy in a way but when he was back in Montreal he was not any happier. This island changed him it changed the way he wrote, and it changed how he was noticed by the public.

Sam Swartley:

I wrote a poem based on and inspired by “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” by Leonard Cohen. There are some shared lines and phrases, but connected to personal experiences through Cohen’s view of the world. In the performance of this song it would be sung in a similar rhythm to how Cohen sung “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” Probably with solo guitar.

World Of Dreams

I awoke in the middle of the night, in a haze of green
Your hands moving across me as I drift far away from my dreams
Yes, I wonder who will be after you, I know it might be no one
In my mind you could leave me as quickly as I could you
But now I know that it is only up to me and I try
I just want to see you in my arms without sorrow
Just lay here and draw me a world of dreams

I am not used to you but I see your dreams clearly
As clearly as you see mine, as you see mine
You know how to keep me going as we walk along this pathway
I know what scares you and you know what entices me
You always think I am gonna leave and not write
I just want to see you in my arms without sorrow
Just lay here and draw me a world of dreams

We awoke in the middle of the night, in a haze of green
Your hands moving across me as I drift far away from my dreams
From dreams
Yes, I know no one will come after you and that’s what I see
In my mind I am scared that you’ll leave so quickly
But now I know it’s up to you I need you to try
I just want you to hold me without sorrow
Just lay here as we draw a world of dreams
A world of dreams

Pritam Khalsa:

In 1967 Leonard Cohen released an album called Songs of Leonard Cohen. He was already a published author who had been living in Hydra (an island in Greece) for a while before considering doing an album. While he was there he met Marianne Ihlen. They lived together in Greece and she is considered his muse. When he returned to Canada for his musical career he brought her back with him. This is when their relationship stopped working well. He started dating other people and so did she. People often talked about him in the way that he loved spending time with women and supporting them but he couldn’t commit to anyone because he needed to be his own person. While this makes sense on some level it seems very unfair because he would still act like he cared about them while cheating on them or leaving them. One of his most famous songs is named “So Long, Marianne” after Marianne. While people believe a lot of his songs are about her, one of his other songs is “Suzanne.” In all of his songs he had very beautiful and oddly specific lines. In “Suzanne,” he wrote, “And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China,” and “She lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover.” In “So Long, Marianne” he also said, “Down by the green lilac park you held on to me like I was a crucifix as we went kneeling through the dark.” Another one of my favorite lines is “she used to wear her hair like you except when she was sleeping and then she’d weave it on a loom of smoke and gold and breathing” which is from “Winter Lady.” I think that part of his charm is his beautiful lyrics so I based my response on the line from “Suzanne.”