A magazine article in which Beth Orton talks about covering Leonard Cohen songs had the following passage that caught my eye:
“When I was 14, me and my best friend would get drunk and then come home and listen to Leonard Cohen and swoon. He’s very sexy, one of those older men you really want to…hang out with a bit. You know that he’d be funny and interesting and quiet, not talk all the time like some boys do. And he’s so generous to women - Just listen to Famous Blue Raincoat. Bob Dylan isn’t - in fact he writes the cruellest words I’ve ever heard - whereas Leonard Cohen is utterly generous to the women he’s loved, and it’s so beautiful. He lays them bare and exposes their vulnerabilities, but he exposes his own too.”
Which is a comparison I’ve never though of making, although I have thought a good deal about their respective attitudes to women. I’ve thought for 2+ decades that the harshest line in rock and roll is the one that closes the last stanza of Positively 4th Street. Especially the way he sings it.
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
and just for that one moment i could be you
yes, i wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
you’d know what a drag it is to see you
Three lines of set-up & then a hob-nailed boot to the slats. All the weight of the whole song falls on the word “DRAG”, like it was the [haul![/b] word in a sea chanty chorus. Positively 4th street pivots around that word.
~~
Which is a splendid example of Dylan’s cruel lyrics, but it’s not what this post was supposed to be about. Another friend used to talk about the intensity of Leonard Cohen’s gaze, especially (exclusively?) at women. She said he had a way of looking at women as if they were the only woman in the world; as if nothing else was more important at that moment than simply seeing HER.
She said you knew it was an illusion, but it feels so good you don’t care.
She also said that this was really sexy. She’s probably not alone with this observation. One of Cohen’s recent songs is about exactly that:
Because of a few songs
Wherein I spoke of their mystery,
Women have been
Exceptionally kind
to my old age.
They make a secret place
In their busy lives
And they take me there.
They become naked
In their different ways
and they say,
“> Look at me, Leonard
Look at me one last time> .”
Then they bend over the bed
And cover me up
Like a baby that is shivering.
