But you’ll be hearing from me, baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly
From my window in the Tower of Song …
Leonard Cohen, poet, musician, 1934-2016
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David Climenhaga's Alberta Politics Blog
But you’ll be hearing from me, baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly
From my window in the Tower of Song …
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“They locked up the man who wanted to rule the world.
Fools, they locked up the wrong one.”
L. Cohen
With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
with the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she’s gone.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
“Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye…”
While I like the “tortured poet” personna as much as the next guy, do yourself a favor and grab a listen to “Famouus Blue Raincoat”, the duet album he did with Jennifer Warren in 1986.
Basically, they took a selection of Cohen songs, ran them through a cappachinno machine, resulting in one of the top selling albums of the year. Cohen (who always had a small, but dedicated fanbase) was transformed into an overnight pop sensation, heard on every disco floor from Manhattan to Berlin.
Party on!
That song and my youngpersonhood in Montreal coincided. The folkies all over the city were singing that song, as well as Suzanne. I’ve heard and read lots of his stuff since then but that was the introduction. That’s why it works for the “goodbye”, too.
The music I love is from the period 1968-1974. There were a lot of great songs in the period including “Suzanne”, “Bird On A Wire”, “Famous Blue Raincoat”, “Joan Of Arc”, and so much more. The musical diversity on these releases is really interesting. One song that is very appropriate is “Everybody Knows”, which has the line “Old Black Joe is still picking cotton”. This song was written about the AIDS in the 1980s but it works in almost every era, including this one with Emperor Orange.