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| Songs from a Room | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | April 7, 1969 | |||
| Recorded | October 1968 | |||
| Studio | Columbia Studio A (Nashville, Tennessee)[1] | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 35:38 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Bob Johnston | |||
| Leonard Cohen chronology | ||||
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Songs from a Room is the second studio album byCanadian musicianLeonard Cohen, released in 1969. It reached No. 63 on the USBillboard Top LPs and No. 2 on the UK charts.
The recording sessions forSongs From a Room began inHollywood in May 1968 withDavid Crosby as producer.[3] That didn't work out, and the album was eventually produced atColumbia Studios inNashville, Tennessee, withproducerBob Johnston (two of the tracks from the Crosby sessions are included as bonus tracks on the 2007 remastered version). Johnston and Cohen had wanted to work together on Cohen's first album, but the studio had assigned Johnston elsewhere.[4] After his experiences with Crosby, Cohen was not keen to continue the project, but after speaking with Johnston, he agreed to carry on as Johnston was prepared to work on achieving the spartan sound Cohen considered appropriate for his songs after the disputes he had withJohn Simon during the mixing sessions ofSongs of Leonard Cohen.[5] At the time, Johnston was best known for producingBob Dylan,Johnny Cash andSimon and Garfunkel. As Anthony Reynolds observes in his bookLeonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life, "Since at this point in time Cohen was something of a hybrid of all of these acts, Cohen moved from theChelsea inNew York City toFranklin, Tennessee, where he lived on a farm 30 miles from Nashville itself. Cohen recorded some demos on the actual farm and otherwise immersed himself in a version of the country life."
Unlike his augmented debut, Cohen's sophomore effort is austere by comparison, with considerably less drums, and featuring a stripped-down approach that emphasize the words rather than the musical arrangements. In 2001, Cohen admitted to Sylvie Simmons ofMojo, "It's very stark. A lot of my friends who were musical purists had castigated me for the lushness and over-production of my first record and I was determined to do a very simple album." The sessions in Nashville began in the fall of 1968 atColumbia's Studio A on 16th Avenue in Nashville.[1] Johnston enlisted a smaller coterie of musicians than had backed Cohen on his debut album, includingRon Cornelius playing acoustic and electric guitar,Charlie Daniels playing bass, fiddle and acoustic guitar, Elkin "Bubba" Fowler contributing banjo, bass and acoustic guitar, while Johnston himself played keyboards. The album also features some prominent (if strictly ornamental)Jew's harp. As biographer Ira Nadel notes in the 1996 Cohen biographyVarious Positions, although Cohen still showed signs of insecurity in the recording studio, producer Johnston created a hospitable atmosphere: "In the studio, Daniels and the other musicians were told to listen to Cohen in order to get into the songs. It was like mixing colors; you had to be one of the colors for it to work. Johnston later referred to the album as a painting, not a record, and described his role as 'a musical bodyguard,' protecting Cohen and his music from artificial intrusions and falsification of sound." According to Nadel, Johnston felt that French voices would enhance "The Partisan" so he and Cohen flew toFrance and overdubbed three female French singers.
The album contains "Bird on the Wire", one of Cohen's most famous songs. In a 1973 interview with Alastair Pirrie of theNew Musical Express, Cohen stated, "The song is so important to me. It's that one verse where I say that I swear by this song, and by all that I have done wrong, I'll make it all up to thee. In that verse it's a vow that I'll try and redeem everything that's gone wrong. I think I've made it too many times now, but l like to keep renewing it." In the liner notes to the 1975 compilationThe Best of Leonard Cohen, Cohen wrote about the song: "I always begin my concert with this song. It seems to return me to my duties. It was begun inGreece and finished in a motel in Hollywood around 1969 along with everything else. Some lines were changed in Oregon. I can't seem to get it perfect.Kris Kristofferson informed me that I had stolen part of the melody from another Nashville writer. He also said that he's putting the first couple of lines on his tombstone, and I'll be hurt if he doesn't." In the 1960s, Cohen lived on the Greek islandHydra with his girlfriendMarianne. She has related how she helped him out of adepression by handing him his guitar, whereupon he began composing "Bird on the Wire" – inspired by a bird sitting on one of Hydra's recently installed phone wires, followed by memories ofwet island nights. Cohen has described "Bird on the Wire" as a simplecountry song, and the first recording, by Judy Collins, was indeed done in a country setting. In the bookSongwriters on Songwriting, Cohen speaks at length to Paul Zollo about the song:
It was begun in Greece because there were no wires on the island where I was living to a certain moment. There were no telephone wires. There were no telephones. There was no electricity. So at a certain point they put in these telephone poles, and you wouldn't notice them now, but when they first went up, it was about all I did - stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn't going to be able to escape after all. I wasn't going to be able to live this 11th-century life that I thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning. Then, of course, I noticed that birds came to the wires and that was how that song began. 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir,' that's also set on the island. Where drinkers, me included, would come up the stairs. There was great tolerance among the people for that because it could be in the middle of the night. You'd see three guys with their arms around each other, stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds. So that image came from the island: 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir.'
In 1988, Cohen explained to John McKenna ofRTÉ in Ireland that "Story of Isaac" was an anti-war protest song but added, "I was careful in that song to try and put it beyond the pure, beyond the simple, anti-war protest, that it also is. Because it says at the end there the man of war the man of peace, thepeacock spreads his deadly fan. In other words it isn't necessarily for war that we're willing to sacrifice each other. We'll get some idea – some magnificent idea – that we're willing to sacrifice each other for; it doesn't necessarily have to involve an opponent or an ideology, but human beings being what they are we're always going to set up people to die for some absurd situation that we define as important." In the same interview, Cohen confirmed that "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" was inspired by a woman[6] he had grown up with inMontreal:
I think that the world throws up certain kinds of figures. Sometime in abundance, sometimes very rarely, and that some of these figures act as archetypes or prototypes for another generation which will manifest these characteristics a lot more easily, maybe a lot more gracefully, but not a lot more heroically. Another twenty years later she would have been just like you know, the hippest girl on the block. But twenty years before she was - there was no reference to her, so in a certain way she was doomed.
In sheet music for the album, a song titled "Priests" was included, and although reportedly recorded, it didn't appear on the LP or on any subsequent Cohen record. The song was recorded byJudy Collins on her 1967 albumWildflowers, and byRichie Havens on his 1969 albumRichard P. Havens, 1983.
The album cover is a simple black-and-white photo heavilymatted as to almost wash out Cohen's face. The back cover features a black-and-white photo of hisNorwegian girlfriendMarianne Ihlen sitting at a desk with a typewriter, books and some papers. The picture was taken on the Greek island ofHydra. Cohen used their seven-year relationship as the basis for several of some his earliest songs, including "So Long, Marianne", "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", and "Bird on the Wire".
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [7] |
| Pitchfork | 8.8/10[8] |
| Rolling Stone | negative[9] |
| Rolling Stone | (2007)[10] |
| Q | [11] |
| Uncut | [12] |
Songs From a Room was released in April 1969 and hit #63 on the U.S. charts and #2 in theUK. A single, "The Old Revolution", was released but did not chart. Like his debut LP, it received mixed reviews from critics, who were put off by his unusual singing voice but intrigued by the songs. In the originalRolling Stone review, Alec Dubro wrote, "Well, it looks like Leonard Cohen's second try won't have them dancing in the streets either. It doesn't take a great deal of listening to realize that Cohen can't sing, period. And yet, the record grows on you..." Mark Deming ofAllMusic calls it "something of a letdown" and "neither as striking or self-assured asSongs of Leonard Cohen" but concedes, "Despite the album's flaws,Songs from a Room's strongest moments convey a naked intimacy and fearless emotional honesty that's every bit as powerful as the debut, and it left no doubt that Cohen was a major creative force in contemporary songwriting." Writing in 2011, Cohen biographer Anthony Reynolds declared, "Compared to the relative 'party' of the previous album,Songs From a Room is the hangover of the morning after... Yet there was a voluptuousness in the album's austerity, a richness of the 'less is more' variety."Amazon.com raves thatSongs From a Room is "fully loaded with poetic classics." In a 2014Rolling Stone readers poll ranking the top ten Leonard Cohen songs, "Bird on a Wire" came in at #5.
Many of the songs from Cohen's second album would appear on 1973'sLive Songs, a collection of performances from 1970 and 1972.Songs from a Room was released onCD in 1990. Adigitally remastered version, including two bonus tracks produced byDavid Crosby, was released in February 2007.[3]
All songs written byLeonard Cohen except as noted.[13]
"Bird on the Wire", described by Cohen as a simplecountry song, has been covered by many musicians includingJennifer Warnes (his one-time backup singer),The Neville Brothers,Joe Cocker,Willie Nelson,The Lilac Time,Esther Ofarim,[14]Johnny Cash,Fairport Convention and subsequently their guitaristRichard Thompson.
"Story of Isaac", based on theOld Testament story ofGod's demand thatIsaac besacrificed by his fatherAbraham, has also been covered by a number of musicians includingJudy Collins,Suzanne Vega,Linda Thompson,The Johnstons,Pain Teens, andRoy Buchanan.
"Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" has been translated in Italian byFabrizio De André and included in his albumVolume 8 (1975).
"You Know Who I Am" was covered byMama Cass in her 1968 albumDream a Little Dream and byEsther Ofarim on the 1968 albumEsther Ofarim.[15]
"The Partisan" is Cohen's cover of the French song "La Complainte du partisan" byEmmanuel d'Astier andAnna Marly, which is about theFrench resistance duringWorld War II.The English translation was written byHy Zaret.[16] The rock journalist Alex Young notes, "[Cohen] is often incorrectly credited as the composer of the song – although he is certainly responsible for its survival." Young also notes that the English translation that Cohen recorded differs from the French in that it excludes the direct references that d'Astier and Marly made in the original lyrics to the occupation of France byNazi Germany.[16]
| Chart (1969) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[17] | 12 |
| UK Albums (OCC)[18] | 2 |
| USBillboard 200[19] | 63 |
| Chart (2016) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Italian Albums (FIMI)[20] | 91 |
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Canada (Music Canada)[21] | Gold | 50,000^ |
| United Kingdom (BPI)[22] 2009 release | Silver | 60,000‡ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
...the music on his sophomore album is something humbler: country tunes.
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