Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen

by Jeff Burger

  COHEN CLIP

  On the “Great Judgment”

  “I know that there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government, I stand in awe and I kneel in respect. And it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song.”

  —from the introduction to “Hallelujah” at a Warsaw concert, 1985

  INTERVIEW

  KRISTINE McKENNA | January 1985, interview | 2001, Book of Changes (US)

  In January 1985—a month after he talked with Sward and only weeks before he embarked on a two-month, forty-two-concert European tour—Cohen met with journalist Kristine McKenna at a house he owned in Los Angeles. Portions of the conversation appeared later that year in the Los Angeles Times and, in 1986, in Another Room magazine; the fuller version that follows comes from McKenna’s 2001 interview collection, Book of Changes. —Ed.

  Kristine McKenna: Do you prefer calm or chaos?

  Leonard Cohen: I prefer calm, but it’s not for human beings to have it their way. As to which is better for me creatively, I never have the sense of any deluxe position as an artist. I always feel I’m operating with very little and never feel I’m standing before a banquet table from which I can choose calm or chaos, one subject or another. Things seem to present themselves urgently and I don’t really have much choice in the matter. I write very slowly, one word at a time, so I don’t have any sense of a grand operation.

  KM: Are you an easily enchanted person?

  LC: I’m always being swept away. I’ve found that as you grow older you become crazier and more careful at the same time. It’s like the base of a pyramid widening as the heights of folly deepen.

  KM: What qualities do you find consistently compelling in people and in art?

  LC: I don’t have a list, but I find that when I’m feeling open and good about things, then people can get through to me. If I’m not, then everyone remains embedded in ice.

  KM: You’ve been a regular contributor to popular culture for several decades. What’s the most significant change you’ve observed in that arena?

  LC: I don’t see anything terribly different. The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It’s useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way. Sometimes the music business is hospitable to innovation and excellence, and sometimes it is not. At the moment it is not—the music business is in the icy grip of the dollar right now.

  KM: What do you see as being your image?

  LC: I get echoes back from different countries—it seems to be a kind of loner telling the truth, or something like that. As to how accurate that is, it’s hard for me to say. Ultimately, one is simply happy that one’s work is present enough that people even bother to attach an image to it.

  KM: What are the recurring themes in your music?

  LC: It’s hard from the inside to say what something’s about. I think you write it to find out what it’s about. In terms of song, popular song has to move quickly from one lip to the next or it isn’t popular song, and popular songs are usually about love and loss.

  KM: Why is popular music obsessed with the theme of romantic love?

  LC: Because the heart is a complex shish kebab in everybody’s breast and nobody can tame or discipline it. We do live passionate, emotional lives somewhere inside, and that’s really the most important thing to us. So nobody fools around with music because music is for the heart.

  KM: Are you surprised at what you’ve achieved in life, or did you always feel you were destined to make yourself heard?

  LC: I always had a compulsion to show off. I always had this notion of speaking simply about the things closest to me, and I thought I could do one or two things in writing. I had this idea of being a minor poet, because it was the minor poets who put one or two little poems in the anthologies that I liked. Those are the people who touched me, rather than the great writers like Shakespeare or Goethe.

  KM: What do you feel to be your chief strength as an artist?

  LC: With any artist who survives past his lyrical twenties, a central quality is perseverance. A lot of people decide not to go on when they realize exactly what is involved in the life of a writer. Many people, very legitimately, decide they don’t want to lead this kind of life, so people drop away. And the people that remain, remain with their eyes wide open, realizing that it is a very specialized kind of existence that has enormous rewards, but involves you in a kind of daily life that leaves much to be desired.

  KM: What’s the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your life?

  LC: They keep changing. The whole thing seems like an obstacle. Whether you’re preparing dinner or trying to get across town, there seems to be a long line of insurmountable problems you must face. I find the whole production to be an ordeal and I don’t know how other people do it.

  KM: When you find your will and inspiration flagging, are there specific things you can do to revive them?

  LC: That’s a good question. You should try to keep yourself cheerful. Gossip, a good comedy, a joke, a glass of wine with a friend—all the conventional escapes are to be recommended.

  KM: Willed cheerfulness often seems to be a mask that allows one to remain asleep.

  LC: Depression and melancholy is the worst kind of sleep, and although we do have to have experiences with these kinds of emotions, they do cripple if they become chronic. So it’s our responsibility to ease ourselves out of those conditions, and the conventional methods are indicated. Conversation, entertainment, a friend who flatters you—anything to break the gloom is valuable.

  KM: What’s the bitterest pill you’ve had to swallow?

  LC: They’ve all seemed bitter, yet I don’t feel bad. Things are tough, but I don’t feel defeated. Things are as they should be, and it’s never been any different. The fact that they’re not putting us in concentration camps, that we can vote every four years—these things are to be celebrated. We have a certain modest liberty in this country—an extravagant liberty, compared with the rest of the world—that we should continually affirm. Outside of that, how to deal with one’s own life and keep oneself straight with the people one knows and loves, and maintain some self-respect while looking at work you know is deeply imperfect—these are the things people confront constantly.

  KM: It’s a popular theory that artists produce better work when they’re in a state of personal turmoil; do you think there’s any truth to that?

  LC: I think everyone is in turmoil and I’m suspicious of the tendency to isolate the artist from the rest of the world. I’m not quite sure why they’ve been separated out, but it seems that they have been. The artists probably want it that way because it gets them off the hook with their wives.

  KM: Can one learn to avoid repeating the same mistakes, or does life always have the capacity to throw you back to the ignorance of point zero?

  LC: The nature of writing is being thrown back to point zero. You look at the blank page in the morning and what next? In maintaining our associations with people, one never loses sight of point zero either, because human relations are fragile and the backlog they depend on can evaporate. A few bad moments with a friend and the whole backlog of experience can be annihilated. So we must be careful in our associations and continually review them. It’s been my experience that things can be destroyed quite easily. It’s like with virtue. You can work on virtue and it’s like throwing a heavy stone to the top of a hill. You can roll it down in a second, but it takes a lot of work to get it up there.

  TV INTERVIEW

  RAY MARTIN | May 24, 1985, the Midday Show with Ray Martin, Nine Network (Sydney, Australia)

  Cohen took a few weeks off after his European tour ended on March 24, 1985; then on April 30, he embarked on a thirty-five-concert series that lasted until July 21. This trip found him returning to Europe but als
o performing in the United States and Canada as well as in Australia, where on May 24 he appeared in concert and on Ray Martin’s television program. On the TV show, Cohen and his band delivered “Coming Back to You” from Various Positions. Then Martin welcomed him to the program. —Ed.

  Ray Martin: Great stuff. Leonard Cohen and the band. One of the living legends and we have got the pleasure of talking to Leonard. Please welcome back Leonard Cohen. Thank you.

  Leonard Cohen: Thank you for having us over tonight.

  RM: Well, it’s all our pleasure. It was the Canadian country, wasn’t it? That song had a country swing to it.

  LC: Yeah, it had a country feel to it.

  RM: Did you realize that today is Bob Dylan’s forty-fourth birthday? LC: Happy birthday, Bob.

  RM: The reason I say that is that it seems like you have been in each other’s shadow now for about twenty years, haven’t you?

  LC: I have known him for a long time. I bumped into him many years ago in Greenwich Village in New York and I have rejoiced in his genius over the years.

  RM: It’s not true, those reports that in fact he has modeled himself on you in terms of being the enigmatic figure?

  LC: I taught him everything he knows. [Laughter.]

  RM: I mentioned Canadian country and you are a Canadian. I am just wondering whether you have had to live with that, whether in fact had you been born in the United States, you would have had the focus of publicity, the sort of star attention, that Bob Dylan has been forced to live with.

  LC: Maybe. I’ve lived in Canada most of my life and never felt a great desire to move south of the border. But it’s true that we probably have the same kind of ambiguous feelings about the United States that you do down here.

  RM: I think Pierre Trudeau referred to it as an inferiority complex.

  LC: It’s true. I was just talking to some people here in Sydney over the past few days. It seems that an artist or a sportsman or a scientist even has to have that stamp of approval from the US before we take him seriously. That’s the sad thing.

  RM: It is. Have you seen enough of Australia yet, Leonard, to really be able to see if we are like a South Pacific version of Canada?

  LC: Well, I think in terms of this United States situation that we are talking about, that you have a better take on it here. We are just a few cities really arranged on the border of the United States, so our sense of identity is continually being threatened and a lot of people say what the hell, we will just go down there and work. Down here, you don’t have that easy access to territorial United States. You got all the cultural stuff coming in on the television but I think it is an easier situation down here.

  RM: Yes. I wonder too, in fact, [about] the sort of characters we have turned out, the Canadian character or the Australia character that we have. Small populations along one strip. In your case it’s along the Saint Lawrence, in our case it’s along the coast … British stock as I say, with a great alliance with America. [I wonder] whether you see Australians and Canadians somewhat the same?

  LC: Well, I think we studied the same things in school and we looked at that map of the British Empire and we were both red. [Laughter.]

  RM: Did that trouble you?

  LC: No, no, and it’s true that the world sees us as stereotypes. They see you as outbackers and kangaroo people and they see us as mounted police and snowmen. [Laughter.]

  RM: Not true?

  LC: It’s true. [Laughter.]

  RM: Can I make one of those sweeping generalizations and say that in my experience, and I have been to Canada many times, I find Canadians as a group perhaps more bland than Australians. They don’t seem to be quite as outrageous and quite as upfront as Australians.

  LC: No, I think that they are much more retiring, much more withdrawn than Australians. There’s a real feeling down here of down to earth and it’s an obscenity that keeps coming to my lips so I can’t say it but there’s an attitude down here like, so what, which is great … this country seems healthy. The body of this country seems to be completely intact and sunburnt and full of beans and Canada, we have that long winter and we are continually in this defensive position in regard to the United States so it is different.

  RM: What about the criticism that often people make about Australia, that we are too hedonistic?

  LC: I don’t think you are hedonistic enough. To rejoice in your own landscape and your own bodies and your own families and your own good luck … I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

  RM: Is it true that the real reason you have come down here is to taste Australian wine and Australian women? [Laughter.]

  LC: Oh no, I- I- I- please, no.

  RM: There’s an ugly rumor doing the rounds.

  LC: No, I would never want to have the reputation as someone who sweeps into a country on a raid. [Laughter.] No, I have tasted the wine.

  RM: Is it true that it is in your contract that you must have red wine backstage?

  LC: Who let that news out? [Laughter.]

  RM: Do you feel very Jewish?

  LC: I know that I am a Jew and I came from a good Jewish family, conservative and, yeah, I certainly feel that tradition deeply.

  RM: Do you speak Hebrew?

  LC: I can pray in Hebrew. I can speak to the Boss in Hebrew. [Laughter.]

  RM: Did you feel especially Jewish when you went back to Poland? I read the story of your return there, which was quite an extraordinary trip, wasn’t it?

  LC: It was kind of an alarming and touching experience. One, because there had been a community there of three million Jews that was destroyed in a couple years during the war. So as a Jew I felt curious because there was a lot of cooperation to be able to do away with that many people. So I did have solidarity in that sense also, because the country is involved in some heroic struggle now. You do identify with their protest. I had no idea that I had any place in the Polish culture at all, so it was kind of alarming to find the crowds there and the kind of attention I got there.

  RM: Now, your parents were Polish Jews?

  LC: My mother was from Lithuania, which was a part of Poland, and my great-grandfather came over from Poland to Canada.

  RM: I read as well you were very surprised to find that there was in fact a Leonard Cohen Festival of Music in—

  LC: Yes, yeah. They have a festival of my songs at Krakow every year or so.

  RM: Which is just near Auschwitz?

  LC: Yeah. It’s very hard to deal with. I was totally unequipped for the kind of pressures that were put on me. The national spokesman of Solidarity asked me to invite Lech Walesa to the Warsaw concert. He was under town confinement in Gdansk so I was invited to embarrass the government in some way, and I didn’t have a chance to test my courage. Some of the guys in the band drew me aside and said, “Leonard, we don’t know what weird missionary adventure [laughter] you’re on but we are just getting paid by the week, so [laughter] don’t say anything that is going to make it difficult to leave the country. Let’s play the gig and get out of town.”

  RM: What was your inclination, though? Would you like to go back? You could go back on your own.

  LC: Yeah, going back on my own. I might look into that sometime.

  RM: What was the response? I have been to Poland a few times reporting and it seemed that any Western music that they weren’t picking up on shortwave radio was at a premium, that in fact they were prepared to pay big money, many zlotys, for music. Did you find that there was a hunger there for your music?

  LC: Not just for my music. There is a real appetite for the Western experience. I think they want to point west and they are being forced to point east. I think that they feel themselves part of the Western European culture and that really eats at the heart of a lot of people.

  RM: We mentioned Bob Dylan, his birthday, but did you find going back there that it was at all an educational experience? You and Bob have both been somewhat critical of Western society. Was there any education in seeing the other side? />
  LC: Well … it is a difficult place to live. I think that people are really suffering under that regime. I think that probably the Polish people are difficult to govern anyhow …

  RM: Yes.

  LC: I know the Polish people because I come from that sort of family. They are independent and crazy.

  RM: Yes, the most crazy romantics. I think they used to say the Irish were the crazy romantics but I think it is the Poles.

  LC: But anybody who has ever seen a communist government, who has felt it for a moment, who has ever seen the public presence of a government … we don’t know what it is to have the public intrusion into our private world. [Silence.] I hate it.

  RM: Where will you spend your sixtieth birthday? Do you still see yourself doing gigs in places like Australia and drinking good red wine?

  LC: Well, God willing I would like to keep on going. I listened to Alberta Hunter in New York a few years ago. She was eighty-two at the time and it was really wonderful to hear the experience in this woman’s voice. You knew that she knew what she was talking about and when she said “God bless you” at the end of her set, you really did feel blessed.

  RM: Yes. Despite the image of the prince of darkness and despair and the poet of melancholy, is it fun?

  LC: There are a lot of good times on the road. You get very tight with the men and women that you are working with and you feel like you are part of the gang again.

  RM: Yes, on the road. Marauding or raiding, but not raiding. LC: No, no. [Laughter.]

  RM: In fact, you can catch Leonard Cohen and the band in Sydney tonight at the Sydney Entertainment Center, on Saturday at the Melbourne State Theatre, on June 2nd at the Adelaide Festival Theatre, and June 5th in Perth at the Concert Hall. And it’s your own fault if you don’t take the opportunity to see Leonard Cohen and the band. Leonard, thank you very much indeed.

  LC: Thank you very much.

  SONGS AND THOUGHTS OF LEONARD COHEN

  ROBERT O’BRIAN | January 1987, interview | September 1987, RockBill (US)