So there I was in my old blue raincoat watching the new Leonard Cohen biopic/concert film Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man. A lot of the artists in the film told their stories about how they first heard of him, so here’s mine. My dad used to play Leonard Cohen all the time, mostly the I’m Your Man album, and I thought it was the worst music in the world. I was probably ten years old at the time. He couldn’t sing! It was all cheesy eighties keyboards! One day, I thought I had a telling argument. In “Tower of Song”, he sings:
I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice
This was clearly untrue! I thought I’d caught him in a lie, so we wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore! Aha!
This was also obviously before I’d heard of irony.
Anyways, the movie is pretty great, but probably only if you already like Leonard Cohen. It blends concert footage (from, strangely enough, Australia), interviews, and biographical footage collected from throughout Cohen’s life. The performances are a bit of a mixed bag - while some were incredible, some came off more like karaoke. I was surprised that I didn’t like Nick Cave’s performance of “I’m Your Man”, since I love Nick Cave and that song. There was also way too much U2. I’ve got more to say about the film, but I think I’ll save it for other posts.
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First time I came across Leonard Cohen was on the Natural Born Killer's soundtrack in grade 10. Before then, I really wasn't into music, and I hadn't even seen the movie. All I knew was that I wanted to spend my money on something other than comic books. don't ask me how I chose that one, but my highschool obsession with NIN came from that. I liked the LC song, but couldn't bring myself to listen to anything else of his. It wasn't until university when I started branching out into other types of music.
Then I heard "So Long Marianne" and it was sealed for me.
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