1967: Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen

Rather as with that other definitive rock'n'roll year, 1977, where I chose Elvis Costello's My Aim is True, I'm rather pleased with myself for choosing an album for 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, which stands alone, away from its time, by an old soul for whom the song above all was everything.

Of course, Leonard, on his debut, wasn't just an "old soul" he was a relatively old dude, already in his mid 30s. He'd had poems and novels published to acclaim. His were not literary pretensions.

He took to song. Song took to him. Leonard Cohen doesn't stand in anyone's shadow, not Bob Dylan's, not Elvis Presley's, not Neil Young's, he'd be exactly what he was without all of them.

As I've already written about, I went to a Leonard Cohen gig last year. It was quite incomprehensibly excellent, I can't overstate the extent to which seeing Leonard Cohen live in the 2010s is one of the wonders of the western world.

Something I love about Leonard Cohen the songwriter is actually how unpretentious his style is - he writes in pretty simple forms with gentle humour, he doesn't baffle or confound. He's not trying to prove anything. I imagine a young singer-songwriter can aspire to writing like Leonard Cohen. He's really not all that forbidding.

What of this debut itself, a bigger hit amongst us cultured folk in Europe than in the US? As with so many, I came to Cohen through Best of Collections, but i've managed to navigate my way over the years to understanding Songs of Leonard Cohen as a proper album. Sensual is a word that should undoubtedly never be uttered by the likes of me, but it is unavoidably a sensual album, through Suzanne and Winter Lady and Sisters of Mercy.

The great song on the album, for me, is So Long, Marianne. It doesn't matter who you are, if you've got a big singalong number, you're all right with me. A real person, too. I'm trying to imagine who would be the worst possible person to do a cover of it thinking they're improving on the original - I'm thinking one of those American singers who sound like they're on the loo - have the Dave Matthews Band ever done a cover of So Long, Marianne? Or maybe the Jove. They've done a cover of Hallelujah which JBJ himself holds in high esteem.

I remember the first time I listened to Leonard, it was on a trip where I also listened for the first time to the next album I'm going to write about, which couldn't be much more different. His golden voice is pretty firmly one to listen too while the rain is pouring down outside.

These are the songs I like the best

Suzanne
Bird on a Wire
Going Home
If It Be Your Will
The Sisters of Mercy
Chelsea Hotel #2
Teachers
Famous Blue Raincoat
The Stranger Song
Stories of the Street
Who By Fire?
First We Take Manhattan
Hallelujah
Come Healing
Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Take This Longing
Everybody Knows
Tower of Song
So Long, Marianne