Despite being the decade in which I was a teenager, I have very little nostalgia for the 1990’s, and while there are a few exceptions here and there, it’s still the decade from which I listen to the least amount of music. This isn’t at all a statement on the importance of that era’s musical trends or artists. I am very aware that the 1990’s were an important time in music, with the advent of grunge, the last push in metal, the rise of pop country and the perfection of pop. I see how much it inspired and affected my friends and contemporaries, not to mention future generations of music fans, and how that entire period was an exciting era for music. But somehow, I completely missed it. It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention to music. Actually, it was the complete opposite. It was the time in which I first started collecting records and listening to music seriously and cultivating a vast knowledge on bands and songs. But by the time I was a teenager I had acquired fairly sophisticated tastes in music to the point that I was bordering on being a “music snob.” While most kids my age were listening to The Tragically Hip, I was listening to The Velvet Underground. It wasn’t that it was better as much as that my focus was different. So in regard to the contemporary music being created around me, I seemed to be incredibly apathetic towards the big new bands or the latest hit records. In all honesty, it just wasn’t really connecting with me.
But one night, when doing a school art project in front of Much Music, I saw a video that caught all of my attention, and a figure would emerge that would have a huge impact on me. It was a bit of a non-event, but the impact of that musical discovery was so intense that I can still see it in my mind’s eye.
The video featured this gravelly voiced old guy flanked by two gorgeous women on either side of him, and it wasn’t like anything I had ever seen broadcast on Much Music before. With his intense eyes, grim persona and slightly bemused smirk, the man was well dressed in a mock turtleneck and suit blazer. The video was high art, pretentiously filmed in black and white and had a cinematic quality to it that sat somewhere between a Daivd Lynch masterpiece and a film student’s final thesis project. Although distinctly modern, the music had an unusual old world quality to it courtesy of a pulsating fiddle, an instrument rarely heard in pop music at that time. The lyrics were full of strange metaphors, and were tantalizingly erotic without jeopardizing their cerebral integrity:
“Yeah, we’re drinking and we’re dancing
But there’s nothing really happening
And the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night
And my very close companion
Gets me fumbling, gets me laughing
She’s a hundred, but she’s wearing something tight
And I lift my glass to the awful truth
Which you can’t reveal to the ears of youth
Except to say it isn’t worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
And it’s once for the Devil, and once for Christ
But the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights
We’re busted in the blinding lights
Of closing time “
Who was this guy? What was this music? Where did he come from? Everything in this video was exhilarating to me, and I hadn’t ever heard anything like that before. It was kind of sexy, kind of dirty, kind of sacrilegious but smart enough to carry itself as art. This was some seriously provocative stuff! As the video ended, I jotted down the song stats at the end of the video so I wouldn’t forget it – Artist: Leonard Cohen. Song: Closing Time. Album: The Future.
We all discover someone at some point, and this was the first time I had ever encountered Leonard Cohen. I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know he was an author, or a celebrated singer-songwriter with a large cult following, or that he was from Canada, let alone a national icon. All I knew is that he was the personification of Bohemian cool, and if my life could look like anything, I wanted it to look like the video for “Closing Time.”
But what stood out more than the imagery and the lyrics was just how out of place Leonard Cohen seemed on Much Music. I mean, this guy was old! What was he? 60? 65? In actuality, Cohen would have been 58 years old in 1992, which isn’t exactly ancient by any standard, but let’s face it. The world of pop music is a young person’s game, and Leonard Cohen was much older than most of the players within the 90’s music scene. But he wasn’t an “old man” like the ones you knew. Leonard Cohen had the kind of magnetism only reserved for Montreal poets, and an undeniable sexual charisma that younger men could only wish to ever have.
And let’s talk about sexual charisma. Although downright chaste compared to some of the music videos produced by that time (i.e. Madonna’s “Justify My Love” from a year earlier), this video was like an art student’s wet dream. It was seedy and gritty, and was highly charged, with bodies bending and floating and passion overflowing. Of course, we couldn’t ignore the two gorgeous back up singers who had the all-important job of blending their voices with Cohen’s raspy performance, hiding his flat notes in the confines of their harmonies. As a hormonous teenager who hadn’t even been with a girl, these women flanking Cohen in the video were more aesthetically interesting to me than the models in the magazines. I’d later come to find out that the women, Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla, weren’t just models hired for the video, but Cohen’s actual back up singers who both toured with him and had worked on “The Future.” It was Perla, the woman on his right, who playfully puts her hand in Cohen’s breast pocket near the end of the video, who ignited the fire of young lust within me. Yowza!
So, to say the least, “Closing Time” had challenged me on multiple levels – lyrically, aesthetically, sexually, culturally and musically. It might have seemed like an ordinary night in front of Much Music, but that was the night I became a lifelong Leonard Cohen fan.
Although in my memory the song “Closing Time” seemed to be all over the popular soundscape in 1992, when revisiting stats on “The Future,” I was surprised to find out that it wasn’t really much of a hit. It only made it to the #70 spot on the Canadian Billboard charts, although it did get to the #5 position on the Canadian Adult Contemporary. However it didn’t chart at all in the US or Europe. But I was also surprised to discover that this was only the second time in Cohen’s long career that he had even appeared on the Canadian Billboard charts. The first time had been in 1984 for, not surprisingly, “Hallelujah,” which only rose as far as #17 in Canada (for the record, Leonard Cohen has only once charted on the US Billboard charts, which was in 2007 when “Hallelujah” was reissued.)
But, despite the lack of chart success, it is really of little surprise that I discovered Leonard Cohen in 1992. If I hadn’t heard him that fateful night, it would have just been a matter of time before I had. By the early 1990’s, Leonard Cohen had finally crossed over from being a cult favorite to entering the mainstream, and was very much a part of the popular musical zeitgeist. Although he had been a favorite to music snobs and hipsters since the mid 1960’s, during the early 1990’s Leonard Cohen’s music was being rediscovered and reexamined for the first time, and “The Future” sealed his place as a major contributor to the 90’s music scene.
Cohen’s climb to mainstream success actually began a few years earlier. Seemingly in a slump for over a decade, primarily due to his disastrous 1977 collaboration with Phil Spector, “Death of a Ladies Man,” a forgettable 1979 releaase called “Recent Songs,” and Columbia’s refusal to distribute “Various Positions” onto` the US market, Leonard Cohen regained his cult status with the release of 1988’s “I’m Your Man.” A modest hit for Cohen, he introduced a dynamic new sound far removed from his previous material with both the title track, as well as “Everybody Knows” and “First We Take Manhattan,” which all became instant fan favorites and important staples of his popular catalogue. With his voice drastically changed due to age and cigarette damage, and trading his acoustic guitar for a modern synthesizer, Cohen’s new songs were still cerebral and intense, but far darker and nihilistic in tone which appealed to a new post-punk audience that was still unpacking their cold war trauma.
His words and music would reach another audience when Cohen’s recording of “Everybody Knows” was prominently featured in the 1990 hit film “Pump Up the Volume” staring Christian Slater. A moody cover of the song by Concrete Blonde was recorded and used over the closing credits, which was released as a single to promote the film, and became a favorite on MTV, peaking at #20 on the Billboard charts. A year later, a completion album of Cohen cover’s titled “I’m Your Fan” was released by Atlantic Records featuring contributions by R.E.M, The Pixies, Nick Cave and James. However, the most prominent contribution to that album would prove be John Cale’s interpretation of “Hallelujah,” which kickstarted that song’s meteoritic rise to prominence…. but that’s another Vinyl Story for another day.
So, by 1992, the world was hungry for more Leonard Cohen, and he did not disappoint with “The Future.” Building off the vibe of “I’m Your Man,” “The Future” features Cohen’s thoughts and feelings of the end of the cold war and the rise of civil unrest witnessed as a result of the Los Angeles riots. Cynical and morose, but with moments of wry humor scattered within its lyrical content, “The Future” had the same sensitive intelligence that Cohen brought to everything he ever produced but managed to capture the cynical dissatisfaction and mass depression that was prevalent in the music industry at that moment in time. Growing up in a culture that rarely acknowledged mental health, I was a very depressed and emotionally mixed up young man, and for better or for worse, that cynicism and depression really spoke to me. While most musicians made sadness and angst look violent, self-deprecating and angsty, Leonard Cohen made depression seem deep.
Between 1992 and 1993, four singles were released from “The Future” – “Closing Time,” “Democracy,” “The Future,” and “Be For Real.” “Be For Real” proved to be an unusual track for Leonard Cohen as it was the only cover he had ever released during his entire career. As a prolific songwriter, Cohen didn’t need to release covers. Other artists covered him. But “Be For Real,” written by Fredrick Knight, was an r&b song originally released in 1976 by singer Marlena Shaw. I had actually first heard the song when I caught it being played in the 1987 teen comedy “Adventures in Babysitting.” A strange choice for Cohen, he truly did a magnificent performance of the song, making it his own with his raspy growl. However, he ended the song by sending out a thank you message to the composer, making sure the audience knew just who actually wrote the song.
“The Future” actually contained not one, but two cover songs, with Cohen giving his own masterful interpretation of Irving Berlin’s 1925 standard, “Always.” Showing off his more playful side, which was something fans had often heard rumors of but had rarely seen, “Always” served as a much needed tension release as the album reached its conclusion. The album’s longest track, clocking in at just over eight minutes, it’s a strange choice for the album, but worked well as a brief moment of joy before moving into the album’s final emotional coda, “Tacoma Trailer.” Another first for Cohen, “Tacoma Trailer” was the first time Cohen had released an original instrumental on any of his albums.While it may not have been the hottest album out in 1992, “The Future” managed to find its audience, especially in Europe, where it topped a number of Eastern country’s album charts. Of course, it went Gold in Cohen’s home country of Canada, and in 1993 Cohen was given the Juno Award for Male Vocalist of the Year. At the awards ceremony, Cohen thanked the audience for the recognition by quipping “Only in a country like this could someone with a voice like mine win Male Vocalist of the Year.”
Although “The Future” was not a success in the US at the time of its release, the album gained enough attention to popularize Cohen into the American soundscape within the next few years. Three tracks from the album, “Anthem,” “Waiting for the Miracle” and “The Future” would all hit mainstream audience’s when they were used prominently in Oliver Stone’s 1994 film “Natural Born Killers,” which became a cult phenomenon at the time of its release. Another tribute album, “Tower of Song,” featuring contributions by an even more substantial grouping of artists including Elton John, Bono, Suzanne Vega, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, Sting and Peter Gabriel, was released in 1995. Meanwhile, a young unknown artist named Jeff Buckey recorded his own version of “Hallelujah,” but that is also another Vinyl Story for another day.
So, while I know a lot about Leonard Cohen now, that night I first saw the “Closing Time” video on Much Music he was still a complete enigma to me. As far as I knew, he was a completely new artist that nobody had ever heard of either! Oh, the arrogant naivety of youth!
The following afternoon I headed downtown, which was already by this point my regular stomping grounds, and went directly to the local Sam the Record Man to get this album by Leonard Cohen. Now Sam the Record Man was located on George St, and there was this slightly older girl who worked behind the counter named Kimber. She was really pretty and played guitar in local bands and, like most record store girls, was seriously cool. I remember I went into Sam the Record Man and asked her if they had “The Future” by Leonard Cohen, naively doubting that she had ever heard of him. Well, she brought me over to the Leonard Cohen section and, much to my astonishment, there were so many Leonard Cohen albums to choose from! My mind was blown! Oh man! So many to buy, so little money to buy them all!
I picked out a copy of “The Future,” but Kimber made a suggestion. She gently recommended that I might want to get Cohen’s 1975 compilation collection, “The Best of Leonard Cohen,” instead. She insinuated that it was far better, but for me it was a blind buy. I had my heart set on “Closing Time,” because it was the only Leonard Cohen song I had ever heard. But, as I held the “Best of” album in my hands, I was intrigued. I couldn’t decide which one to buy, so I just went and bought them both. I don’t know if Kimber was trying to boost her sales or not, but she made her commission that day. I was leaving with Leonard Cohen’s greatest, and his latest, and it was glorious (Vinyl Story Note – I still know Kimber today, and she is still pretty, and she is still seriously cool).
Well, Kimber was right. Although the music on “The Best of Leonard Cohen” was distinctly different than that on “The Future”, every single song on the album became an instant favorite, and while his words were often moody and sad, his music seemed to calm my often off the map anxiety. Soon, like most teenagers who emulate their favorite rock stars, I began to bring a little touch of Leonard Cohen into my own persona. Now it wasn’t going to be easy. I was an awkward manically depressed teenager, who often brought his emotions to number eleven in an attempt to hide his shortage of self-confidence and self-control, and I lacked the distinguished coolness of Leonard Cohen. But it didn’t stop me from trying. While my friends were all growing out their hair and banging on guitars in garage bands in the attempt to be the next Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder, I was wearing fitted turtlenecks, suit blazers bought at secondhand shops and writing terrible poetry in little notebooks. There might even be an extremely misguided cassette tape in circulation of me reading my dreadful verses to acoustic guitar out there somewhere, with a morose black and white photo of me holding Leonard Cohen’s 1993 literary collection “Stranger Music” on the inside cover. If you happen to somehow have a copy of this thing, please never tell me because I don’t want to know and do me a favor and destroy it. Some albums do not need to exist.
But Leonard Cohen became a cultural touch point to me and continues to be still today. I still love his words and his music, and while I am far more emotionally sound than I was at seventeen, I still find a soothing beauty to his music, even when it is at its darkest. I have worked through all of his discography, owning the majority of it in my collection, and I’ve even read all of “Beautiful Losers,” and can honestly say that if anyone tells you that it’s their favorite novel, they probably haven’t actually read it (even as a fan, I can tell you it’s pretty awful). In the entire colorful canon of the Canadian music industry, Leonard Cohen is by far my very favorite.
It’s been a long time since I was seventeen years old, and in only a few years I’ll be the same age that Leonard Cohen was when he released “Closing Time.” Although I haven’t done that bad for myself, I’m still not nearly half as cool as Leonard Cohen was in1992. I don’t know if it’ll ever be possible to be, but I’m okay with that. Few people can ever achieve the same sense of bohemian cool as Leonard Cohen, but part of me keeps trying.
