The Lyrics of Leonard Cohen: Enhanced Edition Read online

  Everybody Knows

  Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

  Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

  Everybody knows that the war is over

  Everybody knows the good guys lost

  Everybody knows the fight was fixed

  The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

  That’s how it goes

  Everybody knows

  Everybody knows that the boat is leaking

  Everybody knows that the captain lied

  Everybody got this broken feeling

  Like their father or their dog just died

  Everybody talking to their pockets

  Everybody wants a box of chocolates

  And a long stem rose

  Everybody knows

  Everybody knows that you love me baby

  Everybody knows that you really do

  Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful

  Ah give or take a night or two

  Everybody knows you’ve been discreet

  But there were so many people you just had to meet

  Without your clothes

  And everybody knows

  Everybody knows, everybody knows

  That’s how it goes

  Everybody knows

  Everybody knows, everybody knows

  That’s how it goes

  Everybody knows

  And everybody knows that it’s now or never

  Everybody knows that it’s me or you

  And everybody knows that you live forever

  Ah when you’ve done a line or two

  Everybody knows the deal is rotten

  Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton

  For your ribbons and bows

  And everybody knows

  And everybody knows that the Plague is coming

  Everybody knows that it’s moving fast

  Everybody knows that the naked man and woman

  Are just a shining artifact of the past

  Everybody knows the scene is dead

  But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed

  That will disclose

  What everybody knows

  And everybody knows that you’re in trouble

  Everybody knows what you’ve been through

  From the bloody cross on top of Calvary

  To the beach of Malibu

  Everybody knows it’s coming apart

  Take one last look at this Sacred Heart

  Before it blows

  And everybody knows

  Everybody knows, everybody knows

  That’s how it goes

  Everybody knows

  Oh everybody knows, everybody knows

  That’s how it goes

  Everybody knows

  Everybody knows

  Co-written by Sharon Robinson and included on I’m Your Man (1988), this song’s bitter-sweet cynicism is mitigated by its suggestion that we, his audience, share the knowledge the singer imparts; it is not just a dispatch from a lone reporter at the far frontier of despair.

  Famous Blue Raincoat

  It’s four in the morning, the end of December

  I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better

  New York is cold, but I like where I’m living

  There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

  I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert

  You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some

  kind of record.

  Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair

  She said that you gave it to her

  That night that you planned to go clear

  Did you ever go clear?

  Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older

  Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder

  You’d been to the station to meet every train

  And you came home without Lili Marlene

  And you treated my woman to a flake of your life

  And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

  Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth

  One more thin gypsy thief

  Well I see Jane’s awake --

  She sends her regards.

  And what can I tell you my brother, my killer

  What can I possibly say?

  I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you

  I’m glad you stood in my way.

  If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me

  Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

  Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes

  I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

  And Jane came by with a lock of your hair

  She said that you gave it to her

  That night that you planned to go clear --

  Sincerely, L. Cohen

  On of Cohen’s best-known songs, and one of his most technically accomplished lyrics, it was included on Songs Of Love And Hate (1971). Cohen’s friends from the time all report his attachment to a much-repaired Burberry coat, originally bought in London in 1959. The phrase “to go clear” is a term of art in Scientology, a movement with which Cohen was briefly involved in 1968. The clues suggest that the letter is written not only by but to “L.Cohen”, that he is writing a past self – the “brother” and “killer” of a still living only son. Clinton Street is a street in the Brooklyn Heights area of New York City. ‘Lili Marlene’ was a song popular on both sides during World War II.

  Field Commander Cohen

  Field Commander Cohen, he was our most

  important spy.

  Wounded in the line of duty,

  parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties,

  urging Fidel Castro to abandon fields and castles.

  Leave it all and like a man,

  come back to nothing special,

  such as waiting rooms and ticket lines,

  silver bullet suicides,

  and messianic ocean tides,

  and racial roller-coaster rides

  and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry.

  I know you need your sleep now,

  I know your life’s been hard.

  But many men are falling,

  where you promised to stand guard.

  I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with

  the poor.

  But then I overheard your prayer,

  that you be this and nothing more

  than just some grateful faithful woman’s favourite

  singing millionaire,

  the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair,

  working for the Yankee Dollar.

  I know you need your sleep now ...

  Ah, lover come and lie with me, if my lover is who you are,

  and be your sweetest self awhile until I ask for more, my child.

  Then let the other selves be rung, yeah, let them manifest

  and come

  till every taste is on the tongue,

  till love is pierced and love is hung,

  and every kind of freedom done, then oh,

  oh my love, oh my love, oh my love,

  oh my love, oh my love, oh my love.

  Cohen visited Israel in 1973, as the storms clouds gathered that would eventually precipitate the Yom Kippur War. After his visit, he flew to Ethiopia where, ensconced in the Imperial Hotel in Asmara, he worked on several songs – among them this one, which was included on New Skin For The Old Ceremony (1974). A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).

  Fingerprints

  Touched you once too often

  Now I don’t know who I am

  My fingerprints were missing

  When I wiped away the jam

  Yes I called my fingerprints all night

  But they don’t seem to care

  The last time that I saw them

  They were leafing through your hairr />
  Fingerprints, fingerprints

  Where are you now my fingerprints?

  Yeah I thought I’d leave this morning

  So I emptied out your drawer

  A hundred thousand fingerprints

  They floated to the floor

  You know you hardly stopped to pick them up

  You don’t care what you lose

  Ah you don’t even seem to know

  Whose fingerprints are whose

  Fingerprints, fingerprints

  Where are you now my fingerprints?

  And now you want to marry me

  You want to take me down the aisle

  You want to throw confetti fingerprints

  You know that’s not my style

  O sure I’d like to marry you

  But I can’t face the dawn

  With any girl who knew me

  When my fingerprints were on

  Fingerprints, fingerprints

  Where are you now my fingerprints?

  Fingerprints, oh fingerprints

  Where are you now my fingerprints?

  Based on an earlier poem ‘Give Me Back My Fingerprints’ from Parasites Of Heaven, this song was included on Death Of A Ladies’ Man (1977). It ends with one of the more unusual excuses a man has given a woman for not marrying her.

  First We Take Manhattan

  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

  For trying to change the system from within

  I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  I’m guided by a signal in the heavens

  I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin

  I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  I’d really like to live beside you, baby

  I love your body and your spirit and your clothes

  But you see that line there moving through the station?

  I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those

  Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that

  I just might win

  You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline

  How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  I don’t like your fashion business mister

  And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin

  I don’t like what happened to my sister

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  I’d really like to live beside you, baby ...

  And I thank you for those items that you sent me

  The monkey and the plywood violin

  I practiced every night, now I’m ready

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  I am guided …

  Ah remember me, I used to live for music

  Remember me, I brought your groceries in

  Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded

  First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

  The opening song on I’m Your Man (1988), the album that marked the beginning of Cohen’s re-emergence as a popular and critically respected artist. Coinciding with a change in his music-writing technique (using a synthesizer instead of a guitar to compose with) and a noticeable lowering of his vocal register (which he attributed to “50,000 cigarettes and a lot of booze”), what he has described as “a demented manifesto” of “enlightened bitterness” presents a much more worldly-wise, cynical and at times angry point of view than the more melancholy, spiritual or philosophical songs he had previously produced. The particular significance of Manhattan and Berlin to Cohen is that they are, respectively, the nerve-centre of the music industry and the city he has found it hardest to play in. The song also played a bit-part in the cultural history of Athens– hip young Greek dudes of the day would test the mettle of their contemporaries by greeting them with “first we take Manhattan”; only the response “then we take Berlin” demonstrated the required level of coolness.

  God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot

  God is alive, magic is afoot

  God is alive, magic is afoot

  God is alive, magic is afoot

  God is afoot, magic is alive

  Alive is afoot, magic never died

  God never sickened

  Many poor men lied

  Many sick men lied

  Magic never weakened

  Magic never hid

  Magic always ruled

  God is afoot, God never died

  God was ruler

  Though his funeral lengthened

  Though his mourners thickened

  Magic never fled

  Though his shrouds were hoisted

  The naked God did live

  Though his words were twisted

  The naked magic thrived

  Though his death was published

  Round and round the world

  The heart did not believe

  Many hurt men wondered

  Many struck men bled

  Magic never faltered

  Magic always lead

  Many stones were rolled

  But God would not lie down

  Many wild men lied

  Many fat men listened

  Though they offered stones

  Magic still was fed

  Though they locked their coffers

  God was always served

  Magic is afoot, God is alive

  Alive is afoot

  Alive is in command

  Many weak men hungered

  Many strong men thrived

  Though they boast of solitude

  God was at their side

  Nor the dreamer in his cell

  Nor the captain on the hill

  Magic is alive

  Though his death was pardoned

  Round and round the world

  The heart would not believe

  Though laws were carved in marble

  They could not shelter men

  Though altars built in parliaments

  They could not order men

  Police arrested magic and magic went with them

  Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry

  But magic would not tarry

  It moves from arm to arm

  It would not stay with them

  Magic is afoot

  It cannot come to harm

  It rests in an empty palm

  It spawns in an empty mind

  But magic is no instrument

  Magic is the end

  Many men drove magic

  But magic stayed behind

  Many strong men lied

  They only passed through magic

  And out the other side

  Many weak men lied

  They came to God in secret

  And though they left Him nourished

  They would not tell who healed

  Though mountains danced before them

  They said that God was dead

  Though his shrouds were hoisted

  The naked God did live

  This I mean to whisper to my mind

  This I mean to laugh within my mind

  This I mean my mind to serve

  Til’ service is but magic

  Moving through the world

  And mind itself is magic

  Coursing through the flesh

  And flesh itself is magic

  Dancing on a clock

  And time itself

  The magic length of God

  God is alive, magic is afoot . . .

  Cohen himself has never recorded this song. It has been recorded twice by Buffy Sainte-Marie – on Illuminations (1970) and Up Where We Belong (1996).

  Hallelujah

  1984 version

  Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord

  That David played, and it pleased the Lord

  But you don’t really care for
music, do you?

  It goes like this

  The fourth, the fifth

  The minor fall, the major lift

  The baffled king composing Hallelujah

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  Your faith was strong but you needed proof

  You saw her bathing on the roof

  Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

  She tied you

  To a kitchen chair

  She broke your throne, and she cut your hair

  And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  You say I took the name in vain

  I don’t even know the name

  But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?

  There’s a blaze of light

  In every word

  It doesn’t matter which you heard

  The holy or the broken Hallelujah

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  I did my best, it wasn’t much

  I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch

  I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you

  And even though

  It all went wrong

  I’ll stand before the Lord of Song

  With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah …

  1988 version

  Baby, I’ve been here before.

  I know this room, I’ve walked this floor.

  I used to live alone before I knew you.

  Yeah I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,

  But listen, love is not some kind of victory march,

  No it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah.

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  There was a time you let me know

  What’s really going on below,

  Ah but now you never show it to me, do you?

  Yeah but I remember, yeah when I moved in you,

  And the holy dove, she was moving too,

  Yes every single breath that we drew was Hallelujah.

  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

  Maybe there’s a God above,

  As for me, all I’ve ever seemed to learn from love

  Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

  Yeah but it’s not a complaint that you hear tonight,