Famous Blue Raincoat: the provenance of a familiar tune
My favorite YouTube activity these days seems to involve watching singer/songwriters morph from young to old almost instantaneously. There’s something both creepy and magical about getting into the YouTube time machine and seeing ten different live versions of a song spanning thirty years or more, something that simply could not have been done in the privacy of one’s home just a few short years ago.
My last subject was Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam. Today it’s Leonard Cohen, and most particularly his “Famous Blue Raincoat,” one of the most bittersweet songs ever, and also one of the most quietly beautiful. Here’s the handsome (at least to me), black-haired, youngish (well, he’s 45; sure sounds young now) Cohen with what has long been his standard touring company—two female vocalists with hypnotic higher tones to set off his lugubrious lows, and a jazzy backup band with a sax and a mandolin:
About thirty years later, Cohen’s face is lined and droopy (“Ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older”), the lights bluer, the backup singers more glam—although, amazingly enough, Sharon Robinson (the black singer on both videos) has returned looking like only a couple of years have passed for her. Sax and mandolin are still around, although the guys playing them have been swapped out for different models. Cohen’s voice has deepened and he sounds even more weary here (and not just world-weary, either, as before). He can be forgiven, though; the man’s in his mid-70s now:
If the melody sounds familiar, it may be because you’ve heard the song before. Or it may be because you’ve heard this one, which was written later, and features a musical phrase that is virtually the same:
“Somebody sued them on my behalf ”¦ and they did settle,” even though, [Cohen] laughs, “they hired a musicologist who said that particular motif was in the public domain and, in fact, could be traced back as far as Schubert.”
No wonder; it’s a pretty nice motif:
But that’s not the end of it. Granted, the following may not be Schubert. But it’s the same dang melody, “suddenly shiny and new”:
Bourée 1969
This flute-dominated instrumental, based on Bach’s ‘Suite in E Minor for Lute’, was a track on Jethro Tull’s excellent ‘Stand Up’ (1969).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2RNe2jwHE0
and compare it with this one..
A Classic Case (1985) is an album by the London Symphony Orchestra, playing a selection of music from Jethro Tull. The music was arranged and conducted by David Palmer. The album features band members Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, Dave Pegg and Peter-John Vettese.
Ian Anderson plays the flute parts in both…
but 16 years apart…
Bourée
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15beVklOus0
some are not as pleasant if you love the early versions and the later ones are stretched and not improved like cohen seems to be
Just like no one will remake “Unchained Melody” given its nuances…
who could possibly remake Clare Torry aria from Dark Side of the Moon? There ARE others, but being copies they either mimic, or are lesser… Wright has since passed on…
Pink Floyd
THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM1Tp8ZtGXU&feature=fvst
(1988 nassau coliseum)
Pink Floyd
THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bIH5QfVGTo&feature=related
Below she tells in an interview of what and how the aria was created… she made it up with wright after they talked to her… they stopped her from singing words… she said she pretended to be an instrument… she said put the red light on, and record it… she was basically going to wing it, and if its good the first recording will be the best and later ones will be more labored and less spontaneous…
very interesting interview of a back ground studio singers work…
Clare Torry habla sobre la grabacion de The Great Gig In The Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LTSLbhyoY
In 2004, Torry sued Pink Floyd and EMI for songwriting royalties, on the basis that her contribution to “Great Gig in the Sky” constituted co-authorship with Richard Wright. Originally, she was paid the standard Sunday flat studio rate of £30. In 2005, a settlement was reached in High Court in Torry’s favour, although terms were not disclosed. All pressings after 2005 list the composition to Richard Wright and Clare Torry.
Dark side of the Moon is a very interesting album with incredible facts about it.
The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success, topping the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart for one week.
It subsequently remained in the charts for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history.
15 years on the charts…
So many great pop tunes are stolen right out of classical music. And Neo, you know how I feel about our Leonard!
I was curious about Leo Sayer because I loved his music as a teenager. Did you know he recently became an Australian citizen and is still singing and touring over there? He has his own website and it is very active.
Thanks for posting “Raincoat.” I’d never heard it before, and I had only the vaguest notion of who Leonard Cohen was.
I, too, have been enjoying Youtube video’s and “reacting” to the feeling generated by those who, at the time long ago, seemed so old, yet now seem so young. One of the most emotional for me was Neil Young’s “Old Man.” See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVC2cszdTao I was 10 at the time, and I probably first heard it in my early to mid teens when Neil seems old to me. Now, he looks like a kid. Yet, now, at 50, clearly, I’m the “old man,” and, in a way, a lot like him. And, now, (or relatively recently) he’s older. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KF1NxXTEX4&feature=related
Conrad: I guess it’s not such a famous raincoat after all.
But it is blue.
If you do a search for Leonard Cohen on this blog, you’ll find other posts I’ve written on him that you might enjoy. Try this, this, and this.
IMO nobody covers Cohen better than Jennifer Warnes:
http://tinyurl.com/p63y8c
and my favorite Cohen cover of all time:
http://tinyurl.com/7us2xav
and a not so distant third from Jann Arden:
http://tinyurl.com/85fzce4
Here is a detailed attempt to analyze the meaning of this song;
http://www.heroldmusic.com/assets/Famous_Blue_Raincoat__English.pdf
Cohen himself said in an interview that he always felt there was a third party playing a background role in any of his relationships. In this song the third party seems to morph into different male and female phantasms each for a period playing a role in the setting of his relationships. I’m reminded of dreams in which the actors are separate individuals yet simultaneously aspects of the dreamer’s psyche. In his songs Cohen gives voice to his subconscious aspects, like any fine artist, and like any fine artist he speaks for his generation. (I never met the man, yet we were contemporaries in Montreal, and I am still greatly moved by Suzanne, whoever that marvelous lady or muse Suzanne may have been. I’ve likely been seeking ‘Suzanne’ ever since!
Agree with Parker. Let me mention for comparison Jennifer Warnes’ CD tribute famousbluerainoat of Cohen’s finest songs.
I lost my Dad very suddenly just before Christmas and Leonard Cohen was his favorite artist. I have been obsessively listening to all of his old albums since it happened. And this last week his new album, which is wonderful. I find them very comforting. Both the versions you posted of Famous Blue Raincoat are great, so thanks for that. As for Leo Sayers’ dramatically backlit afro, not so much.
Found this later:
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1941&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=0
Pico Ayer writes on LC’s stint at a CA Buddhist training center near LA.
After reading it, I think we resonate with LC because he as poet and monk opens us to our own expressions of psychosexual and spiritual longing. “I am a hotel,” he said of his inner personas, so thus he represents something very significant in each of us.
Your love of Jewish men is sweet!
Brad: you don’t have to be Jewish to love Leonard Cohen.
Speaking of Jennifer Warnes, she is the blonde back-up singer in the first video.
I enjoy her collection of Cohen songs, “Famous Blue Raincoat.”
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