The forgotten draft of the original Leonard Cohen song ‘Chelsea Hotel No.1’
Leonard Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ has become one of the artist’s most beloved songs. The anthem for a distinct time in history, a specific place and a particular scene – the stories and myths surrounding New York’s Chelsea Hotel continue to be an object of fascination thanks to songs like Cohen’s. But Cohen wasn’t the only artist making art within its rooms.
During the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s especially, The Chelsea Hotel stood as the central point to New York’s artistic population. Some of history’s finest writers, musicians and artists lived within the hotel during a time when the manager would happily trade artworks for rent and keep hold of people’s portfolios in lieu of a deposit. Patti Smith’s writings on the hotel are perhaps the most famous, as her book Just Kids details her time living in room 107, the hotel’s smallest and cheapest room, with artist Robert Maplethorpe. In the memoir, she recounts meeting the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and beyond in its halls.
The stories from within the hotel seem endless. It was where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death, where Sid killed Nancy, and where 2001: A Space Odyssey was written. Chelsea Girls was filmed there, Arthur Miller hid there to mourn his divorce from Marilyn Monroe, and Bob Dylan wrote ‘Sara’. Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, Madonna, and the Ramones all resided there during different times. It seems that one hotel has more history behind one door to rival entire cities.
But one of the most famous stories from the hotel, or the most vivid pieces of art created about the place, comes from Leonard Cohen. In the winter of 1967, Cohen moved into room 424 as he left Hydra to embed himself within the New York folk scene as his musical career began to take off. Finding himself in a hotbed of culture, Cohen became a fringe figure in Andy Warhol’s Factory, where he mingled with Nico and even warned Edie Sedgwick that bad luck was coming her way before her infamous Chelsea Hotel fire. Suddenly surrounded by figures that would become not only his peers but some of the world’s greatest artists of all time – Cohen was enamoured with the scene.
And that love quickly turned to lust. The story has become infamous now of how Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin in the hotel’s elevator. In 1988, at a New York concert, Cohen recounted the tale: “A thousand years ago I lived at this hotel in NYC. I was a frequent rider of the elevator in this hotel. I will continuously leave my room and come back. I was an expert on the buttons of that elevator. One of the few technologies I really ever mastered.”
“The door opened,” he added. “I walked in. Put my finger right on the button. No hesitation. Great sense of mastery in those days. Late in the morning, early in the evening. I noticed a young woman in that elevator. She was riding it with as much delight as I was. Even though she commanded huge audiences, riding that elevator was the only thing she really knew how to do.”
The woman was Janis Joplin, who was living in room 411 at the time. Cohen gathered the courage to talk to the singer but borrowed his identity from someone else: “Are you looking for someone? She said, ‘Yes, I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’ I said ‘Little Lady, you’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson. Those were generous times. Even though she knew that I was someone shorter than Kris Kristofferson, she never let on. Great generosity prevailed in those doom decades. Anyhow, I wrote this song for Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel.”
‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ was recorded for Cohen’s 1974 album New Skin For The Old Ceremony, immortalising the encounter within its famous opening lines: “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet. Giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street.” The song is a beautiful ode to Joplin but also to the fleeting love of the decade, all the people lost and the subtle loneliness that came with liberation.
However, as suggested by the title, ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ is a second draft. Only Cohen’s revised version was ever put on record, with the original lyrics only being captured once in Cohen’s almost-lost 1974 documentary Bird On A Wire. The documentary, which chronicles his 1972 tour, was savagely re-edited and almost scrapped entirely as Cohen was “surprised by the intimacy of it”. The documentary sees him dealing with fan riots in Tel Aviv, feeling completely directionless in his career and navigating a total emotional breakdown. One of the most revealing and vulnerable moments comes as Cohen introduces a song he wrote just “a couple weeks ago” that he explains “takes place in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City and it’s for a brave woman who put an end to it all”. He then performs the only known version of the original ‘Chelsea Hotel’.
The lyrical differences are nuanced for the most part. Instead of singing, “we were running for the money and the flesh”, Cohen turns his gaze and blame directly onto himself, originally singing: “I was running for the money and the flesh”.
Instead of thinking about “those of them left”, he counts himself within that group, originally saying “us”. Throughout, the little changes point towards Cohen being in mourning for Joplin, seeming to suggest that this initial version was written more immediately after Joplin’s death in 1970. It speaks to a rawer and more emotional Cohen, who is still reeling from the loss in the early stages of grief.
But the biggest difference comes as the song hits the chorus. In the recorded ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ the chorus feels at once both flippant and sentimental, perfectly summarising the feeling of a fleeting encounter. He sings:
“Ah, but you got away, didn’t you babe?
– ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ – Leonard Cohen
You just turned your back on the crowd
You got away, I never once heard you say
I need you, I don’t need you
I need you, I don’t need you
And all of that jiving around”
There’s something empowering in it, with the image of Janis Joplin rejecting the scene and turning her back on it as though she wouldn’t be tied down or stuck to the hotel, its inhabitants or Cohen himself.
But in the original lyrics, a sadder story is revealed, and the tone changes to one of anger or upset as Cohen initially sang:
“Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe?
– ‘Chelsea Hotel’ – Leonard Cohen
You just threw it all to the ground
You got away they can’t pay you know
For making your sweet little sound can they?
Making your sweet little sound on the jukebox
Making your sweet little sound on the radio
Making your sweet little sound”
In the original ‘Chelsea Hotel’, Cohen appears to sing about Janis Joplin’s career and the way the singer only gained the acclaim she deserved after her death. In fact, it was in 1971, the year Cohen first performed ‘Chelsea Hotel’, that Joplin’s classic album Pearl was released posthumously and went straight to number one. It could be that ‘Chelsea Hotel’ was initially a response to this, writing as a mourning friend regretting that Joplin didn’t get to see her own success while she was alive and feeling angry that the music industry that would go on to herald her as a great was also the industry that let her down. This becomes even clearer in the devastating final image of Cohen listening to Joplin’s record, singing, “I can hear you now, go into the juke box, choose your records, I listen all night now”.
The closing remark of ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ seems to shrug Joplin’s memory off as Cohen sings: “I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best, I can’t keep track of each fallen robin. I remember you well in the Chelsea hotel, that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often”. It’s a line that has always held up Cohen’s ladies’ man reputation, closing off the sentimental track with a cool, cold one-liner. But in the original version, clearly written during a more vulnerable time, Cohen reveals not only a more emotional side but possibly his own struggles existing within the music industry as his career appeared to be derailing.
At the ending of ‘Chelsea Hotel’, Cohen draws parallels between his life and Joplins, singing, “I’m so tired, I’m thinking of you babe, Did it happen, baby?, Were you standing here Just like I am, I heard singing, All that clapping, People listening, Nobody viewing”. With the context now of the struggles Cohen faced during his 1972 tour, this original version feels like a devastating look at his own mental health just as much as a comment on Joplin’s.
Overwhelmingly, the lost original version of ‘Chelsea Hotel’ reveals a more vulnerable side to Cohen, a side that was clearly still in mourning while struggling with his own well-being. It’s no wonder then that Cohen decided to give this track some time to breathe, revisiting it with a less raw eye for his 1974 album. It appears the songwriter wanted to get a bit of distance from the song’s devastating inspiration before sending it out into the public sphere, protecting both himself and Joplin’s memory to a degree.
Either way, the song proved conflicting for Cohen, who later expressed deep regrets for revealing that it was Janis Joplin who inspired the song. He called it the “sole indiscretion in [his] professional life”. He came to regret publicly associating Joplin’s name with a song where he mentions just a vivid sexual scene. “I’ve always disliked the locker-room approach to these matters, I’ve never spoken in any concrete terms of a woman with whom I’ve had any intimate relationships,” he said. “And I named Janis Joplin in that song, I don’t know when it started, but I connected her name with the song, and I’ve been feeling very bad about that ever since”.
Cohen continues: “It’s an indiscretion for which I’m very sorry, and if there is some way of apologising to the ghost, I want to apologise now, for having committed that indiscretion.”
While all but lost, the original version of ‘Chelsea Hotel’ seems to reveal a deeply emotional, mournful Cohen. Before ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’ became an anthem for a scene and its loose approach to love and life, ‘Chelsea Hotel’ was always simply an anthem of pure sadness for the friend he lost to an industry he too felt lost in.
Leonard Cohen’s original ‘Chelsea Hotel’ lyrics:
I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet
Giving me head on the unmade bed
While the limousines wait in the streetAnd those were the reasons
And that was New York
I was running for the monеy and the flesh
I’ll say it again
I was running for the monеy and the flesh
And that was called love
For the workers in song
And it still is for those of us leftAh, but you got away
Didn’t you, babe?
Just threw it all to the ground
You got away
They can’t pay you now
For making your sweet little sound
Can they?
Making your sweet little sound?
On the juke box
Making your sweet little sound
On the radio
Making your sweet little soundI remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
In the winter of ‘67
My friends of that year
They were all getting queer
And me? I was just getting evenAnd those were the reasons
And that was New York
I was running for the money and the flesh
And that was called love
For the workers in song
And it still is for those of us leftAh, but you got away
Didn’t you, babe?
You just turned your back on the pain
You got away
Oh, in your deepest dream
Racing the midnight train, baby
Racing the midnight train, all naked
Racing the midnight, feet on the gravel
Racing the midnight train, yes you caught it, babe
Racing the midnight train, won’t you wave to me now?
Racing the midnight train, we can’t follow you
Racing the midnight trainI remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
Then I went down to Tennessee
Sat by the stream, listening to nothing else but
Holding my honorable dream
Willy York form the big east fork
He came there to talk with me
And we fed the peafowl
The bread for their pride
The stream there, it’s still running insideAh, but you got away
Didn’t you babe?
You just threw it all to the ground
You got away
They can’t pay you now
For making your sweet little sound
I’m so tired
Making your sweet little sound
I’m thinking of you babe
Making your sweet little sound
Did it happen, baby?
Were you standing here
Just like I am
I heard singing
All that clapping
People listening
Nobody viewing
Making your sweet little sound
I can hear you now
Go into the juke box
Choose your records
I listen all night now
Making your sweet little sound, baby
Making your sweet little sound
The juke box, ah
Guess I got nothin’ more to say to you baby
I mean
So long…I’ll leave ya, now
Little sound…
