Leonard Cohen and his five best collaborations
Leonard Cohen was a singular artist, with a singular sound, a singular style and a singular, golden voice with which he was born; there is no one out there who sings or sounds like him.
But as singular as his voice is and was, it often wasn’t the only voice you’d hear on one of his recordings or performances. Over his career, Cohen often paired his gruff, worn and always ageing baritone with an angelic chorus of backing singers. In the process, he struck up long-time associations with a multitude of muses and supporting singers, like Jennifer Warnes, Sharon Robinson, Perla Battalia and The Webb Sisters, Charley and Hattie.
Before he became known as the singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, he was a famous poet/novelist and didn’t really consider a career in music at first, even telling the Greenwich Village businessman Marty Machat at one point that people had told him he couldn’t sing. “None of you can sing!” Machat supposedly had replied, “When I want to hear singing, I go to the Metropolitan Opera”.
Not everyone said he couldn’t sing, though, as Judy Collins was enraptured the first time she heard him belt ‘Suzanne’ and later insisted that as well as letting her record the first version, he simply had to start singing it before an audience himself. She invited him to sing at an event in 1967, at which point Cohen reluctantly agreed but admitted to feeling nervous, telling her, “I wouldn’t know what to do out there. I’m not a performer”.
Halfway through his song, he fled from the stage, citing an issue with his guitar strings but really seeming to have been struck by stage fright. Collins calmed him down backstage before returning to the spotlight with him in tow, about which she recalled, “I went back on with him, and we finished the song together. People went wild”. He may have had a singular voice, but, ultimately, his singing career started with a duet.
Here are five great Leonard Cohen collaborations:
‘Suzanne’ with Judy Collins (1976)
They’d originally sung the song with each other in 1967, right at the start of Leonard Cohen’s singing career, before he was even sure if he could sing in front of a crowd, but by the time they came back together to play it again in 1976, Cohen had firmly established himself as a singing poet of the highest regard.
By this time, his voice had started to slowly drop in pitch, though it wasn’t as deep as it would eventually become, and he was surer of himself, enough to begin experimenting slightly away from and around with his melodic deliveries. Collins, always a consummate singer anyway, exhibited even greater control and range in both her vocal performance and guitar embellishments here as she had even 11 years earlier, making for a truly magical collaboration.
‘Born to Lose’ with Elton John (1993)<br>
Leonard Cohen hasn’t done many duets over the years, but when he did, it was usually with women sharing the microphone with him, and one of the few times he shared vocal duties with another man was the disastrous experiment of U2’s ungodly cover of ‘Everybody Knows’.
Infinitely more successful and beautiful, though, was his 1993 collaboration with Elton John on the heartbreaking Ted Daffan composition ‘Born to Lose’, where Cohen’s gravel-aged and ocean-deep voice beautifully contrasts with the swells of string and organ, as well as with John’s seemingly ageless tone. The most famous version of the song was, of course, Ray Charles’ seminal 1962 recording, and separately, Cohen, in his grit and gruffness, and John, with his soulfulness, embody some of the best parts of Charles’ legendary voice and delivery.
‘In My Secret Life’ with Sharon Robinson (2001)<br>
Leonard Cohen probably sang more frequently and more beautifully with Sharon Robinson than he did with anybody else throughout his 82-year life.
Robinson joined Cohen’s troupe of backing singers for the first time on his 1979 tour and would work with him on and off for the rest of his life. In 2001, he released his first new album in nine years, titled Ten New Songs, and all the tracks were produced by, co-written with and sung alongside Robinson. ‘In My Secret Life’ contains some of the most stunning, gut-wrenching and intimate lyrics he ever released, and is more of a duet between the two songwriters, wherein Robinson’s voice supports and sustains Cohen’s, and harmonises with those earthy and metallic tones like nobody else could.
‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ with Julie Felix (1967)
Leonard Cohen and Julie Felix first met on the Greek island of Hydra, around the Bohemian paradise and artist colony that they both called home. You’d have to imagine that they had spent plenty of long summer evenings singing together, against the backdrop of sun, sea and Olympos and to the sounds of ever-flowing bottles of red wine and the typewriter ribbon.
So, given their history together, it was no wonder that their voices came together in such a natural and heavenly way when she invited him to perform on ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ together on her BBC television show Once More with Felix.
‘Who By Fire’ with Sonny Rollins (1989)
Hal Willner was a music producer who may be best known for his work in assembling unusual and eccentric tribute albums and combinations of artists or songs, and we have him to thank for the albums Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen, I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico and Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, which gave us the equal parts horrific and delightful cover of ‘Heigh Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song)’ by Tom Waits.
Between 1988 and 1990, Willner was also the producer for the short-lived American late-night music television show Sunday Music, during which time he coordinated one of the greatest, most incendiary and inspirational collaborations ever conceived of when he brought together Leonard Cohen and jazz legend Sonny Rollins.
Listening to Leonard Cohen’s music can, at the best of times, feel like a religious experience in itself, but almost never more so than here, where Rollins plays out of his skin to push Cohen’s apocalyptic Yom Kippur hymn ‘Who By Fire’ onto almost unimaginable heights. Perhaps as great as any of the music they’re playing are the moments where Cohen himself is watching Rollins rolling through one of his extended solos; seeming to have half an eye on the saxophonist and half an eye on the heavens, and the creeping smile that sneaks into his lips as he lingers at the microphone after his final line, knowing that Rollins is about to unload the most incredible of all his solos yet.
