When Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell argued about plagiarism: “Up for grabs, right?”
There is something so special about the coming together of two legends, no matter how brief. That surely has to be part of the appeal and ongoing enamour surrounding the 1960s and ‘70s when the artists who are now regarded as truly god-like were all thrown together. They were at the same festivals, playing the same shows, living in the same cities, even the same hotels, and, occasionally, in beautiful instances, they were falling in love and letting inspiration strike. One of those collisions was the coming together of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, a musical match made in heaven, even if it ended in an argument.
At first, it was a connection born out of complete and utter mutual admiration; no more than that. Both artists were captivated by the other’s talent. “Joni was some kind of musical monster, that her gift somehow put her in another category from the other folksingers,” Cohen said about Mitchell, adding, “There was a certain ferocity associated with her gift. She was like a storm. She was a beautiful young woman who had a remarkable talent.”
In return, Mitchell said of Cohen, “Leonard was an early influence“. In fact, she credits Cohen for spurring her on and pushing her to better her work, admitting that after hearing his song ‘Suzanne’, “He made me feel humble because I looked at that song and I went, ‘Woah. All my songs seem so naive by comparison.’ It raised the standard of what I wanted to write.”
Eventually, however, the awe evolved into a personal and romantic connection. Like so many other pairings from this time and of the many relationships that coloured Mitchell’s life, art and love went hand in hand with inspiration as fuel.
Some say Mitchell wrote ‘A Case of You’ for Cohen, referencing their joint Canadian nationalities in the track. In return, it’s rumoured that Cohen wrote ‘Winter Lady’ about her. There are other Mitchell tracks said to be inspired by him, including ‘The Gallery’, ‘Chelsea Morning’, ‘The Song About the Midway’ and certainly ‘Rainy Night House’, but one of them caused an argument between the lovers.
Mitchell never specified what song caused the fallout, but as music was brought into the tumult of their connection, one of her tracks caused a fight. “Leonard got mad at me actually because I put a line of his, a line that he said, in one of my songs,” she once explained. Taking something Cohen had said out loud to her and putting it into her lyrics—she didn’t see the issue, but he called it plagiarism.
“To me, that’s not plagiarism”, she claimed, but obviously, she knows there’s a line. To her, there is a definition of plagiarism and a line to not cross. As she explained, “You either steal from life, or you steal from books. Life is fair game, but books are not. That’s my personal opinion.”
So, if Cohen had simply written the line into one of his own songs or poems first, Mitchell would have kept her hands off. But as one of his sentences lives on in one of her songs, and we can only speculate which, Mitchell thought it fair game: “Don’t steal from somebody else’s art, that’s cheating. Steal from life—it’s up for grabs, right?”
