The Leonard Cohen song Roger Waters simply couldn’t live without: “An open door between poetry and song lyrics”
It would be remiss to suggest that he is not a polarising figure outside of music, but there aren’t many talents that dwarf the star of Pink Floyd creator and songwriting driver, Roger Waters.
His work with the prog rock outfit started with their acid-rock salad days and transformed into stadium-filling rock operas that, quite literally, changed the world. With his incandescent sense of songwriting style, he drove the group, alongside David Gilmour, to be recognised alongside behemoths such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. However, there is one man who even he feels trumps him.
Leonard Cohen’s songwriting style is an unusual one. Such a statement might not be as well-received as others, but not only is it factual, but it should stand as a serious compliment. Arriving in the 1960s amid a flurry of similarly positioned singer-songwriters, somehow Cohen demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was unique.
Not finding his singing voice until the age of 33, Cohen’s strange turn from poet to novelist to folk singer has imbued his work with a sense of narrative that few can match. It’s why, when Waters was faced with picking his favourite songs to take with him to an inescapable desert island, he chose the uncanny Cohen as one of his prime candidates.
Having initially only taken the role of bass player in the formative years of the band, letting Barret lead in both lyric writing and musical composition, Waters stepped up to be the band’s leader following the difficult departure of Syd Barrett in 1968. He soon became the face of Pink Floyd and, despite constantly duelling with David Gilmour—something he’s never shied away from doing, no matter the situation or the company—Waters has been seen as a grand member of British rock royalty.
For the next 20 years, Waters and Pink Floyd would go on to achieve international fame with critically acclaimed records such as The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall while rubbing shoulders with some other hugely influential figures of a counter-culture movement. It would result in the major development of pop and alternative music, with an extra focus on the evolution of sonic landscapes. Yet, within his selections, he chose to pay tribute to the artists who were keener to strip things back.
As well as doffing his cap to Cohen, he also heaped praise on Neil Young and Ray Charles, who both embody the simplicity of music’s internal rhythm. However, when picking his favourite Leonard Cohen song, there was only one track he could land on, the quite wonderful ‘Bird on the Wire’.
Waters noted to the BBC Radio show, Desert Island Discs: “Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan were the two men who allowed us to believe that there was an open door between poetry and song lyrics,” he said. “This song of his, ‘Bird On The Wire’, is so simple, so moving, so brilliant. I love it.”
“It was begun in Greece because there were no wires on the island where I was living until a certain moment,” explained Cohen as he reminisced in 1993 of the track he’d written while staying on the Greek island Hydra. “There were no telephone wires. There were no telephones. There was no electricity. So at a certain point they put in these telephone poles, and you wouldn’t notice them now, but when they first went up, it was about all I did – stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn’t going to be able to escape after all. I wasn’t going to be able to live this 11th-century life that I thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning.”
Like only a poet could, the song grew out of his intent to observe the world in a new way: “Then, of course, I noticed that birds came to the wires and that was how that song began. ‘Like a drunk in a midnight choir,’ that’s also set on the island. Where drinkers, me included, would come up the stairs. There was great tolerance among the people for that because it could be in the middle of the night. You’d see three guys with their arms around each other, stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds. So that image came from the island: ‘Like a drunk in a midnight choir.'”
One very noteworthy point is that Cohen also featured in another man’s list, his fabled friend and foe, David Gilmour. The other half of Pink Floyd also picked out Leonard Cohen as a must-have disc for his collection on the island. However, the guitarist opted for ‘Anthem’ despite having recently played the aforementioned ‘Bird on the Wire’ during lockdown.
Listen to the Leonard Cohen song that Roger Waters couldn’t live without below.
