The “self-indulgent” song Leonard Cohen thought was too crazy to release
Nobody seems to understand the power of music more than Leonard Cohen does. This applies to both its intense nature and the fact that it can be used to make the mundane a bit less so.
Cohen started his career as a poet. He was always transfixed on the words that he wrote, their meaning and how they would connect with others. He was so obsessed with their apparent power that when he was writing, he would go into a fixed state and wouldn’t come out until he had finished. This led to him winding up in the hospital after a stint of writing on the Greek Island of Hydra, where Cohen fasted, barely slept, and spent the majority of his time writing.
“Leonard sat in his room in his house on the hill in Hydra, writing furiously,” recalled Sylvie Simmons when discussing his first time on the island. “He was driven by an overpowering sense of urgency. He had the feeling, he said, of time running out.” After sporadically practising his guitar during this period, when his writing was finished and he had recovered from the aftermath of such devotion towards his work, Cohen thought about putting some of his poems to music.
His career turned a corner at this point, as Cohen was able to make a name for himself as a musician, not just because of his ability with the guitar, but also because of how well Cohen’s poetry fit within music. He wrote songs that tapped into listeners on a very human level, revealing things about himself and those who listened in the process. He also wrote music that was easy to listen to, that people were happy to put on in the background of their lives while they went about their day. Cohen was always accepting of both of these purposes that music had.
“A song operates on so many levels,” he once said. “It operates on the level you just spoke of, where it addresses the heart in its ordeals and its defeats, but it also is useful in getting the dishes done or cleaning the house. It’s also useful as a background to courting.”
Cohen accepted all of these different examples of how music could find its way into the lives of his listeners, and he wrote according to them. He always wanted to make sure that his lyrics were meaningful and accessible, while they might reveal secrets about him and his life, they also showed the listener different parts of themselves. Every word had a purpose, and Cohen wasn’t one to put pen to paper lightly.
It was for these reasons that he was hesitant to release his song ‘Going Home’. It’s a track that his collaborator and producer, Patrick Leonard, thought would work on a commercial level, but Cohen disagreed as he felt the piece was too self-indulgent. When Cohen finally gave it a chance, though, he realised it could work.
“Pat said, ‘This would make a great song’. I said, ‘Are you mad?! This song is a piece of self-indulgent introspective writing that doesn’t deserve to see the light of day,’” Cohen concluded. “Under his prodding, however, I finally began to see there might be a song there.”
