The song Leonard Cohen wrote about falling for Joni Mitchell: “I know that we are not new”
Falling in love is different every time it happens, varying among the person, the circumstances, or even the time of year, but falling face-first into the endless possibilities of a new love is scary and unpredictable in every condition.
Leonard Cohen knew this, writing all about the transcience and ever-changing countenance of love and longing in his song, ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’, singing, “Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new / In city and in forest they smiled like me and you / But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try, / Your eyes are soft with sorrow / Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.”
In this track, the singer renders himself both a realist and an optimist, noting how one can have many lovers, and love them all fiercely and passionately in their own way, which is not something to worry about but rather is a reminder of the spirit of unity connecting us all in our need to be seen and cherished.
If Cohen was one of the great poetic lovers of his time, he certainly found his match in Joni Mitchell. The pioneering figure of alternative and folk music first met him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, after the media had incessantly drawn comparisons between the two Canadian artists, shortly thereafter spending a month living with Cohen at her Laurel Canyon home.
Mitchell has admitted to writing the song ‘Rainy Night House’ about their intense connection, and the singer has her own bets on which of Cohen’s songs was written for her, which, she believed, stemmed from one of her paintings.
The ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ singer recalled that she “had this painting I did for the Mitchells”, adding, “I was such a misfit in that family, and I did painting, which I showed to Leonard. In this painting, there are these sparrows sitting on a wire. It’s got a hot-pink background, and there are sparrows with peacock tails. There are all these fictitious birds. And there was one for each Mitchell, and one of them was hanging upside down. Guess who? I think that had some input on ‘Bird on the Wire’.”
For someone so strongly encouraged and influenced by his style, curiosity, and lyricism in her early work, it’s telling that Mitchell wanted to give a piece of herself back through the painting. This encounter would’ve been rife with emotional weight, and the perfect kind for Cohen, it would seem, to use in a song about his ex-lover.
Released in 1969 and appearing as the opener for his Songs From a Room, near the song’s close, Cohen recounts that he saw “a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door / She cried to me, ‘Hey, why not ask for more?'”. Given that the relationship between the two musicians was famously short but sweet, this adds weight to Mitchell’s speculation, where they played a dangerous dance together, knowing that they’d forever be tied through their art and tunes.
