The night Leonard Cohen told Bob Dylan a barefaced lie: “The two of them are sitting in a cafe in Paris”
Leonard Cohen stands singular and peerless in music history. No one else could write like he did and really, no one else would. Very few people could dream of matching up to the level of devotion and dedication he gave to his work, stacking up effort over sometimes years upon years, all for the sake of a song. But when Cohen himself came face to face with the one man the world consistently likened him to, a lie slipped out.
Cohen’s career is a unique one. By the time his first track, ‘Suzanne’, was a hit, he still hadn’t really considered becoming a musician. Instead, he’d been busy living and working on the remote island of Hydra, writing novels and poems and truly believing that that was his life’s work, that music was merely a distant fantasy. It wasn’t until Judy Collins covered ‘Suzanne’, a song that only really lived as a poem before, that Cohen thought maybe he could try to make it all work.
But that origin is the key to understanding him and his work. Even though the process of making music is a lot slower than many expect, and timelines for albums and songs are often way longer than the typical listener knows, it’s still nothing in comparison to a novel. The written word not only takes longer, but it demands longer. Novels not only ask for far more time to be put together, spanning over 80,000 words on average, but they also have to be meticulously edited. It could be likened to the mixing and mastering process, or maybe the production process, but it’s different. Editing a book is getting back into the weeds of it and being brave enough to change things that might collapse the whole project and require even more work. The process of writing songs might have elements of that, but if the foundations crumble in the process, it’s only really a couple of verses and a chorus, not an entire narrative arc.f
Cohen was trained in that. With his background being in novels and poems, and in the demand for bold yet careful and always time-consuming editing, he was never afraid to sit with something or impatient about giving it the time it needed.
That’s why the comparisons that often come up between Cohen and other musicians are never quite right, including the connection between Cohen and Bob Dylan that cropped up time and time again in the 1960s when both were leading the folk game. That link stuck around as every move of their careers was compared to the other’s. Both were more than aware of it.
The awareness hung heavy when they met. They were in and out of each other’s orbits their whole careers, but one day, in Paris, they found themselves simply sitting together, talking. It could have been an honest and open moment for the two legends to compare notes and bond as men, rather than public figures. But something in the air demanded something from Cohen; a bold-faced lie.
His son, Adam Cohen, remembered the story, stating, “A lot of people have made the comparison between Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen over the years and there’s some hilarious stories.” He continued, “Like the two of them are sitting in a cafe in Paris and Dylan says to him, ‘How long did it take you to write ‘Hallelujah’?”
This was the moment. Maybe something in the question appeared to Cohen as a test, as if Dylan was sizing him up. Aware that his way of working was unusual in this world, and that ‘Hallelujah’ was the most intense example of that, he lied. Adam Cohen recalled, “And my father completely lied to Dylan and said, ‘Oh you know couple of years.’”
The truth is that ‘Hallelujah’ actually took Cohen around seven years, perhaps even more. Over those years, he was said to write around 80 to 150 verses, taking all that time to write new bits, edit old bits and eventually whittle the song down to the timeless anthem the world knows and loves. It was his biggest labour of love, but for some reason, he was embarrassed for Dylan to know that.
But it’s fine, perhaps Dylan lied right back. Cohen continued, “And then my father returned the favour and said, you know, ‘How long did it take you to write ‘Like a Woman?’’ and Dylan said ‘Fifteen minutes’.” Somehow, that feels more likely to be a lie, too.
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