Leonard Cohen at the BP Orchestra, March 2 1985
RTE 2 (Dublin, Ireland)
Interviewed by BP Fallon

Leonard gave two shows in Dublin the same evening, so the programme probably was conceived around that date.
From bpfallon.com: The BP Fallon Orchestra is the famous radio programme on RTE Radio 2 that ran from 1982 to 1987 and played a big part in BP being awarded The Jacob's Award For Broadcasting. In it's five years, The BPFO featured incisive interviews with everyone from George Harrison to Mick Jagger, Spike Milligan to Quentin Crisp, Leonard Cohen to Pete Townsend, Jerry Lee Lewis to the Pogues...


Transcribed by Paula Jenkins for A Thousand Kisses Deep website



Leonard Cohen (recites »Suzanne«)
...From his lonely wooden tower,
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
He said, All men will be sailors then
until the sea shall free them...

»Suzanne« (Songs Of Leonard Cohen)

BP Fallon Alright folks, there you heard Leonard Cohen and here he is, sitting in the Orchestra pit. Leonard Cohen, you’re very welcome.   Leonard Cohen It’s great to be here.   BP Fallon He says with poetic sincerity. Leonard Cohen. First of all, let’s talk about your work as a poet before you actually started making records. At that point in time, did you think that, did you actually think that you were going to be kind of a vinyl star one day or was this something that happened by default? Leonard Cohen Well, I think everything pretty well happens by accident in a man’s life. »The best laid plans of mice and men.« ...But yeah, I had, I had written several books and... They had been gloriously reviewed but I couldn’t pay my rent and... At about the age of 32, I thought maybe I’d try to become a singer. I had always been singing and my first job was in a country band... But I kind of got this idea, in hindsight it seems to be madness, that I would try to make a living as a singer. I - I’d been playing all my life but... It was only at the age of 32 that I decided to get into it in any sort of professional way.

(c) Alfred Steffen, April 1988 (from his free gallery).

BP Fallon
Were you actually singing country music with the band?

Leonard Cohen
Yes... Well, I had always played country music. My first job, I guess I was about 16 years old, I was in a small country band called the Buckskin Boys and we did church basements and high school dances. Square dances, we’d call off the old traditional square dances.

BP Fallon
Really? And what kind of music was it, I mean, what sort of artists were you doing their work?

Leonard Cohen
Well, we were doing real traditional square dance music... hoedowns and songs like the »Red River Valley«... And we had a caller, you know, they called out the steps.
 
BP Fallon
Do you remember how that goes?
 
Leonard Cohen
I do, but I think it’s a little early in the morning to give it to you.
(Laughter)
 
BP Fallon
OK, alright.
 
Hoedown music plays
 
BP Fallon
There you were, Leonard Cohen the poet, and you decided you want to go and be a singer. Now, what’s the first step, because without sort of being bad mannered about it, some people would suggest that Leonard Cohen has not got the most sort of musical voice for singing.
 
Leonard Cohen
Oh yeah, a lot of people say I don’t know how to sing and... Even more say I don’t know how to play the guitar.

BP Fallon
Really?

Leonard Cohen
But there are other kinds of critics who say that I have the style and that my music is sophisticated. So, somewhere between those two, err, verdicts.
 
BP Fallon
And how did you actually get tied in with the record company first of all, then?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, you know, in the early and middle 60’s there was a kind of break in all the commercial institutions in America and cracks appeared, and I think if those cracks hadn’t appeared and I hadn’t been able to slip in, I would probably never have been heard of. But things opened up at that time. And there was a lot of interest in all kinds of music and there was a man at Columbia Records by the name of John Hammond, who had brought in Aretha Franklin, and Dylan and Billie Holiday. He was supposed to have a fine ear and he came up to my hotel room and he said, OK, Leonard, sing me a couple of songs. So I sang him a couple of songs and he said, You got it, err, here’s your contract, and it was as simple as that. Those sorts of things don’t happen today.
 
BP Fallon
No, well, I mean, it’s much more mechanically now.
 
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, well, the companies only want to hear demos and, and, err, the music is once again in the hands of record companies. Their... their fist is pretty tight these days.
 
BP Fallon
Yes. I mean, talking about the time you signed with John Hammond for CBS, it was very much a period like you say, it was out of the hands of the record companies because the music was actually more organic. It was coming from bands rather than from recording studios.
 
Leonard Cohen
It was coming spontaneously from the people. People were rising up and saying things and, and the companies are not fools and they thought they could cash in on it in some way.
 
BP Fallon
Looking back on that, which I suppose in one way was part of the flower power era, do you think it was like an incredibly naive time? I mean, do you think it has any sort of... base in reality?

Leonard Cohen
Well, I think that the pendulum swings back and forth and that we are going to get periods like that again. It was naive in the sense that people thought that just on the basis of talent and heart that they could speak out. People are a little more cynical about the whole process now. But there were a lot of very cynical and sophisticated people ready to use the naiveté that was abundant.
 
BP Fallon
Do you think it was kind of really castrated by the music industry?
 
Leonard Cohen
I think it had its own organic time and that times change. I also think that drugs helped wipe it out and the Vietnam War helped wipe it out.
 
BP Fallon
Let’s talk about when Judy Collins covered »Suzanne«, because in a kind of way, that really broadened it very much for you, didn’t it?
 
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, that was a very big opening for me. I had met Judy Collins in New York through a mutual friend. I hadn’t known about what was going on in New York because I had been living on this little island in Greece. I didn’t know about Dylan and Joan Baez and Judy Collins. I had been listening to a lot of country music on the Armed Forces Radio station and I didn’t know that this great renaissance was taking place. So... When I came to New York, I suddenly heard all these great singers around and I loved Judy Collins’ voice and we met and I sang her a couple of songs and she said, Yeah, they are good, you know, if you ever come up with anything that you think might be good for me, give me a call. And that’s exactly what I did. I phoned her from Montreal and I sang her »Suzanne« over the telephone and she said, I love it. I am in the studio right now, I am gonna do it right away. Get me the chords. And so I came down to New York and gave her the song and she recorded it and that was a great, that was a great help to me, and she was a great help to me all the way along.
 
»Suzanne« (Judy Collins)
 
BP Fallon
When you, when you kind of came into the public eye, it seemed in a way from the outside that you were very much part of some sort of circle of folk, I mean, like, you mentioned Bob Dylan and you said you had never heard of him and everything, but is this all sort of fantasy or did, did you kind of hang out for want of a better description with folk like that?
 
Leonard Cohen
No, I never really made the rounds, err, on that level... I don’t know why I just, I guess, I made most of my friends in school and I live in the same place that I grew up in. So I didn’t have any great desire to change my actual way of living, although I have met great singers along the road and I have become friendly with some of them or another. But I don’t think any of them really has a glittering circle. I think if anybody is doing really good work, they’ve got to stay in contact with their own roots.
 
BP Fallon
And you do --- Do you still live the same life style then, that you would have done beforehand, I mean, in other words, do you live up in Canada and do you sit there and write, I mean, is it very much the poet when you are off the road?

Leonard Cohen
I have had pretty much the same kind of life... It is just completely a personal choice. I have always lived in the same kind of little houses and the same kind of rooms. When I am on the road, of course, I am staying in some of these pretty hotels. (Laughter) They aren’t, they aren’t really my choice but, yeah, my, my actual operation of my life hasn’t changed much at all, no.
 
BP Fallon
Let’s talk, Leonard Cohen, here in the Orchestra pit, let’s talk about your singing, because it has been suggested by some people that you are not necessarily, in traditional terms anyway, in the sort of normal way people would view a singer that you don’t actually fit into that.
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, you know, you... You can only sing with the voice that you have. I know my voice is limited, but I know that it is also capable of conveying something that is true and I’ve always just been interested in the kind of singer that lays out a scene that tells you where he is and what he is feeling and that’s why I think that anybody can be a singer. I like old singers too. I remember hearing Alberta Hunter when she was about 82 and I wept in every one of her sets, it was just to hear somebody, you know, from that perspective of 82 years, she knew something about the world.
 
»Alberta (Let Your Hair Hang Low)«

Leonard Cohen Oh, so, I am not so interested in, you know, how finely pitched a voice is. I am more interested in where it comes from.   BP Fallon Same as me actually.   Leonard Cohen Yeah.   BP Fallon It should be hard, not technique.   Leonard Cohen Yeah, that’s the way I feel. I mean, you pick up a few tricks of the trade on the way, and there is something very beautiful about a highly trained voice or even a voice like Judy Collins, which... Or, or Jennifer Warnes which, you know, has the music in it. They can sing anything and that kind of singer I love too, but there is another tradition which I think I fit into. Guys just speaking about the way things are for them.

In Granada, 1985. Courtesy of Speaking Cohen website.

BP Fallon
So, I mean, when you first maybe read a review or something and it said this chap is there droning, were you hurt or were you uptight or did you say, well, what the hell anyway. Or what?

Leonard Cohen
Well, no, I don’t think I’ve ever been really hurt by a review. Of course, you’d prefer to be praised rather than put down but at this stage, you know, 25 years later, I read a review from the point of view of a critic. I mean, I read a review to see if the guy knows how to write and how just he is, and if he is saying the truth, or if he is just waiting like a thug, with a --- (first track ends here at 19:27)

BP Fallon
In un-kinder moments as a critic, I have called it »blood in the bath music«.
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, the best review I ever got in that, in that realm, I think, there was a review after, err, an English concert I had done. They said, err, Leonard Cohen is a boring old drone and should go the fuck back to Canada where he belongs. After that anything is kind.
(Laughter)
 
BP Fallon
Where was that then?
 
Leonard Cohen
I think it was, it was one of the British newspapers, like... Melody Maker... I think it was.

BP Fallon
It’s not exactly praise, is it?
 
Leonard Cohen
No.
(Laughter)
 
BP Fallon
And do you listen, for instance, I mean, it seems to me there’s a band who in terms of their appeal are very much in the ground that you used to be when, in the early times that we were talking about. The Smiths – are you familiar with them for instance?

Leonard Cohen
Somebody has spoken to me about them but I don’t know their work. But I know there are a lot of young singers who are connecting with me these days. I think just for those reasons, just because they, err, they see music in a different way. They don’t see it as a factory product. They see it as something that has got to stand for the truth of the heart and Ian McCulloch is a man like that... Others, there are many of them.
 
BP Fallon
Do you think your music is depressing?
 
Leonard Cohen
I don’t think it is depressing. I mean, sometimes a song doesn’t work and it is legitimate to say that’s a lousy song and it turns me off, err, and I think, you know, if you feel like dancing then my stuff is not the stuff to listen to. But there are other moods that we inhabit and... You know, I don’t get a lot of mail but I get some and the mail always says the opposite, those letters say, you know, you got me through the night, you got me out of the depression. So, you know, if you... If you, you know, got an appetite for reggae, which I do also, you know, then you don’t really want to put on one of my records.
 
»Sisters Of Mercy« (Songs Of Leonard Cohen)

BP Fallon
I mean, the thing about Leonard Cohen, sort of, the sort of High Priest Guru of Bed-Sit Anxiety, I mean, does that sound waffle to you or can you relate to that or what?
 
Leonard Cohen
(Sighs.) You know, everybody has experienced loneliness and it’s one of the things that we... People suffer and, err, there’s always going to be a tradition of song that tries to name that kind of sorrow and... Maybe some of my songs are in that tradition. But I think it’s a legitimate tradition, I think it’s really, those songs are really useable. I am not just talking about my own, you know. There are times when you don’t want to hear somebody rejoicing about everything if you don’t feel that way, but if somebody can name a certain kind of sorrow that you yourself are experiencing, that can be very valuable to you.
 
BP Fallon
Do you think it is sort of a pain shared and therefore lessened?
 
Leonard Cohen
It is something that its name becomes... dissolves in some way... And, you know, I am not the first person to observe that this world is filled with sorrow and that we are living in a kind of butcher shop and, err, there is always going to be some kinds of singers who have, that, that recognition in their voices and in their text.
 
BP Fallon
Let’s change tack now, Leonard Cohen here in the pit, and talk about you as, I suppose as a pin-up actually, and, and sort of, the sort of the romantic chap who, it seems, is, well, part of the legend is chased by women and everything like that.
 

Leonard Cohen and Dominique Issermann at Montreal Film Festival, 1985.
(c) Lois Siegel


Leonard Cohen
Well, I’m a bit over the hill these days...

BP Fallon
How old are you now?

Leonard Cohen
Fifty. I mean, I am not the first man also that has been interested in women, and the nature of song is about the heart and the heart is always out of control and, err, cooking like shish kebab in the breast and, err, nobody ever masters it, and we are always in some little way and, sometimes in deep ways, falling in and out of love. So of course, your work is going to be about that, if it is going to be about the human situation.
 
BP Fallon
But do you get a lot of ladies running after you?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, I don’t think any more than Tony Bennett.
(Laughter)
 
BP Fallon
But, I mean, you’re not, really, I mean, come on, you’re not a Tony Bennett type chap, are you? Or are you?
 
Leonard Cohen
(Silence) I think that... You know, compared to the kind of attention that an athlete gets or a real superstar, err, in music today, that, you know, the modest appreciation that some womenfolk show to me is, you know, on a very small degree.
 
BP Fallon
What type of mail do you get, I mean, do you get, people sort of opening their heart to you?
 
Leonard Cohen
I do get some mail that is really touching, you know, some mail that is so intimate and personal that I wouldn’t even dare to answer it because it would involve you in a correspondence with a spirit that... that you couldn’t possibly help.
 
BP Fallon
Because Morrissey of the Smiths, the group I mentioned to you, said that he gets a lot of mail and that he is actually nervous of answering it because of the responsibility then that he is getting involved in.
 
Leonard Cohen
Yeah. I think it’s very tricky to enter into too intimate circumstances with, with somebody who isn’t really organically in your life. I have had, I won’t say friendships, but certainly acquaintances, acquaintanceships that have formed through mail but... It’s a tricky thing to get into.
 
BP Fallon
Let’s talk about two of your record producers, the first one Bob Johnston who, I suppose, made his name really with Bob Dylan.
 
Leonard Cohen
And Johnny Cash.
 
BP Fallon
And Johnny Cash. What kind of chap is he?
 
Leonard Cohen
Oh, he’s a great novelistic figure, bigger than life. His great genius was just to let it happen in the studio. He rarely interfered with anything. He chose artists that were really good and usually went along with the artist’s decisions about things. It was the atmosphere in the studios that he created that was the mark of his excellence.
 
BP Fallon
And how would he do that, I mean, maybe, would you be kind enough, how did it work with him?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, he just –-- He had the kind of... Has, I don’t know why I am speaking of him in the past, but he’s the kind of man, that’s always, he’s filled with generosity and he’s always up. I don’t know what his interior predicament is, but when he is working in the studio, he looks like the happiest guy in the world. That he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but right there, and he turns everyone on that way. So that you feel good about working and if you make a mistake or if you blow it or if you need 30 takes instead of one, he’s just as happy in the 30th take as in the 1st. So, he creates that kind of atmosphere of freedom and generosity that makes it easier to work.

BP Fallon
And is very much, the sort of, what’s the thing you said, is it rolling bag? Does he actually record more than produce?

Leonard Cohen
He, err, yeah, he, he records but I mean, it’s a subtle thing about what a producer is. You know, a producer is someone who gets the product and he knows how to do that and it’s just letting it roll. Yeah, a lot of it is that.
 
BP Fallon
What’s the favourite track you did with him?
 
Leonard Cohen
I like »Nancy« very much, I remember that very well. You know, I made Bob play organ. He’s not really a keyboard player but I liked the way he plays. He’d just play one note at a time and sustain it for four bars... And he played on »Nancy« and he toured with me, too.  Actually, we have a little film of him falling asleep at the organ with his finger on one note. But, it was the right note.
(Laughter)
 
»Nancy« (Live Songs)
 
BP Fallon
Let’s talk, Leonard Cohen, about another record producer, a gentleman more famous, I suppose, not necessarily with more notoriety, well maybe actually, well, yes actually, Phil Spector. It would seem on the surface that Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector are really like chalk and cheese.
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, I thought my instincts were right in wanting to work with Phil. The record didn’t come out exactly as I wanted, although I am feeling a lot more tender about it now than I did when it first came out... I have always loved his music and my admiration for him is... huge, and when we were writing the songs together, it went very well. It was a... he worked in the same way that I work; in other words, like he’d be willing to work up to six o’clock in the morning getting something right. And we wrote well together. When we got into the studio, it was a different kettle of fish.
 
BP Fallon
But before we come to the studio, would you be kind enough to explain how you sit down with a mercurial chap like that and sort of get something created?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, Phil’s a kind of recluse and we had a mutual friend and he came to a concert that I gave at the Troubadour, I think. It was in Los Angeles and... He rarely went out and he came up to me after the concert and told me that he really liked the music. It never occurred to me to work with Phil Spector, and, he said, you know, come on back to the house. I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again, if you wanna hear it.
 
BP Fallon
Yes.
 
Leonard Cohen
So, we went back to his house; and he locked the doors of his house, because he likes to be in control of whether his guests can leave or not. [laughter] And... the air conditioning was about 26 degrees. It was freezing in there, and I couldn’t leave. So I said, Listen, Phil, since you have locked me in here and it’s freezing, let’s do something. So I said, let’s play.
 
BP Fallon
Did you know he had locked you in, I mean, does he ---
 
Leonard Cohen
Oh yes. (Laughs) Well, you know, I said it’s time to go now Phil, and he said don’t go, you know, and I thought this was just an aspect of his hospitality. Finally, as the hours wore on I said, Well Phil, I’m leaving now whether you like it or not, and I walked towards the door and it was locked. He also has bodyguards around everywhere... armed. So it’s a little tricky the atmosphere, sometimes.

BP Fallon
Is he a flip out?

Leonard Cohen
Did I ---

BP Fallon
No, is he a kinda of, err...

Leonard Cohen
Is he a flip out? (Sigh) Well, it’s hard to say, you know, how much of it is a put-on. It’s hard to say how much of it is authentic, and how much of it is a kind of a delirious cover story for himself. I mean, I think every man of talent and in his case of genius, you know, develops some kind of cover story, under which they can operate. Otherwise, it’s just impossible. And he has the cover story of a madman; and I don’t think he is. But, he is pretty close from time to time.
 
BP Fallon
What’s the favourite track that he did with you?
 
Leonard Cohen
I like all the songs... I think I like »Memories« the best on that record.

»Memories« (Death Of A Ladies’ Man)
 
BP Fallon
Shades of Leonard Cohen and »Memories« with a touch of Uncle Phil, Phil Spector. When you were growing up, were you aware of Phil Spector records, I mean, the Ronettes and the Crystals.
 
Leonard Cohen
Oh, yes... I listened to those, to those records all the time. Well, I... There was a jukebox in Montreal in an old restaurant that doesn’t exist any more, called the Cadillac, that stayed open all night; and I used to sit beside that jukebox, and a lot of Phil’s stuff was on it, and I did a lot of writing in that restaurant.
 
BP Fallon
What other stuff was on the jukebox?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well ---
 
BP Fallon
Because, I mean, the picture, the picture of Leonard Cohen, sitting by a jukebox shoveling in dimes, seems a bit incongruous to how we imagine Mr. Cohen.
 
Leonard Cohen
It was a great restaurant. I am sorry it disappeared. It was, it was a real funky restaurant, but it had white tablecloths; I don’t know why. (Laughs) And a really good jukebox. Well, it changed over the years. They had good country songs on it, too, by people like George Jones, and they had Platters, and they had... »Unchained Melody« was a song that I used to listen to a lot on that.
 

BP Fallon Which version?   Leonard Cohen ...   BP Fallon The Righteous Brothers?   Leonard Cohen The Righteous Brothers, right.   BP Fallon Interesting, here it is.   Leonard Cohen Oh, that’s a good one.   »Unchained Melody« (performed by Righteous Brothers)   BP Fallon When you were making the album Death Of A Ladies’ Man, how did... how did the involvement come along, how did the involvement happen, with Dylan? Bob Dylan?

(c) Sharon Weisz, 1988. Courtesy of Speaking Cohen website.

Leonard Cohen
Well... we were in the studio, and Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan just dropped over. I think they knew Phil Spector; and I knew, also, I knew Allen Ginsberg and Dylan. I had met them before.

BP Fallon
Do you want to explain who Allen Ginsberg is for people who may not know?
 
Leonard Cohen
Allen Ginsberg is probably the greatest poet writing in the United States today. He was a terrific influence on Dylan, and he kind of turned poetry around in America, in the late 50s. He was known, then, as a beatnik poet, and he was a buddy of Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso, and between the three of them, there were three or four of them, they really opened the window and let the fresh air into poetry.
 
BP Fallon
Do you want to explain the kind of things he wrote?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, he wrote, he wrote long lines in the style of Walt Whitman. Long lines that just came right out of the heart. He would sing like, I have seen the best minds of my generation go mad, I want to put my queer shoulder to the wheel, America are you listening...
(tape goes blank for a couple of seconds)

BP Fallon
He, Allen Ginsberg, appeared with Bob Dylan?

Leonard Cohen
Yeah, they just dropped into the studio... to say hello and we were in the middle of this song, which is the one I like least on the album.
 
BP Fallon
Which is what?
 
Leonard Cohen
»Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On«. Because that line I never liked very much, and it was just one line in a song, and Phil decided, when he was writing the music, to make that into the chorus; and I never thought we would keep that track. Anyhow, err, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan dropped into the studio, and they kind of wandered onto the floor, and we kind of corralled them around the microphone for the chorus.
 
BP Fallon
But, you don’t like it?
 
Leonard Cohen
No, I don’t like... I don’t like; part of the lyric is OK and if that, just one line, was there in the lyric, it would be OK, but to make the emphasis on that line, I think, puts the song into a place it was never designed to go.
(»Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On« plays in the background)
 
BP Fallon
Before we go into the track, maybe you would lyrically lead us into it?
 
Leonard Cohen
I don’t remember it. I was born in a beauty salon, my mother was a dresser of hair. My father – I don’t remember how it goes.
 
BP Fallon
Well, here it is, anyway.

»Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On« (Death Of A Ladies’ Man)

BP Fallon
Do you remember, actually, when you started writing poems?
 
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, I have a kind of... I have a kind of recollection of when it was.
 
BP Fallon
What happened?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, the first time I wrote was after my father died. I was nine years old and, err, after his funeral, I went up into his closet. I don’t know why I did this. And, I took... I took a bow tie that he had hanging there, and I cut it open. And, I wrote something on it, on a piece of paper, and I put it into this little, silk envelope, and put it into the garden, in the back of the house. I think that was the first time that I felt that the only way that I could deal with my emotion was to write something down.

BP Fallon
Do you remember what you wrote?
 
Leonard Cohen
I do, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say it.
 
BP Fallon
It’s too personal?
 
Leonard Cohen
Yeah.
 
BP Fallon
OK. Do you remember? I mean, looking back on that; I mean, what age were you, at this point, when you started writing poems?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, then, about the age of 15. 14 or 15. The beauty of the city; that’s Montreal, and the beauty of women. Some combination of those two things drove me into the dismal practice.
(Laughter)
 
BP Fallon
Would you like to recite for us one of your early works?
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, there’s one poem that I remember. It’s a very, very short poem. It goes like this:

Leonard Cohen (recites »For Anne«)
With Annie gone,
whose eyes compare
with the morning sun?

Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she’s gone.

BP Fallon
So, Leonard Cohen, 1985. Do you, do you view the whole sort of shmock’n’roll business with a jaundiced eye?

Leonard Cohen
Well, I view any business with a certain kind of jaundiced eye. Because the bottom line is that these people are out to maximise their profits and don’t really care too much, with some exceptions, but more or less don’t care too much about anything but the bottom line. But, you know, even though the business of the record companies is business... There is good wine in every generation and... There is always going to be a man or a woman and a singer is going to stand up and talk from the heart and nobody can stop that.
 
BP Fallon
Alright, Leonard Cohen, for being in the Orchestra. Let’s chose a final track of the new album. What’s the one you like the best and maybe before we play it you would be kind enough to actually explain it a little bit.
 
Leonard Cohen
Well, this is a song called »The Law« and the chorus is There is a law, there is an arm, there is a hand. And it’s got something to do with the fact that there are consequences to our activities and that even though we are living in an age when guilt is getting very bad press and even regarded as a disease, it is still is the only way that we know we have made a mistake... It’s some other tact.

BP Fallon
Right. Thank you very much, Leonard Cohen.

Leonard Cohen
Thank you.

»The Law« (Various Positions)
 
BP Fallon
Well, thanks very much to Leonard Cohen for talking to us in the Orchestra and stick around ‘cos we are going to be back after the news but right now, broadcasting on AM and FM stereo nationwide, this is Radio Two and...

Transcribed in April 2005.
Special thanks to Marie Mazur for corrections (again!:-) - connect to her site Speaking Cohen.
Very special thanks to Jim Devlin for identifying the interviewer and the date!
And very very special thanks to Elizabeth for further corrections and feedback!
Transcribed and reprinted with Leonard Cohen’s permission. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the photographs but some were unreachable. We’d be grateful if the authors concerned would contact us.


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