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Un album che scava nelle profondità dell’animo umano, che si insinua nei meandri della psiche umana. Un uomo torturato dalle ansie esistenziali si mette a nudo attraverso otto brani uno più struggente e emotivo dell’altro. Leonard Cohen, nativo di Montreal, Canada, è uno di quei pochi cantautori che riescono a conquistare il cuore e la mente dell’ascoltatore, uno di quei pochi maestri del folk della generazione post-bellica che è riuscito ad interpretare il proprio malessere interiore e renderlo universale tramite la canonica forma canzone. Da abile chansonnier, Cohen è stato capace di conciliare musica e poesia in un mix incredibilmente vero e autentico, personale e mai banale, nonostante ciò di cui parla sia condiviso su vasta scala, nonostante ciò che dice sia ciò che molta gente vive. La forza del cantautore di origini ebraiche (di religione ebraica, poiché la madre in realtà era lituana e il padre polacco) sta nel tentare (e nel riuscire) di (a) esorcizzare il suo male intrinseco, regalando anche al mondo della toccante e pura poesia, mite e genuino lirismo.
Dopo l’esordio discografico che prende il nome di “Songs of Leonard Cohen”, super acclamato lavoro folk elevato a pietra miliare, e dopo un album sulla falsa riga del primo, Cohen pubblica, il 19 marzo del 1971, un long playing totalmente diverso: "Songs of Love and Hate". Una stupenda copertina in cui Leonard sorride su sfondo nero, come se volesse mettere in risalto il contrasto tra luce e ombra, e un retrocopertina che presenta una didascalia che dice “Loro hanno rinchiuso un uomo che voleva conquistare il mondo, gli stupidi, hanno rinchiuso l’uomo sbagliato” fanno da cornice a questo capolavoro della musica folk d’autore destinato all’immortalità “in saecula saeculorum”.
Cohen lascia poco spazio all’allegria: solo nel brano che chiude il lato A, “Diamonds in the Mine”, egli si concede alla goliardia canora accompagnato da un coro femminile. Eppure il testo della canzone in questione non lascia trapelare alcun segno di positività: attraverso un linguaggio crudo, lo chansonnier canadese indirizza una feroce critica a coloro che permettono l’aborto (i dottori), e a quelle madri che decidono di rinunciare al frutto del loro amplesso, o che in certi casi lasciano a degli uomini senza scrupoli, i loro virili compagni, il potere di eliminare il “figlio non nato”. I testi delle altre composizioni non sono da meno: dalla deprimente e monocorde “Avalanche”, una delle più belle creazioni musicali di Leonard, della quale Nick Cave, tredici anni dopo, farà una cover nel suo esordio discografico, “From Her To Eternity”, si passa alla malinconica “Famous Blue Raincoat” in cui l’autore parla del tradimento della sua donna per il fratello di lui (“E cosa posso dirti, fratello mio, mio assassino? Cosa potrei mai dirti? Suppongo che mi manchi, suppongo che ti perdono, sono lieto che tu abbia preso il mio posto. Se mai verrai qui, per Jane o per me il tuo nemico starà dormendo, e la sua donna sarà libera”). Per non parlare della attanagliante e angosciosa “Dress Rehearsal Rag”, e della serrafila dedicata alla figura eroica di Giovanna D’Arco (“Joan D’Arc”), citata anche in “Last Year’s Man”. Tolta “Love Calls You By Your Name” nell’album trova spazio anche un pezzo live (Isola di Wight, 31 agosto 1970), “Sing Another Song, Boys” che riesce ulteriormente a impressionare l’ascoltatore. Fabrizio De André, lo chansonnier di casa nostra, ha fatto di “Joan of Arc” e “Famous Blue Raincoat” delle cover: il primo titolo è tradotto letteralmente, il secondo muta in “La Famosa Volpe Blu” spostando l’attenzione sulla protagonista femminile.
“Songs of Love and Hate” rappresenta uno step decisivo nella carriera dell’artista canadese, un salto di qualità rispetto al passato. Da ascoltare una, due, infinite volte: non stanca mai. Un album da amare.
Elenco tracce testi samples e video
01 Avalanche (05:01)
Well I stepped into an avalanche,
it covered up my soul;
when I am not this hunchback that you see,
I sleep beneath the golden hill.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn, learn to serve me well.
You strike my side by accident
as you go down for your gold.
The cripple here that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold;
he does not ask for your company,
not at the centre, the centre of the world.
When I am on a pedestal,
you did not raise me there.
Your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare.
I myself am the pedestal
for this ugly hump at which you stare.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn what makes me kind;
the crumbs of love that you offer me,
they're the crumbs I've left behind.
Your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound.
I have begun to long for you,
I who have no greed;
I have begun to ask for you,
I who have no need.
You say you've gone away from me,
but I can feel you when you breathe.
Do not dress in those rags for me,
I know you are not poor;
you don't love me quite so fiercely now
when you know that you are not sure,
it is your turn, beloved,
it is your flesh that I wear.
03 Dress Rehearsal Rag (06:05)
Four o'clock in the afternoon
and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now,
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?
There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?
Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?
You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.
06 Famous Blue Raincoat (05:10)
It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --
She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Sincerely L. Cohen
08 Joan of Arc (06:21)
Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, "I'm tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite."
Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.
"And who are you?" she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.
"Why, I'm fire," he replied,
"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."
"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?
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Altre recensioni
Di Grasshopper
Stanare i fantasmi dalla mente umana, costringerli a lasciare i loro nascondigli più oscuri per uscire allo scoperto.
Con Leonard Cohen ne vale sempre la pena.
