The album contains "
Bird on the Wire", one of Cohen's most famous songs. In a 1973 interview with Alastair Pirrie of the
New Musical Express, Cohen stated, "The song is so important to me. It's that one verse where I say that I swear by this song, and by all that I have done wrong, I'll make it all up to thee. In that verse it's a vow that I'll try and redeem everything that's gone wrong. I think I've made it too many times now, but l like to keep renewing it." In the liner notes to the 1975 compilation
The Best of Leonard Cohen, Cohen wrote about the song: "I always begin my concert with this song. It seems to return me to my duties. It was begun in
Greece and finished in a motel in Hollywood around 1969 along with everything else. Some lines were changed in Oregon. I can't seem to get it perfect.
Kris Kristofferson informed me that I had stolen part of the melody from another Nashville writer. He also said that he's putting the first couple of lines on his tombstone, and I'll be hurt if he doesn't." In the 1960s, Cohen lived on the Greek island
Hydra with his girlfriend
Marianne. She has related how she helped him out of a
depression by handing him his guitar, whereupon he began composing "Bird on the Wire" – inspired by a bird sitting on one of Hydra's recently installed phone wires, followed by memories of
wet island nights. Cohen has described "Bird on the Wire" as a simple
country song, and the first recording, by Judy Collins, was indeed done in a country setting. In the book
Songwriters on Songwriting, Cohen speaks at length to Paul Zollo about the song: It was begun in Greece because there were no wires on the island where I was living to a certain moment. There were no telephone wires. There were no telephones. There was no electricity. So at a certain point they put in these telephone poles, and you wouldn't notice them now, but when they first went up, it was about all I did - stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn't going to be able to escape after all. I wasn't going to be able to live this 11th-century life that I thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning. Then, of course, I noticed that birds came to the wires and that was how that song began. 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir,' that's also set on the island. Where drinkers, me included, would come up the stairs. There was great tolerance among the people for that because it could be in the middle of the night. You'd see three guys with their arms around each other, stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds. So that image came from the island: 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir.' In 1988, Cohen explained to John McKenna of
RTÉ in Ireland that "Story of Isaac" was an anti-war protest song but added, "I was careful in that song to try and put it beyond the pure, beyond the simple, anti-war protest, that it also is. Because it says at the end there the man of war the man of peace, the
peacock spreads his deadly fan. In other words it isn't necessarily for war that we're willing to sacrifice each other. We'll get some idea – some magnificent idea – that we're willing to sacrifice each other for; it doesn't necessarily have to involve an opponent or an ideology, but human beings being what they are we're always going to set up people to die for some absurd situation that we define as important." In the same interview, Cohen confirmed that "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" was inspired by a woman he had grown up with in
Montreal: I think that the world throws up certain kinds of figures. Sometime in abundance, sometimes very rarely, and that some of these figures act as archetypes or prototypes for another generation which will manifest these characteristics a lot more easily, maybe a lot more gracefully, but not a lot more heroically. Another twenty years later she would have been just like you know, the hippest girl on the block. But twenty years before she was - there was no reference to her, so in a certain way she was doomed. In sheet music for the album, a song titled "Priests" was included, and although reportedly recorded, it didn't appear on the LP or on any subsequent Cohen record. The song was recorded by
Judy Collins on her 1967 album
Wildflowers, and by
Richie Havens on his 1969 album
Richard P. Havens, 1983. The album cover is a simple black-and-white photo heavily
matted as to almost wash out Cohen's face. The back cover features a black-and-white photo of his
Norwegian girlfriend
Marianne Ihlen sitting at a desk with a typewriter, books and some papers. The picture was taken on the Greek island of
Hydra. Cohen used their seven-year relationship as the basis for several of some his earliest songs, including "
So Long, Marianne", "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", and "
Bird on the Wire". ==Reception==