Longtime readers know that I'm pretty selective when it comes to popular music, but these two songwriters have been favorites of mine for many decades. Now Bob Dylan is a more well-known artist, but I think that Leonard Cohen is just as interesting and important a musician. Plus, way more dark! Yes, compared to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan is a happy-go-lucky minstrel. Cohen was once on a Canadian talk show and when questioned about his supposed pessimism he said, "A pessimist is someone who thinks it is going to rain--I'm soaked to the skin."
Let's compare a couple of songs. Here is "Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan:
Ok, that's a bit dark. But let's listen to "Everybody Knows" by Cohen:
8 comments:
younger me memorized the entirety of both "Desolation Row" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". I can't remember much about either to be able to recite them NOW but that's because of all the other reading and writing I've done.
My two favorite double-albums in the history of rock and pop are Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life and then Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.
"In the room the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo"
"Do I dare to eat a peach and part my hair behind?"
That's about all I remember of the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock! And I'm scared to check to see how much I have misquoted.
My two favorite double albums are Blonde on Blonde and the White Album.
The Hatchet
I think of Eliot's Prufrock as a literary paraphrase of Waldo Emerson's Days.
Bryan, you should remember the mermaids also as they are referenced in Desolation Row.
Right, mermaids! Must reread Eliot sometime soon. After Thucydides, though.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each
I do not think that they will sing to me
Also, completely agree about Leonard Cohen. I think his poetry outclasses Bob Dylan's (and that's saying something). In The Window, for example, there's a perfect description of the human being as a "tangle of matter and ghost" and as "frozen love", and there's the amazing line: "Oh bless the continuous stutter / Of the word being made into flesh"...
One of my more treasured books is a collection of poetry by Leonard Cohen. And I love the first line of the lyric: "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin."
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