“Life Of A Ladies’ Man”1 wasn’t the only newspaper Arts section story about Leonard Cohen published on 26 May 2007. Cohen - with a dash of honey, a straight-forward feature story by Neil McCormick in the Telegraph, focuses on the relationship and mutual musical efforts of Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas.
The tale of the creation of Blue Alert is well written, and while the story has previously appeared in other publications, this article includes a number of details that were new to me (although they may well be in print somewhere).
As a bonus, there is timely news about the upcoming Leonard Cohen album:
Cohen has been working on his own album (released later this year), and admirers will be pleased to hear that he has responded to Anjani’s more organic recording methods, abandoning the synths and drum machines of recent years to return to the joys of real instrumentation: “He has picked up the guitar again, and swung around to the idea of bringing in people to play.”
In contrast to Blue Alert, however, the subject matter is unlikely to be the human heart. “No one describes pain, loss, despair and grief as well as Leonard does. But it’s not where his intention is right now. The material he is choosing is much more social commentary-driven, which makes this record kind of a miracle, because without it these songs wouldn’t have been born.”
The Telegraph article can be found at Cohen - with a dash of honey
Footnotes
- See previous post: On Considering Leonard Cohen - A Prose Poem By Sarah Hampson↩
