"It's hilarious," Cohen deadpanned, after a pregnant pause. "The banjo can be a funny instrument," he said. "Is the penitence appropriate to God or to man? Who's to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out."Ĭocker also asked about the song Banjo, which uses the image of an instrument floating in the sea. "I'm not sure what that means, to be honest," responded Cohen, to guffaws from the audience. "In another song, Come Healing, there's a line 'the penitential hymn' and it struck me that that could work as a label for a lot of your songs," Cocker persisted. "You know, I don't have that many ideas," jousted Cohen. He said that songwriting involved "perseverance, perspiration, but also a certain kind of grace and illumination."Ĭocker asked that as Cohen's publishing company was called Old Ideas, was it something he'd always wanted to call an album? He persistently rebuffed Cocker's attempts to decode his songwriting, warning him: "We've got to be careful analysing these sacred mechanics because somebody will throw a monkey wrench into the thing and neither of us will ever write a line again." I felt I was operating in more like what Yeats used to say was the 'foul rag and bone shop of the heart'." I never had the sense that I was standing in front of a buffet table with a multitude of choices. "I always felt I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get the song together. "You know, you just work with what you got," said Cohen, after a pause. Now it doesn't really matter one way or the other."Ĭocker said that he had always been impressed with the "intimacy" of Cohen's work. The 77-year-old said that being a songwriter used to be popular with the opposite sex: "It was agreeable to have some kind of a reputation or some kind of list of credentials so you didn't have to start from scratch with every woman you walked into. The inside cover features a drawing, by Cohen, of a naked woman and a skull. Old Ideas proves that Cohen's long-term preoccupations with sex, death and salvation have endured. "I thought it would destroy my whole position and my voice would rise to a soprano." He joked that his aim is to take up smoking again at 80, so if he continues to tour, "I can smoke on the road". "It's what happens when you give up cigarettes, contrary to public opinion," he told Cocker. "Do you think there's a bottom it can get to or can it go all the way?" "We have to mention the voice – its seems to have got even deeper," said Cocker. This particular record invites one to be swept along with it even if you happen to have written it yourself."Ĭohen's tones have become even more sepulchral with age.
But mostly I was wondering if I myself could be swept along with it. He went on to say that he did keep an ear out to see whether he had "ratcheted it up to the right degree of excellence.
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