When He Speaks Like This You Don’t Know What He’s After: Last Thoughts On Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016.

Leonard Cohen is dead.

He was one of those rare songwriters—like Bob Dylan, like Neil Young, like Joni Mitchell—who has been around so long we that we have long since taken him for granted; he keeps active, keeps touring, keeps surprising us with new twists and turns to his career.

But he was 82.

Older than Elvis would have been, older than Jerry Lee Lewis is now. He is easily the biggest pop legend to have begun his career at the most advanced age. In a music world of teenagers and young prodigies, Leonard Cohen released his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, when he was all of 33 years old. If he was Jesus, it was the year he would have been crucified.

On the first and most famous song on the album, “Suzanne,” he addresses Jesus directly, walking across the water, becoming certain only drowning men could see him, and saying that “all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them.” Cohen then describes Jesus as “almost human.”

This was 1967. People were simply not writing songs like this. Everything was about Sgt. Pepper’s band and Jimi Hendrix’s various experiences, or, if you were lucky (or just hip), The Velvet Underground’s postmodern menace. Only Bob Dylan was hiding out in the basement, but by the end of the year, even he had hired Gordon Lightfoot’s band.

Leonard Cohen clearly borrowed from Dylan—the deadpan voice and folk arrangements are unimaginable without Bob paving the way—and yet he went beyond him. Where Dylan always wanted to be an accomplished writer, Leonard Cohen already was; he was an accomplished novelist before Songs was released. It would be like if John Updike walked away from his books to become a country-rock icon.

And like the greatest modern songwriters, many of Leonard Cohen’s songs are best known by others who put them across in bigger ways. Judy Collins’ “Suzanne” put him on the map, while Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” remains the definitive reading of that beautiful, fragile masterpiece.

And yet, for me, the deepest, darkest, greatest song of all is “The Stranger Song.”

Like his finest work, it mixed the sacred with the profane, the sacrament with the seediness. I’ve listened to it countless times, yet I’m still not entirely sure what it’s about. It’s about love, mystery, mysticism, shelter, dealers, deceit, and fate, but I can’t even figure out if it’s about two people, three people, or an entire parade of people. Yet lines stick out that work despite their seeming pretentions: “He was just some Joseph looking for a manger,” goes one part; “It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,” goes another.

And then, at yet another part are among the most fully-realized and sophisticated lyrics I’ve ever encountered in a pop song:

And while he talks his dreams to sleep

You notice there’s a highway

That is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.

It sounds like a ghost story and looks like a de Chirico painting.

I first got my copy of Songs when I worked in a used record store; it was un-remastered and unremarkable looking, the way those original Columbia CD issues were and I doubt I paid more than five bucks for it.

At the time I knew a girl who was a poet and also appreciated the album. We would celebrate the macabre world it conjured by improvising to each other in deadpan new Cohen “lyrics,” which basically consisted of stringing together images of roads, sex, and New Testament imagery. Like a Leonard Cohen song, she had a dark mysteriousness about her, and a sexiness too.

Years later, I learned that she tried to killed herself and was only saved when her boyfriend and father broke down her door.

And yet, Leonard Cohen had long since beaten me to the epiphany, sung as obvious as though he was a blind man reciting a dog-eared hotel room Bible: “It is you my love, you who are the stranger.”

And this is just one line of one song.

And Leonard Cohen wrote hundreds of songs with thousands of lines.

And I can only imagine the scores of places each one could take us, through his own vision as an artist and through our own experiences as listeners.

And now that voice has been silenced, and we pause to reflect, as we should.

And it comes to you, he never was a stranger.

Washington 2014 (Seen The Lights Go On For Billy): The Gershwin Prize Concert.

It was a pretty good night for a Wednesday & Justice Sotomayor gave him a smile.

I love Billy Joel.

Still, when I first heard he had won the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize For Popular Song, I was a bit skeptical--especially when, in Librarian of Congress Dr. James H. Billington's initial press release that discussed the quality of his songs, all but one were from Joel's 1977 commercial breakthrough The Stranger. (The LOC's subsequent statements about the Joel's songwriting have included a wider range of songs.)

But the implications remained--many of Joel's signature songs like "Just The Way You Are," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Only The Good Die Young," "She's Always A Woman," & "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," were from this one album. Sure, he had other great songs, but the Gershwin Award? I remained skeptical.

Well, after spending a week straight listening to nothing but Billy Joel, I had the honor last night of attending the ceremony at the DAR Constitution Hall in downtown Washington, D.C.

It was a very D.C. show--everyone was in their Paul Simon bow-ties (the late Illinois senator, not the former Garfunkel partner who won the first Gershwin Award) or in their Hillary pantsuits, except for the older ladies, who were dressed like Madeleine Albright. Flanking Billy Joel in his box seat were Dr. Billington & Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the latter of whom received the most applause after the Piano Man of honor himself.

It was a night to celebrate Billy Joel, & to do so, they had a revolving door of performing artists to demonstrate the versatility & worth of his material, which gave me something to do while I tried to not be distracted by the fact that they were all Columbia/Sony/BMG label-mates with Joel. (The sole exception was Michael Feinstein, who didn't perform a full song himself & was there in part as a member of the Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board.)

Some fared better than others.

Boyz II Men opened the show with a rousing rendition of Joel's doo-wop revival hit "For The Longest Time" (the original of which featured Joel doing all 14 vocal parts). Leann Rimes reminded everyone why she once beat out Britney Spears & Christina Aguliera for Best New Artist at the Grammys when she belted out "Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)"--& also demonstrated that the otherwise marginalized late-period Billy Joel song deserves a reappraisal. Former lead Dixie Chick Natalie Maines (A.K.A. The One Who Was Embarrassed By Bush) switched the genders around on "She's Got A Way" & reinvented it as lovely country tune, finding the folk song hidden inside of it that its simple structure had always implied was there.

Meanwhile, Josh Groban proved that he is a talented singer but that even the most delicate Billy Joel material (in this case, "She's Always A Woman") isn't best suited for a classical voice. Gavin DeGraw did a fine-but-ultimately-forgettable romp through "It's Still Rock & Roll To Me," the greatest song to ever mock New Wave while sonically embracing it. (It was also Joel's first #1 hit.) The only real disaster was John Mellencamp's case for Joel as a protest singer, with an acoustic version of "Allentown" that sounded like a misguided outtake from Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' LP. Mellencamp played it loose & understated, with an accompanying guitarist who never seemed to lock in with what he was doing. Ultimately, the punchy melody that drives the original was lost in a sea of well-meaning but confused rasping & strumming.

The only person to receive a standing ovation from this opening set was Tony Bennett, who closed with a perfect take on "New York State Of Mind." Here was a song that was written & conceived for a lounge/jazz singer like Bennett--& he sang it like the old-school New Yorker that he is, mixing the jazz, pop, & perhaps, a touch of rock. Somewhere, the Gershwin Brothers were smiling.

But all of this combined proved to be merely a flicker before Joel came out & burned the place down. He played his songs so thoroughly & theatrically, I was shocked to realize afterwards that his set was a mere 4 songs. He opened with "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," riding the driving verses into the thrashing pre-chorus with such flair that it made you forget the entire evening of music that had come before it. He then played "Vienna," which for my money is the finest song he has ever written--opening & closing with a lilting cabaret figure, he builds the melody up & brings it down with a promise of escape couched in words of pragmatism. "Dream on," he sang to the newly-minted Gershwin Prize facing him on his piano, "but don't imagine they'll all come true." Well, most of the time anyway.

Joel next unleashed "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)," an apocalyptic tale of a post-future New York City that was the highlight of the night. Originally released in 1976, it took on a new significance a quarter century later, when it came eerily close to prophecy. It is a song about the Brooklyn bridges blowing, the Harlem churches burning, & the mighty Manhattan skyline falling. But it is an old man's tale, shrouded in mystery & memory; for all of the song's chaos & destruction, its key words seem to be: "There are not many who remember--they say a handful still survive." It could be sung by the few survivors of the PS General Slocum steamship disaster of 1904 who were still alive to see the Twin Towers fall.

Billy Joel closed his small set with "You May Be Right," the lead single (& a Top 10 hit) from 1980's Glass Houses, the most rocking album he would ever release. It is the best of his "angry young man" songs, a song of defiance that added up to more than the huffing & puffing its lyrics implied. This is a testament to the song's crashing, bashing music, which revels in the feeling of simple, stupid rebellion. Which only makes sense--isn't this night ultimately all about the music in the first place?

With the thrashing bookends of "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" & "You May Be Right," Joel made his case for being a rocker, even when his reputation might imply otherwise. If the night had ended there, it would've been spectacular, but of course it didn't--there was still the obligatory "Piano Man" encore, which featured the ensemble joining in. Early reviews have called it the highlight of the evening, but they must've not been listening. From my seat, the whole thing seemed ad-hoc & ill-conceived (Kevin Spacey gets to sing more of the song than Billy Joel?! Boyz II Men & Tony Bennett don't get any feature spots in it at all?! Mellencamp didn't even bother to show up?!), with its finest moments--a Boy II Man waltzing with himself, Groban & DeGraw swaying like the bar patrons they sing about, Rimes acting like a lovable kook--only speaking to how dispersed the performance was.

The show deserved a better ending, & had they let Joel close it by himself, it would've gotten it.

The whole thing airs on PBS on January 2, 2015, at 9:00 PM, so you can judge for yourself. Presumably there will also be the prerecorded congrats (from Streisand, McCartney, & James Taylor), the video interview segments with Joel (always interesting, if produced in a bizarrely shoddy manner), & the dance numbers from his Broadway musical (which might as well feature Eva Trapp dancing alone--despite all those around her, you won't be able to take your eyes off of her).

Once the show had ended & I was tallying up the full setlist when I got home, I was struck by the small number of actual major Billy Joel hits that got played. Aside from "It's Still Rock & Roll To Me," neither of his other #1 hits--"Tell Her About It" or "We Didn't Start The Fire"--were to be heard. He also didn't play anything from his quartet of #3 hits: "Just The Way You Are" (except for a tease bit he did about its opening riff), "River Of Dreams" (it was played as part of a prerecorded medley for the dancers), "Uptown Girl," & "My Life" (the latter of which was the biggest oversight of the evening). Come to think of it, of his 13 Top 10 hits, only 2 were accounted for: "It's Still Rock & Roll To Me" & "You May Be Right."

The fact that this went unnoticed during the evening made me wonder--how many artists could fill a comprehensive overview of their career & leave out almost all of their biggest hits? Perhaps this, more than anything else, is proof that Billy Joel truly deserves the Gershwin Prize For Popular Song.

So congrats, Billy. & thank you for helping us all to forget about life for a while.

The Top 5 1/2 Jaymay Songs.

(Note: This article is a slightly adapted version from Beth Silverman's totally awesome music blog, Major Dudes. Do yourself a favor & check it out.)

Jaymay, c. 2006.

Back in 2006, I was just another scruffy postmodern Dylan-wannabe kid trying to crack into the NYC singer-songwriter scene that I had read about in all the Dylan books (SPOILER ALERT: It hasn't existed since Dylan went electric, as I was soon learning). In the meantime, I was going to all kinds of rock shows—such as one fateful evening when I went to Pianos (a Lower East Side music institution) to see the (now dearly-departed) Philadephia-based rock band The Teeth. But then, right when the show was about to start, one of the guys from The Teeth jumped onstage to announce that their friend was going to play a few songs before their set...

1. "Gray Or Blue" (Sea Green, See Blue EP, 2006; Autumn Fallin', 2007).

I didn't catch her name at first—& indeed, neither did most of the crowd, since everyone shouted her to repeat it when she mumbled it into the mic—but after 2 more tries from her side, we learned it was Jaymay. Her guitar was missing a string. She said something about how she didn't know how to restring it, or something. But then she started strumming on the 5 remaining ones & began "Gray Or Blue":

I—

Feel so helpless now

My guitar is not around

& I keep struggling with the xylophone

To make these feelings sound...

But I watched you very closely

& I saw you look away

Your eyes are either gray or blue,

I'm never close enough to say—

But your sweatshirt says it all

With your hood over your face

& I can't keep staring at your mouth

Without wonderin' how it tastes

& I'm with another boy

He's asleep, I'm wide awake—

She had me at awake. A girl who can write like Bob Dylan & stack her rhymes like Bruce Springsteen, with the sharp eye of Joni Mitchell & the confessional wit of Liz Phair?

THIS is what I had come to NYC for.

By the end of the set, I learned "Gray Or Blue" was no fluke. I bought her still excellent Sea Green, See Blue EP & never looked back. What follows is 4 1/2 more choice songs by one of the finest living songwriters in America.

2. "Blue Skies" (Autumn Fallin', 2007).

If "Gray Or Blue" was the proof of Jaymay's potential, "Blue Skies" is her flat-out masterpiece. Its tagline & mood seem to be lifted from Irving Berlin's 1926 standard (Al Jolson sang it to his mom the following year in The Jazz Singer), but this is merely an incidental cosmic connection to the greater pop unconsciousness that only enhances the song's greater richness & depth.

From the moment the opening drumbeat continues for an unexpected 5th bar (instead of the standard 4), unleashing the wash of strings & vocals with the "dah-dah-dah" hook that takes the song to the edge of psychedelic rock without ever crossing into it, this is a recording that exists on its own terms. All of Jaymay's hallmarks are present—the seemingly effortless vocals, the internal rhyme schemes, the deceptive simplicity of the music—along with my favorite trick of all, the way in which she plays words off each other by drawing one into another ("I prom—mister Blue Eyes I would never be unkind...").

& on one level, everything described above is just a setup to be catapulted into one of the most perfect bridges I've ever heard, which is at once a contemplation, a work of poetry, a killer returning to the scene of the crime, a temptation, & a dare—not to mention a graduate-level course in melody.

3. "Rock Scissors Paper (Rsp)" (Long Walk To Never EP, 2010).

If people in the outside world know Jaymay, it's probably from the use of her song "Sea Green, See Blue" in the Season 2 finale of How I Met Your Mother. The star of that show, Josh Radnor, is a big Jaymay fan & asked to use her music for his 2010 writing & directing debut, Happythankyoumoreplease. Perhaps the best one featured in the film is "Rock Scissors Paper (Rsp)."

"So I have under 2 minutes to sing you this song," it begins, but rarely have 2 minutes been used so economically in a pop song. Over the course of 120 seconds, the singer confesses her love, spins a tale about a message in a bottle, & ruminates on the etiquette, moral, & legal implications of plagiarism—all while keeping track of the time ("Now, I have under 50 seconds to finish this song..."), making room for a lovely synth-&-whistle solo & switching up the dynamics with a clap-along breakdown in the third verse.

Oh yeah, & at the center of it all, she sings the bluntest line like a scrap of overheard conversation that defies the song while summing it up perfectly: "Really, who cares how they feel?"

4. "Corduroy" (Sea Green, See Blue EP, 2006).

A love letter to NYC open mic performers & the late-night trains that take us away from them. As a song, pure melody; as a production, pure beauty.

5. "One May Die So Lonely" (A Long Walk To Never EP, 2010).

3 minutes & 37 seconds of just voice & guitar, straightforward & strumming & matter-of-fact singing, delivered in a second person narrative. In terms of delivery, "One Might Die So Lonely" may just be Jaymay's finest vocal, brimming with confidence, clarity, & humor (just listen to the way she twists the words "little old man" or breathes life into the line "I really think you're crazy"). The song is the rare stream-of-consciousness narrative that feels as coherent as a set story, with the singer searching for words, building them off one another, stitching together snippets of conversation with thought & explanation.

Now that's all well & good, but I would include "One Might Die So Lonely" on this list if only because of the line delivered to the singer's long-lost companion towards the end:

It just gives me hope

Like music is a rope

To hold you right here

As far as I can tell, therein lies the power of songwriting & listening to music, summed up in 3 lines or less.

5 1/2. "40 Hours Ago" (Single, 2011).

When Jaymay made her catalog available for Happythankyoumoreplease, it provided the perfect outlet for songs like this—one-minute, half-song sketches that play like demos with a raw honesty that would far outstrip any "finished" version that might try to complete it.

"40 Hours Ago" is the best of these short Jaymay songs—it contains a confessional vocal, a lovely melody, a playful lyric with her signature word-connecting ("What did you come here for—ty hours ago, I was feeling one way..."), an understated production that shrewdly lines up the piano keys with a doorbell ring, & a direct intimacy that doesn't let up after multiple listens. In terms of length, it may only be half a song, but in terms of content it's an executive summary of Jaymay's signature hallmarks.

But all that said about Jaymay, there is one element to her music that for me trumps all the rest: The rare & elusive ability to create a song that sounds like it simply has always existed, Her music walks the line between the old & the new, the forgotten & the remembered, the might-have-been & the never-was. This is what stopped me cold & made me listen on that NYC night all those years ago—& it is what has kept me listening ever since.