Everybody Knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
Co-written by Sharon Robinson and included on I’m Your Man (1988), this song’s bitter-sweet cynicism is mitigated by its suggestion that we, his audience, share the knowledge the singer imparts; it is not just a dispatch from a lone reporter at the far frontier of despair.
Famous Blue Raincoat
It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some
kind of record.
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.
Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane’s awake --
She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way.
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear --
Sincerely, L. Cohen
On of Cohen’s best-known songs, and one of his most technically accomplished lyrics, it was included on Songs Of Love And Hate (1971). Cohen’s friends from the time all report his attachment to a much-repaired Burberry coat, originally bought in London in 1959. The phrase “to go clear” is a term of art in Scientology, a movement with which Cohen was briefly involved in 1968. The clues suggest that the letter is written not only by but to “L.Cohen”, that he is writing a past self – the “brother” and “killer” of a still living only son. Clinton Street is a street in the Brooklyn Heights area of New York City. ‘Lili Marlene’ was a song popular on both sides during World War II.
Field Commander Cohen
Field Commander Cohen, he was our most
important spy.
Wounded in the line of duty,
parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties,
urging Fidel Castro to abandon fields and castles.
Leave it all and like a man,
come back to nothing special,
such as waiting rooms and ticket lines,
silver bullet suicides,
and messianic ocean tides,
and racial roller-coaster rides
and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry.
I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life’s been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.
I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with
the poor.
But then I overheard your prayer,
that you be this and nothing more
than just some grateful faithful woman’s favourite
singing millionaire,
the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair,
working for the Yankee Dollar.
I know you need your sleep now ...
Ah, lover come and lie with me, if my lover is who you are,
and be your sweetest self awhile until I ask for more, my child.
Then let the other selves be rung, yeah, let them manifest
and come
till every taste is on the tongue,
till love is pierced and love is hung,
and every kind of freedom done, then oh,
oh my love, oh my love, oh my love,
oh my love, oh my love, oh my love.
Cohen visited Israel in 1973, as the storms clouds gathered that would eventually precipitate the Yom Kippur War. After his visit, he flew to Ethiopia where, ensconced in the Imperial Hotel in Asmara, he worked on several songs – among them this one, which was included on New Skin For The Old Ceremony (1974). A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).
Fingerprints
Touched you once too often
Now I don’t know who I am
My fingerprints were missing
When I wiped away the jam
Yes I called my fingerprints all night
But they don’t seem to care
The last time that I saw them
They were leafing through your hair
Fingerprints, fingerprints
Where are you now my fingerprints?
Yeah I thought I’d leave this morning
So I emptied out your drawer
A hundred thousand fingerprints
They floated to the floor
You know you hardly stopped to pick them up
You don’t care what you lose
Ah you don’t even seem to know
Whose fingerprints are whose
Fingerprints, fingerprints
Where are you now my fingerprints?
And now you want to marry me
You want to take me down the aisle
You want to throw confetti fingerprints
You know that’s not my style
O sure I’d like to marry you
But I can’t face the dawn
With any girl who knew me
When my fingerprints were on
Fingerprints, fingerprints
Where are you now my fingerprints?
Fingerprints, oh fingerprints
Where are you now my fingerprints?
Based on an earlier poem ‘Give Me Back My Fingerprints’ from Parasites Of Heaven, this song was included on Death Of A Ladies’ Man (1977). It ends with one of the more unusual excuses a man has given a woman for not marrying her.
First We Take Manhattan
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’d really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that
I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I don’t like your fashion business mister
And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin
I don’t like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’d really like to live beside you, baby ...
And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I practiced every night, now I’m ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I am guided …
Ah remember me, I used to live for music
Remember me, I brought your groceries in
Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
The opening song on I’m Your Man (1988), the album that marked the beginning of Cohen’s re-emergence as a popular and critically respected artist. Coinciding with a change in his music-writing technique (using a synthesizer instead of a guitar to compose with) and a noticeable lowering of his vocal register (which he attributed to “50,000 cigarettes and a lot of booze”), what he has described as “a demented manifesto” of “enlightened bitterness” presents a much more worldly-wise, cynical and at times angry point of view than the more melancholy, spiritual or philosophical songs he had previously produced. The particular significance of Manhattan and Berlin to Cohen is that they are, respectively, the nerve-centre of the music industry and the city he has found it hardest to play in. The song also played a bit-part in the cultural history of Athens– hip young Greek dudes of the day would test the mettle of their contemporaries by greeting them with “first we take Manhattan”; only the response “then we take Berlin” demonstrated the required level of coolness.
God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot, God never died
God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived
Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe
Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always lead
Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot
Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart would not believe
Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men
Police arrested magic and magic went with them
Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry
But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end
Many men drove magic
But magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic
And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left Him nourished
They would not tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within my mind
This I mean my mind to serve
Til’ service is but magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God
God is alive, magic is afoot . . .
Cohen himself has never recorded this song. It has been recorded twice by Buffy Sainte-Marie – on Illuminations (1970) and Up Where We Belong (1996).
Hallelujah
1984 version
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for
music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah …
1988 version
Baby, I’ve been here before.
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
Yeah I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,
But listen, love is not some kind of victory march,
No it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below,
Ah but now you never show it to me, do you?
Yeah but I remember, yeah when I moved in you,
And the holy dove, she was moving too,
Yes every single breath that we drew was Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Maybe there’s a God above,
As for me, all I’ve ever seemed to learn from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Yeah but it’s not a complaint that you hear tonight,