The Leonard Cohen collection

There’s a crack in everything…

Our collection of stories stemming from songs by Leonard Cohen looks at rehabilitation, mental health, love, even the moon landing. Plus a fun jazz poem from Canada, filmed while the author is driving.

Luke Davies says in his piece about Tonight Will Be Fine, ‘Listening to most music has been so much harder for me since the stroke and I had not been keen on revisiting older recordings and demos of ideas stashed away on various hard drives. But finally I could listen to a Cohen song I used to do.’

Martina Medica eventually finds solace in Anthem: ‘The radio is playing in my darkened room, the music no more than an irritation that I can’t make myself care enough about to turn off. But then it starts. And the song is familiar.’

For Rijn Collins, Undertow is part of a nascent romance: ‘ You slide a CD into the car stereo. This is Cohen, you say. I know little about Cohen, but I’m learning about you. You tell me a story as we drive, and I turn towards you, my hands out to catch the falling words.’

The least known of Cohen songs in our small gathering is Sing Another Song, Boys. Alan Attwood says: ‘It’s a raucous, shambolic, ranting wreck of a song, which ends with a well-oiled Leonard chanting instead of singing; a song that never made it into any of his greatest-hits collections.’

The Stereo Stories band has performed Martina’s brave story based on Anthem, and Rijn’s tender love story based on Undertow. Anybody up for Alexandra Leaving or Tonight Will Be Fine?  (Or, let’s dream; a one-hour show, though we’d need to fly in Bill Arnott from Canada for his jazz poem…)

Until then, here are the stories.