Take This Waltz (1988) – Leonard Cohen

How Leonard Cohen weaves poetry into music so seamlessly is on full display in today’s track – Take This Waltz. Inspired by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, the lyrics of Take This Waltz are a loose translation, into English, of the poem “Pequeño vals vienés” (Little Viennese Waltz). It was originally issued as part of the 1986 Federico García Lorca tribute album Poets in New York – to commemorate the 50 years anniversary of the assassination of the poet by the Fascists in Spain in 1936.

Leonard Cohen’s rendition retains Lorca’s surreal vision, where “there’s a lobby with nine hundred windows” and “death comes in through a fiddle’s moan.” The result is a hypnotic waltz infused with an almost cinematic sense of nostalgia and longing. In fact the video below was filmed in Spain, in the city of Granada in 1986, famous for the Alhambra Castle. Leonard Cohen is shown in the house of Federico Garcia Lorca.

Two years after his 1986 original release, Cohen revisited Take This Waltz for his album I’m Your Man. This later version (which I have included below the 1986 video) added Raffi Hakopian’s violin and Jennifer Warnes’ vocals in overlayers. A longtime Cohen collaborator, Jennifer Warnes also included her own version of Take This Waltz in her 1987 Cohen tribute album, Famous Blue Raincoat which you can read more about in my friend Christian’s post – First We Take Manhattan. You may remember Warnes had big chart successes with Up Where We Belong and (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.

According to Wikipedia Cohen’s eighth studio album I’m Your Man was received as follows:
I’m Your Man was hailed by critics as a return to form. It was number 1 in Norway for 16 weeks. The album went silver in the UK and gold in Canada. In the original Rolling Stone review, David Browne called it “the first Cohen album that can be listened to during the daylight hours.” Also interestingly, Tom Waits named it one of his favourite albums.

Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women
There’s a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on it’s jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love’s never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With it’s very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging it’s tail in the sea

There’s a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years

There’s an attic where children are playing
Where I’ve got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its “I’ll never forget you, you know!”

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz …
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

And I’ll dance with you in Vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist

Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now. It’s all that there is

{Instrumental}

(Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay)

References:
1. Take This Waltz (song) – Wikipedia