Tower of Song (1988) – Leonard Cohen

We find Leonard Cohen at his most musically rudimentary and starkly poetic in today’s featured track, Tower of Song. It feels like a walk in the wilderness: Cohen crying out in solitude and pleading for inspiration and passion from the music gods in the Tower of Song. All he seems to have left to hold onto – even to pay his rent – is the Tower of Song.

Despite its title, Tower of Song contains very little “song” in the usual sense. Its approach is spare and minimalist. In fact after finishing the lyrics, Cohen called an engineer in Montreal and recorded it in one take using a small Casio synthesizer.

Here Cohen deals openly with being an aging songwriter. He lays it all bare in this piece of art-house music, speaking as the consummate poet. Despite being as musically straightforward as it comes, the song – poem, if you will – still evokes rich imagery, shifting emotions, and that cheeky, ironic, dark humour we are accustomed to hearing from Leonard. Aware of his reputation among critics as a “flat singer,” he wrote:

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond

Audiences often reacted most favourably when Cohen sang these lines, such as in his 2008 live performance in London. I’m especially fond of this performance, with so much humour and interaction between Leonard and the audience, so I’ve included it at the end of this post.

In Tower of Song, Cohen also pays respect to earlier pioneers of music such as Hank Williams – who he places “a hundred floors above” him in the tower. At the same time, he does not sugarcoat how it must have been for artists like Hank, struggling in lonely pursuit while paving the way for others to follow.

There are similarities between the transparent, introspective Cohen in Tower of Song and another gem from the same album, Everybody Knows. Both songs challenge us to drop the small cloaks that hide our past mistakes and our worry about how others see us. Keeping up a façade is tiring. There is something freeing in assuming that people already know more about us than we think – including our secrets – and accepting that.

So, Leonard is saying goodbye to what’s past:

Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back

But echoes of his music, which reflect his devotion and strength to this art form, will live on – long after he is gone.

But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window
In the Tower of Song

Tower of Song is aptly the final track on Cohen’s 1988 album I’m Your Man.

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[Verse 1]
Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song

[Verse 2]
I said to Hank Williams, ”How lonely does it get?”
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
Oh, a hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

[Verse 3]
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song

[Verse 4]
So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don’t let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song

[Verse 5]
Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song

[Bridge]
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again

[Verse 6]
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window
In the Tower of Song

[Verse 1]
Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song

References:
1. Tower of Song – Wikipedia