Leonard Cohen - Democracy

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I've always been pretty anti Nu-Leonard, but I finally heard this track from The Future and it changed my mind.

It's comming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tianahmen Square.
It's comming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay.
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

It's comming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol,
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's comming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet.
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

It's comming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on...

It's comming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

It's comming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's comming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on...

I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay.
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild boquet:
Democracy is comming to the U.S.A.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:27 (twenty years ago)

comming= commie? = WTF?

Hopefully good. I just want to know when it will be reimagined by John Cale.

― Cunga (Cunga), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:38 (twenty years ago)

He's said in interviews that he spends weeks and months on those verses, filling notebooks with alternatives, selecting and deleting. And all that work, all that self-doubt, does pay off in the form of intelligent images and striking metaphors. "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay" is a great metaphor, for example. But what makes this song so strong is the very big and very simple structuring conceit: "Democracy is coming to the USA". I can imagine Gore Vidal saying that. Somehow you have to have lived a long time, and seen all the freedom movements come and go, to write a song like this. So yes, it's a good example of age giving a certain width of vision, boldness of statement, and clarity of purpose. On the downside, it's not got the more intuitive greatness of some of Leonard's earlier songs, like "Take This Longing" or even "Sisters of Mercy". As the image of filling notebooks implies, it's laborious rather than visionary. A visionary songs tends to be effortless, to arrive fully-formed.

― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:40 (twenty years ago)

In which category would "First We Take Manhattan" fall?

― M. V. (M.V.), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:45 (twenty years ago)

comming= commie? = WTF?

Yeah, it's cut-and-pasted from a site. Didn't really check the spelling.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:47 (twenty years ago)

Into the "Leonard Cohen Songs Now Hilarious Due to Dated Production" category.

― js (honestengine), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:48 (twenty years ago)

On the downside, it's not got the more intuitive greatness of some of Leonard's earlier songs, like "Take This Longing" or even "Sisters of Mercy". As the image of filling notebooks implies, it's laborious rather than visionary. A visionary songs tends to be effortless, to arrive fully-formed.

I don't know, there are some lines in there that sound to me like they arrived pretty fully formed: pretty much the whole first stanza starting with "It's coming from the feel" for example.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:50 (twenty years ago)

Production and all, it's a great companion to Neil Diamond's "America" song.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 05:33 (twenty years ago)

I think the production works really well in this case, actually. It suits the content.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 05:48 (twenty years ago)

It does. It builds very dramatically. For latter-day bitter Lenny, I like "The Future" and "Everybody Knows" better, but "Democracy" is a great cranky rant.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 05:53 (twenty years ago)

I mean he's singing about something grand and shiny and false, and the music also kind of sounds grand and shiny and false.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 05:54 (twenty years ago)

But also like he still wants to believe in it, which the music does too.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 06:14 (twenty years ago)

"A visionary songs tends to be effortless, to arrive fully-formed."

That is nonsense.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 10:03 (twenty years ago)

"A visionary song tends to be effortless, to arrive fully-formed."

That is nonsense.

seriously! wordsworth much?

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 12:11 (twenty years ago)

I think there might be a confusion here between literally "arriving fully formed" and reading as though it arrived fully formed. Momus is arguing that because Cohen labors over his poems, they must therefore be labored, which I don't really think is the right idea.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 13:48 (twenty years ago)

Nu-Cohen has sounded a lot better to me in the last few years, although maybe that's just because I am now dating a girl who prefers Nu-Cohen to Classic Cohen. Also, the 80s are back!

This is a fantastic song, thanks for posting. I'll go get myself a copy right now, it'll feel good to listen to today...

― Eppy (Eppy), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 14:17 (twenty years ago)

Momus is right. What makes Democracy is the simplicity of the chorus rather than the laborious verses. On the other hand, two other songs on The Future, Waiting for the Miracle and the title track hit visionary status. Nothing like a nearly 60-year old man (at the time) singing "give me crack and anal sex" and singing it like he means it.

It's too bad The Future is his last good album. Maybe bankruptcy has his creative juices flowing again.

― Jacobo Rock (jacobo rock), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

I've ALWAYS preferred nu-jack Cohen to boring old acoustic Cohen.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

So have I.

― xavier mcshane (xave), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 21:57 (twenty years ago)

I guess I'm not really sure what Momus and Jacobo mean by "labored". Complex? I mean the chorus is great, but it wouldn't work at all without the context. And a lot of those lines flow really well, which to me is the opposite of "labored".

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 13 October 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

I love this song, and 'Waiting For A Miracle' too. oh, and 'Be For Real'.

as far as other nu-Cohen goes, 'Dear Heather' is really fantastic.

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 13 October 2005 02:13 (twenty years ago)

Labored to me is when Leonard Cohen tries to write like Lou Reed. I guess the song feels a bit too crammed and slightly forced. Then again maybe accusing a poet of writing songs that are too wordy might miss the point? But I generally like it when he keeps it simple, except on Dear Heather where 4/5's of the songs come off half-written (and the others aren't even written by him).

Incidentally, has anyone heard Judy Collins's version of this song? Now that's painful.

― Jacobo Rock (jacobo rock), Thursday, 13 October 2005 12:34 (twenty years ago)

No contest, Nu-Cohen is superior to Classic Cohen when documenting oral sex:

"She stands before you naked / you can see it, you can taste it / and she comes to you light as the breeze / Now you can drink it or you can nurse it / it don't matter how you worship / as long as you're
down on your knees."

= far more impressive than "she was giving me head on an unmade bed".

― doug watson (solid air), Thursday, 13 October 2005 18:03 (twenty years ago)

the simplicity of 'Dear Heather' is nice, though; it's playful and light, for the most part. he's having fun.

― derrick (derrick), Friday, 14 October 2005 04:38 (twenty years ago)

xpost I like both of those a lot. But re: the whole "labored" thing in general, I just dislike the truism that simpler = better in pop/rock/folk/whatever music.

― Hurting (Hurting), Friday, 14 October 2005 04:40 (twenty years ago)

is Vinnie on the drums?

― bahtology, Friday, 14 October 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

In Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" (Da Capo), he recites a few of the rejected verses from "Democracy":

It ain't coming to us European style;
Concentration camp behind a smile.
It ain't coming from the east,
With its temporary fest,
As Count Dracula comes strolling down the aisle.

* * *

First we killed the lord and then we stole the blues.
The gutter people always in the news,
But who really gets to laugh behind the black man's back
When he makes his little crack about the Jews?
Who really gets to profit and who really gets to pay?
Who really rides the slavery ship right into Charleston Bay?
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

(Asked why he left out that verse, he said, "I didn't want to compromise the anthemic, hymn-like quality. I didn't want it to get too punchy. I didn't want to start a fight in the song. I wanted a revelation in the heart rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense.")

* * *

From the church where the outcasts hide
Or the mosque where the blood is dignified.
Like the fingers on your hand,
Lake the hourglass of sand,
We can separate but not divide.
From the eye above the pyramid
And the dollar's cruel display,
From the law behind the law
Behind the law we still obey
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

― Eazy (Eazy), Saturday, 15 October 2005 13:09 (twenty years ago)

As far as this being a mature song, it's worth noting that the bridge ("Sail on, sail on, o mighty ship of state") appeared in his novel "Beautiful Losers" in the late 1960s.

― Eazy (Eazy), Saturday, 15 October 2005 13:12 (twenty years ago)

(oh, and that's 'feast' not 'fest' in the first alternate verse)

― Eazy (Eazy), Saturday, 15 October 2005 13:13 (twenty years ago)

For me the ne plus ultra of the visionary song arriving fully formed is Dylan's "I'm Not There (1956)" from the Basement Tapes. The "words," music and performance seem to emerge simultaneously. The lyrics are a mix of placeholder syllables, sleep talk and poetry.

― M. V. (M.V.), Saturday, 15 October 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

= far more impressive than "she was giving me head on an unmade bed".

Oh, quite disagree. The first uses the same basic "blasphemous" oral sex as worship metaphor that Madonna used (before Cohen!) on "Like A Prayer". There's some Pepsi-copyline-style "taste it-drink it-nurse it" wordplay, not improved by tired similes like "light as the breeze". Whereas "giving me head on the unmade bed" is a stark, simple picture of a slightly sordid scene, prose-like, powerful in its (moving) detachment... and you forgot the killer pay-off "while the limousines wait in the street". Isn't that a great scene, and so telling? Two stars having sex in the Chelsea Hotel, while the limos wait outside! Very powerful stuff, very audacious. And the heroin-blankness of the ending... "that's all, I don't even think of you that often"... phew!

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 15 October 2005 14:57 (twenty years ago)

I think those are equally powerful. What is remarkable is how well-suited each is to the music — the former celebratory, the latter almost eulogistic.

xxpost in a perfect world "Democracy" is sung in homeroom and during the 7th inning stretch.

― Dr. Gene Scott (shinybeast), Saturday, 15 October 2005 15:12 (twenty years ago)

Interesting to see those deleted Cohen verses, and I totally agree with his choices. The verses he included all have this very specific level of irony that some of the other verses exceed. Also he's totally right about the anthemic quality -- repetition of "It's coming from ..." etc.

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 15 October 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

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