I’M YOUR FAN: THE SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN 9781501355066, 9781501355097, 9781501355080

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Track Listing
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Origins of the Tribute Album
Interlude: Hal Willner
Chapter 2: The Idea behind I’m Your Fan
Interlude: Ralph Sall
Chapter 3: Recording I’m Your Fan
Chapter 4: Cave and Cale
Interlude: Juliana Hatfield
Chapter 5: The Release of I’m Your Fan
Interlude: Jarkko Arjatsolo
Chapter 6: The 1990s Tribute Album Explosion
Interlude: Jim Sampas and Joe Spadaro
Chapter 7: The Tribute Album Today
Notes
Index
Also Available in the Series

Citation preview

I’M YOUR FAN: THE SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN Praise for the series: It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch … The series … is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration — The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren’t enough — Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet — Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds — Vice A brilliant series … each one a work of real love — NME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smart — Nylon Religious tracts for the rock ’n’ roll faithful — Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series — Uncut (UK) We … aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way … watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Bloomsbury’s “33 1/3” series of books — Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com and our website at http:​//www​.bloo​msbur​y.com​/musi​ cands​ounds​tudie​s Follow us on Twitter: @333books Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Forthcoming in the series From Elvis in Memphis by Eric Wolfson Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth by Zach Schonfeld Murder Ballads by Santi Elijah Holley Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 by Colin Fleming Once Upon a Time by Alex Jeffery Tapestry by Loren Glass Timeless by Martyn Deykers Tin Drum by Agata Pyzik The Archandroid by Alyssa Favreau Avalon by Simon Morrison Band of Gypsys by Michael E. Veal Rio by Annie Zaleski Vs. by Clint Brownlee xx by Jane Morgan and many more…

I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen

Ray Padgett

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2020 Copyright © Ray Padgett, 2020 For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-5506-6 ePDF: 978-1-5013-5508-0 eBook: 978-1-5013-5507-3

Series: 33 31 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Dedicated to Lesley. I’m your fan.

vi

Contents

Track Listing Acknowledgments

viii ix

Introduction 1 1 The Origins of the Tribute Album 5 Interlude: Hal Willner 16 2 The Idea behind I’m Your Fan 25 Interlude: Ralph Sall 36 3 Recording I’m Your Fan 49 4 Cave and Cale Interlude: Juliana Hatfield

65 76

5 The Release of I’m Your Fan 85 Interlude: Jarkko Arjatsolo 97 6 The 1990s Tribute Album Explosion Interlude: Jim Sampas and Joe Spadaro

107 117

7

129

The Tribute Album Today

Notes Index

137 143

Track Listing

1. “Who by Fire”—The House of Love (2:26) 2. “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”—Ian McCulloch (3:21) 3. “I Can’t Forget”—Pixies (3:24) 4. “Stories of the Street”—That Petrol Emotion (4:58) 5. “Bird on the Wire”—The Lilac Time (3:20) 6. “Suzanne”—Geoffrey Oryema (4:29) 7. “So Long, Marianne”—James (4:47) 8. “Avalanche IV”—Jean-Louis Murat (5:13) 9. “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On”—David McComb & Adam Peters (5:13) 10. “First We Take Manhattan”—R.E.M. (6:05) 11. “Chelsea Hotel”—Lloyd Cole (3:24) 12. “Tower of Song”—Robert Forster (3:19) 13. “Take This Longing”—Peter Astor (4:39) 14. “True Love Leaves No Traces”—Dead Famous People (3:37) 15. “I’m Your Man”—Bill Pritchard (4:00) 16. “A Singer Must Die”—The Fatima Mansions (3:53) 17. “Tower of Song”—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (5:39) 18. “Hallelujah”—John Cale (4:06)

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Cover Me’s right-hand man and this book’s first reader Patrick Robbins, my agent Helen Zimmermann, my editor Emily Mackay, Leah Babb-Rosenfeld and everyone at Bloomsbury, and all the musicians, producers, and journalists who spoke to me for the book. All quotes except where otherwise noted come from those conversations. Special thanks to I’m Your Fan producers Christian Fevret and Jean-Daniel Beauvallet, without whose help telling this story would have been impossible, and to LeonardCohenFiles founder Jarkko Arjatsalo for being a fount of information on all things Cohen. Finally, thanks to the man himself for his tower of songs.

x

Introduction

Michael Stipe is holding a banana. So are John Cale, Ian McCulloch, and three out of four Pixies (it’s not clear what Kim Deal did with hers). The members of James dangle peels, having already eaten theirs. Nick Cave doesn’t hold a banana, but one hovers near his head. These bananas—and their musician companions—appear in the I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen liner notes as an inside joke. It’s an obscure reference: on the cover of 1988’s I’m Your Man—the newest Leonard Cohen album at the time—Cohen himself poses holding a (half-eaten) banana, imitating what he called in an unpublished interview “the transcendent ape.”1 So on top of their work corralling a bunch of famous, semi-famous, and seemed-at-the-timelike-they-might-become-famous bands to cover Cohen’s songs, I’m Your Fan’s curators took it upon themselves to photograph each artist aping Cohen’s banana cover. These zany photos exhibit something rarely seen in a tribute album: thematic cohesion. Many tribute albums, even good ones, shoot at a million targets at once, haphazardly blending genre and era and sound. Even if every individual

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

cover delivers something fresh (a hard-enough feat to manage), a tribute album rarely adds up to more than the sum of its parts. But the banana photos indicate as vividly as the music itself how the producers conceived I’m Your Fan as a unified statement. Longtime rock photographer Renaud Monfourny was tasked with getting the musicians to submit to the silly banana shots. The assignment went against all his training. “Usually when I take portraits of people, I try to have people [look] serious in front of me,” he says today. “I don’t like when bands are doing the crazy stupid rock and roll things. But this time, it was open. Every band could do what they want with the banana.” Monfourny spent two months getting his shots. First, he had to convince each artist. This proved easier than he anticipated. Some got the visual joke, others just trusted the magazine curating the album, Les Inrockuptibles, and went along with it; “I would have held a baby rhinoceros if they’d asked me to,” says The Lilac Time’s Stephen Duffy, who placed a peeled banana in his suit jacket pocket. Pixies, taking the most obvious route (a rarity for the pioneering group), used the bananas as telephones. R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck stuck his in a jacket pocket while bandleader Stipe munched away. Cale, who Monfourny remembers acting disdainful of the whole proceeding, held a few bananas under his jacket like guns. Cave, the only artist who said no, got stuck with a hovering banana spliced into an earlier photo Monfourny had taken of him. Cohen appreciated the homage, telling an interviewer that the silly banana photos reflected “the whole tone of 2

I N T R O D U C T IO N

the album, which was very referential—to say nothing of reverential—but very referential to my actual treatment of the songs.”2 *** The amount of effort put into an inside joke many listeners wouldn’t even get speaks to the thought put into creating I’m Your Fan. Tribute album curators do not always evidence such care. The mechanics of the tribute album always take effort, sure—corralling artists, booking studio time, licensing all the covers—but many still seem like half-assed recordlabel cash-ins. Post-grunge the new big thing in rock? Let’s make a Led Zeppelin tribute album with Blind Melon and Hootie & The Blowfish. Is a ska revival underway? Let’s rope Less than Jake and Reel Big Fish into covering—why not?—Duran Duran. Even in Cohen’s case, four years after I’m Your Fan’s unexpected indie success, major label A&M Records released its own star-studded tribute, Tower of Song, abandoning the hip Cohen-acolytes approach in favor of blindly recruiting household names from Elton John to Billy Joel. Individual covers can certainly triumph even in such inauspicious circumstances (Don Henley’s “Everybody Knows” on that album, against all odds, rocks), but one doesn’t imagine the phrase “labor of love” coming up much in those record-label boardrooms. I might have listened to more tribute albums than anyone alive. This is not a boast—I don’t think anyone else is competing for this particular title. It’s more like a byproduct 3

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

of running a blog about cover songs, Cover Me, for the last thirteen years (when I was still running it out of my college dorm room, one of my first posts contained covers of every track on Cohen’s I’m Your Man). I will defend the tribute album’s potential and can rattle off dozens of great examples that defy the format’s critics. That includes I’m Your Fan. I selected it for this book both for the ways the album is exceptional—most of individual covers are excellent, and when assembled together they actually create a cohesive listening experience—and for the ways it is fairly typical—I’m Your Fan follows what was then becoming codified as the standard recipe for a tribute album, a recipe that hasn’t changed to this day. Plus, while many tribute albums boast vague impacts on the tributed artist’s career—hard-to-quantify phrases like “increased their profile” or “exposed them to a new audience” get tossed about a lot—I’m Your Fan had an unusually concrete impact on Cohen: It made “Hallelujah” his best-known song. But I’m Your Fan aside, I readily acknowledge the format has produced a whole pile of misguided, unlistenable tribute albums pretty much since its inception. A tribute album lives and dies on its curation. When anonymous suits want to capitalize on a popular music trend, the results often reflect the cynical commercial impulse. When well-connected superfans honor an artist they adore, though—well, those tribute albums often prove terrible too. But the odds improve.

4

1 The Origins of the Tribute Album

If you define the term broadly enough, the tribute album has been around as long as the album itself. If, as many do, you trace the birth of the modern album to 1948, when Columbia Records debuted the first 12-inch 33 1/3 RPM record, artists began releasing full-album tributes almost immediately. Ella Fitzgerald released Ella Sings Gershwin in 1950, and a host of similar jazz albums followed. When pop music embraced the album in the 1960s, boosted by its rowdy new sibling rock and roll, the format exploded across genres, from country (Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams, 1960) to soul (Aretha Franklin’s Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington, 1964) to rock (hundreds of Beatles covers records by the late sixties). But while these are albums made in tribute to another artist, they do not reflect what the term “tribute album” means today. When people refer to a tribute album, they typically mean a compilation of covers – a single artist’s songs, performed by multiple other artists. That format did not emerge until a few decades later.

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

When someone does use the term “tribute album” today, there’s a decent chance that person is complaining about them. In 2016, Stereogum (which years earlier had curated several tributes itself) called tribute albums “possibly the most universally derided format in pop music, one defined by inconsistency, unpredictability, and precipitously low expectations.”1 Even the people creating tribute albums sometimes steer clear of the term. One of the I’m Your Fan producers said they deliberately avoided calling it a “tribute album” even though it fits the textbook definition. A few years later, another producer took it a step further, pasting “This Ain’t No Tribute” onto the cover of their tribute album Tangled Up In Blues: Songs Of Bob Dylan, as if adding that disclaimer would make it true. Journalist Stephen Deusner, the author of that Stereogum article, says in an interview that the criteria for judging a tribute album are different: The things that we go to an album for, or the experience that we want to have with an album . . . are usually missing from a tribute album. It’s not going to be cohesive. It’s not going to be any major overarching statement. It’s going to have tracks that you don’t like or that you skip or [that] sound immediately dated. It’s a different rubric for measuring quality than we normally use. I will endlessly defend the tribute album, but I don’t actually disagree with any of what Deusner says. If a certain tribute album features more good covers than bad ones, we call it a good tribute album—but it still might offer a 6

T H E O R IG I N S O F T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM

rather disjointed listening experience. To pick but one of thousands of possible examples, a wonderful run of Kronos Quartet, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Seal, as on 2010’s Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan, can be rudely interrupted by Maroon 5 melismatically croon-belching “I Shall Be Released.” I’m Your Fan, as we’ll soon see, is no different. Inconsistency has been baked in since the format’s earliest days in the 1980s and 1990s. But before we get there, a brief stop in the 1970s is in order. The tribute album didn’t exist yet, but two albums that decade tested the concept. Both were tied to contemporary movies and to The Beatles. Arguably the first real tribute album—though released so early it wasn’t called such and inspired few copycats—was the soundtrack to the 1976 movie All This and World War II, which juxtaposed Beatles songs with newsreel footage from the Second World War (and was so thoroughly savaged by critics that the studio pulled it from theaters after two weeks). After the producers failed to license the original Beatles recordings, they commissioned a set of covers by stars from Rod Stewart (“Get Back”) to Peter Gabriel (“Strawberry Fields Forever,” his first solo release after leaving Genesis). Most notably, they commissioned three covers from the Bee Gees, who two years later released a similar project—arguably the second tribute album—as the multi-artist soundtrack to their own wildly unsuccessful Beatles movie, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. For that one, they brought in everyone from Aerosmith (“Come Together”) to Earth, Wind, and Fire (“Got to Get You Into My Life”) to Steve Martin (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”). 7

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

But these two 1970s Beatle-movie soundtracks proved isolated incidents. They were not considered part of any new format, and they apparently spawned no imitators (both movies bombing at the box office probably didn’t help). The real birth of the tribute album came in the following decade. *** Hal Willner holds as much claim to being the inventor of the tribute album as anyone. He’s been one of the most famous music producers in the world for a few decades now, working with everyone from Lou Reed to Lucinda Williams, but in the early 1980s, he was still a young man getting his start in the music business. He had several associate producer credits to his name and had just landed a job overseeing sketch music for the relatively new show Saturday Night Live. He’d grown up loving television variety shows and adored albums that took a similarly sprawling approach. He lamented that TV and musical productions like these seemed to have gone out of fashion. But Saturday Night Live had recently revived the former, and he decided to try his hand at the latter, to make an eclectic and sprawling album that would mix artists and sounds around some sort of theme. Willner recruited a number of his favorite jazz musicians to interpret the music of a favorite composer: Nino Rota, best known for his work on Fellini films. The result, Amarcord Nino Rota (“I Remember Nino Rota” in English, a nod to Fellini’s film Amarcord), came out in 1981. The album sold better than anyone expected, given its relatively obscure subject matter. Soon followed tributes to more jazz artists 8

T H E O R IG I N S O F T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM

he loved. As his reputation grew, he got assigned subjects with which he was less familiar. 1985’s Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill saw him recruiting bigger names, like Sting and Reed. He topped even that three years later with James Taylor, Ringo Starr, The Replacements, and a dozen more on 1988’s Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films. The tribute album as we know it was born, largely from the mind of one man. Willner never truly capitalized on the tribute album’s commercial potential, though. Music geeks loved Willner’s tribute albums, but the esoteric nature of the subjects limited their reach. Other people, however, started to realize the format’s potential. First out of the gate was UK label Imaginary Records. Founded in 1985 by Alan Duffy, associate of progressive-rock revivalists The Porcupine Tree, Imaginary began releasing tribute albums at a brisk clip. They started in the Willner mode, paying tribute to cult favorite artists – Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett first, then Captain Beefheart, the definition of an acquired taste – but quickly broadened their horizons. By the time the 1980s turned to the 1990s, they’d added tributes to The Kinks, The Byrds, and The Rolling Stones to their catalogs, with a dozen more still to come. A variety of other labels got in on the tribute game as well, with tributes to a variety of early rock influences from Johnny Cash (‘Til Things Are Brighter, 1988) to the Velvet Underground (A Tribute to Andy Warhol, 1988) to Buddy Holly (Everyday Is a Holly Day, 1989). British music magazine NME began its own series of tribute albums with 1988’s alternative rock-focused Sgt Pepper Knew My Father. 9

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

You could still count the non-Willner tribute albums on two hands at the decade’s end, but the pace was picking up fast. As more labels and producers began to put out tributes, the format accrued its current shape. Veering away from the Willner model of following one’s esoteric interests, tribute albums began to more often than not cover an alreadyiconic artist or band. Increasingly wide arrays of artists would contribute, sometimes keeping within a certain sound or scene, sometimes pulling from all over the genre map. Where else but a tribute album could sixties doo-wop crooner Dion lead straight into eighties noise pioneers Jesus and Mary Chain (The Last Temptation of Elvis, 1990)? Where else would the Melvins and a then-little-known band called Nirvana be able to acknowledge they loved the music of – of all people – Kiss (Hard to Believe: A Kiss Covers Compilation, 1990)? Where else was anyone going to turn kids on to a cult artist like psychedelic-rock pioneer Roky Erickson (Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, also from 1990)? Fans and critics noticed this new format. On October 15, 1989, the New York Times published a trend piece on the tribute album called “Rock’s Icons: Hero Today, Homage Tomorrow.” Rounding up a number of these early tributes, critic Robert Palmer wrote, At their best, the tribute albums offer a satisfying sense of emotional connection as well, linking younger bands and audiences with the works of their predecessors at a level that runs deeper than mere competence. The most successful performances on the albums define some of the ways in which younger rockers have absorbed lessons 10

T H E O R IG I N S O F T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM

from the past in a manner that infuses historical or stylistic insights with an immediacy the listener can feel.2 Yet some skepticism about the tribute album had already taken hold. Palmer writes that the Imaginary albums are all “uneven propositions,” and adds that the NME’s Beatles tribute Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father “sounds like something of a curio” (though he correctly praises Sonic Youth’s “Within You Without You” as a keeper). Palmer only singles one tribute album out for nearcomplete praise: 1989’s fantastic The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young. That album’s producer never managed a second tribute album, but his lone release helped define the format as we think of it today. *** In the late 1980s, Terry Tolkin was a record store clerk in New York. Thurston Moore sometimes came by the store to use the Xerox machine, and over time they became friends. One day, Moore brought in Imaginary Records’ second release, the 1988 Captain Beefheart tribute Fast ‘n’ Bulbous. His band Sonic Youth, only a few years into their career, had covered “Electricity,” and he wanted Tolkin to hear it. Tolkin still remembers his reaction to the album: “This is a piece of shit. It looks horrible and, aside from Sonic Youth, I never heard of any of these bands. And they all suck.” Tolkin began to worry about someone doing an equally terrible job compiling a tribute album for an artist he loved. If you want the job done right, he thought, you have to do it yourself. 11

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

He selected Neil Young. When his musician friends crashed at his apartment, they always cranked Young records, so he already had some idea of who to ask. Tolkin knew the alternative music scene well. In fact, he’d literally coined the term “alternative music” a decade before, in his early days as a music journalist.* He borrowed money from his employer and phoned some of the bands who hung out at the record store: Sonic Youth, of course, plus Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips, and many others. He says his pitch to these bands was simple: “Hey, we’re doing Neil Young, I got 500 bucks for you.” They all said yes. He let the bands choose their own songs. Sonic Youth did “Computer Age” because it was a relatively new track, not an old, oft-covered chestnut. The Pixies did “Winterlong” because it was the only song they all could agree on (they later told Tolkin it was the best thing the band ever recorded). Dinosaur Jr. sent in an “I’ve Been Waiting for You” cover, then changed their minds and sent in “Cinnamon Girl,” then changed their minds again and sent in “Lotta Love.” The entire process didn’t take long, under a year from conception to completion. Creatively, this follows in the model of other early tribute albums. Tolkin’s big innovation in the world of tribute albums was financial: he didn’t keep the money. He donated all the proceeds to The Bridge School, founded a few years prior by Young and his wife Pegi to help kids who had cerebral palsy. Tolkin himself had a cousin with cerebral palsy and wanted In later years, he became a major A&R guy in this world, discovering Stereolab, Luna, and others. *

12

T H E O R IG I N S O F T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM

to support their work. He asked the bands to donate their royalties as well. He even named the album in honor of The Bridge School. It wouldn’t be much money, he figured, but a nice gesture. The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young came out in 1989. One year later, Tolkin found himself flying to San Francisco with one of those giant checks, made out to The Bridge School. The number printed in large type: $86,000. He met Neil and Pegi, who thanked him profusely. Their team also agreed to reimburse Tolkin all the license fees he’d paid to clear the covers for release. The Bridge helped pioneer the model of younger bands making an “oldies” artist cool again that I’m Your Fan would follow two years later, but its real influence was in this charity angle. Though one or two earlier tributes had raised small amounts for worthy causes, once the big-money potential became clear, fundraising almost immediately became a huge part of the tribute album world. To this day, a sizeable percentage of tribute albums benefit some cause or another. This serves two purposes. The first is the most obvious: it’s a nice thing to do, raising both money and awareness for an organization or individual in need. But there’s a second, sneakier advantage of making one’s tribute album a benefit: it helps convince big artists to sign on, particularly when there’s no budget to pay the musicians. In 1990, NME’s Roy Carr got Paul McCartney on the magazine’s Elvis tribute album by promising the proceeds to McCartney’s favorite charity. It’s become a good selling point in a producer’s pitch. Are you really going to say no to helping Doctors Without Borders? 13

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Pretty soon, some charities began to produce their own tribute albums. The Red Hot Organization was founded in 1990 for that explicit purpose, to fight AIDS through music. They released the Cole Porter tribute album Red Hot + Blue that same year and have released many more compilations and tributes since, most recently the sprawling Day of the Dead Grateful Dead tribute album in 2016. The organization has raised over $10 million with these efforts. Amnesty International also occasionally dips its feet into the tribute album waters, having released A-list tributes to Bob Dylan and John Lennon in recent years. Back in 1990, Terry Tolkin hoped to release his own Grateful Dead tribute album. And this time he had an extra advantage. The Bridge had done so well that it had caught other artists’ eyes. Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and the band’s publicist Dennis McNally called Tolkin up personally to pitch him the idea of paying tribute to the band. A huge Grateful Dead fan, Tolkin knew many closet Deadheads among his hip music community. Like he did for The Bridge, he began making calls, ringing up artists like Elvis Costello, Edie Brickell, and Television’s Tom Verlaine. He spent three months lining up artists for the Grateful Dead tribute. But the Dead, who had initiated the project, grew slower to return his calls, then stopped communicating with him altogether. After a period of radio silence, he one day got a cease and desist letter from the band’s label Arista Records. It told him to stop working on the project—or else. The following year, Arista released its own Grateful Dead tribute album. Tolkin says that the band’s team went behind his back to take the project away from him and give it to 14

T H E O R IG I N S O F T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM

producer Ralph Sall, starting Sall on his path to becoming the most successful tribute album producer in history (Sall tells a different story, which we’ll get to). Tolkin still doesn’t know why he lost the project. He says they even took his album title: Deadicated. “That really hurt,” he says now. “I might have made a career out of it after the Dead one had finished. When that happened, I was looking around the landscape going, ‘Man, there’s just so many shitty fucking tribute albums out there. I got other things to do.’” Terry Tolkin never released another tribute album, but The Bridge still regularly appears on lists of the best tribute albums ever and was certainly among the most important in crystallizing this new format. Its model of hip artists exposing their younger audience to a mutual influence has been followed by untold numbers of tribute albums. One of the first to run with that torch, two years later, was I’m Your Fan.

15

Interlude: Hal Willner

“Is it all my fault?” Those are the first words out of Hal Willner’s mouth when I tell him I’m writing about tribute albums. Short answer: yes. As much as anyone’s, at least. The producer didn’t invent the format from whole cloth, but he kickstarted the tribute album movement in the 1980s. Willner doesn’t think he deserves the credit, though—or the blame. He feels the trend only gained momentum a few years later, beginning with The Bridge and Red Hot + Blue and continuing with producer Ralph Sall’s string of blockbusters. They had bigger artists on them and were drawing from better-known songbooks. They seem more like what we think of tribute albums today, he argues, and were bigger deals at the time. He imagines people looking back on his early albums and thinking, “If that schmuck only had wellknown groups on them.” But he reluctantly acknowledges that the records he cites as the first real tribute albums were inspired by his own endeavors. So, yeah, it is all his fault. ***

I N T E R LU D E : HA L W I L L N E R

Willner didn’t set out to make “tribute albums,” he says; he just made records he wanted to hear. In the early 1980s, he’d got his start producing a couple of mid-tier artists—Leon Redbone, The Neville Brothers—and landed a job overseeing sketch music for Saturday Night Live (he’s still there almost forty years later). He came to SNL with a short resume but a long passion for that variety-show format combining music and comedy. He reminisces about growing up watching late sixties variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and listening to albums by surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theatre, who blended avant-garde humor with Beatles-inspired studio trickery. He adored unexpected combinations—concert bills with both George Carlin and The Doors, or avant-garde jazz sax player Rahsaan Roland Kirk opening for Led Zeppelin. The Beatles’ all-over-the-place White Album was a favorite. “That was like a little variety show,” he says. “You had jazz into rock into this, and it was funny here and it was avant-garde there.” There were fewer rules back in the sixties, he felt. Artists and creators would combine all sorts of disparate elements to see what worked. As the 1980s progressed, he didn’t see that sort of thing being made anymore, in television or music. The entertainment industry had calcified, and everyone had to stay in his or her lane. When Willner produced his first tribute album, 1981’s Amarcord Nino Rota, he didn’t aim to start any trend. If he had, he probably would have chosen someone more famous to pay tribute to than Fellini’s film composer. He intended it strictly as a jazz album, and for the most part it ended up that way, including contributions from a pre17

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

fame Wynton Marsalis. But a chance meeting with Debbie Harry led to her and Blondie compatriot Chris Stein signing on. Their brief appearance got the album covered in the rock press, and Amarcord Nino Rota became a bigger deal than he’d ever imagined. Suddenly A&R men began approaching him saying, “Well, what’s your next idea?” He came up with something quickly enough. Then another idea, and another after that. Tributes to the music of Thelonious Monk, Kurt Weill, Disney films, and on and on. He recorded a Charles Mingus tribute played entirely on the homemade instruments made in the 1930s by musical mad scientist Harry Partch, with participation by everyone from Chuck D, who raps lines from Mingus interviews over a horn section, to Cohen, who, despite inspiring many tribute albums, only rarely appeared on them himself. He’s now done two separate albums of the likes of Bono, Sting, Lou Reed, and many others singing old pirate songs (he’d learned from his Blondie experience it helped to have big names if you picked obscure subject matter). That’s why Willner thinks he didn’t really invent the tribute album; he skipped the part about paying tribute to an iconic artist. With a handful of exceptions (like his own Cohen tribute in 2006), Willner’s selections lean toward the oddball. He wanted to hear rock acts like NRBQ and Todd Rundgren cover Thelonious Monk, so he made it happen. He doesn’t aim to make the biggest-selling record, he says; he simply envisions his “dream fantasies.” Or, in some cases, he realizes someone else’s “dream fantasy.” His commissions have been some of his most 18

I N T E R LU D E : HA L W I L L N E R

successful. He didn’t know Kurt Weill’s music well before a label came to him with the idea, but his first tribute in 1985 was so successful it spawned a sequel twelve years later. “I love to approach subjects that I don’t know anything about,” he says. “It’s a great way to learn about it, and then your audience is going to learn with you.” His 1988 collection Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films was so successful, he says, it pretty much gave him carte blanche to do whatever he pleased after that. The Replacements’ sneer through “Cruella De Ville” offers the sort of surprise few other than Willner could have imagined, and Tom Waits steals the show with a “Heigh Ho” that reimagines the seven dwarfs’ journey to the diamond mines as the rattling-chains march of a prison camp. Willner fondly remembers the day Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, and Herb Alpert all came into the studio to play with a fifty-piece orchestra for that one. He says he takes his role as a curator seriously, picking which artist does what song. “Usually, there’s a handful of ideas to start—not a ton of them,” he says. “Then, as it grows, I keep a little blackboard and start thinking about stuff and pick out the songs I’d like on the record.” The artists usually agree to his assignments—he says Lou Reed was particularly excited to sing Weill’s “September Song”—but he’ll work with anyone who wants to go in a different direction. “I don’t like the word ‘no’ on any of my albums.” This level of oversight is unusual in the tribute album world; most producers pick the bands and then merely try to ensure two don’t cover the same song (they don’t always manage even that, as we’ll see with I’m Your Fan). But no 19

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

one in the small tribute album community commands more respect than Willner, and he can dictate more than others. *** When the format he’d pioneered exploded in the nineties, Willner stepped back. After a decade of having his pick of artists, the competition had grown fierce. He’d approach a manager and hear the artist was already booked for some other tribute. “I stopped doing that kind of record for a while because it seemed to get kind of ridiculous,” he says. “There was a period where there were zillions of them being done. It just was getting unfun.” So he pivoted from tribute albums to tribute concerts. For his first, in 1991, he put together a tribute to the singersongwriter Tim Buckley at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn. The show found its way into music history by being the first public performance of Tim’s twenty-four-year-old son Jeff. Within a couple of years, Jeff Buckley would be a star in his own right (aided in large part by a certain Leonard Cohen song he’d learned from I’m Your Fan . . .). Willner loved the immediacy of producing tribute concerts. “When something you never saw before is working, and it’s something that will never happen again, it is a feeling one gets that you can’t describe,” he says. He recalls Bill Withers attending his own tribute in 2008. Withers hadn’t sung in public in years, but unexpectedly leaped onstage to join jazz guitarist Cornell Dupree on “Grandma’s Hands.” Though he still releases tribute albums, many are really just recordings of those tribute concerts. That includes 2006’s

20

I N T E R LU D E : HA L W I L L N E R

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, taped a year prior at the Sydney Opera House. Everyone from Rufus Wainwright to Jarvis Cocker of Pulp tried their hand at Cohen’s hits. For the film that accompanied it, Willner even recorded Cohen himself singing “Tower of Song,” backed by U2. Willner finds no rhyme or reason to which of his tribute concerts a label decides to record and release. Covering songs from the totemic 1952 compilation Anthology of American Folk Music didn’t seem an obvious blockbuster, but Shout! Factory turned it into an album in 2006 (having indie icons like Beck and Wilco helped its commercial appeal). Standing with Beck, PJ Harvey, and Elvis Costello watching a jazz band cover “Fishing Blues” is one of Willner’s pinch-me moments. But mostly these concerts never go beyond the people in the room. “I never approach live things like they are going to be albums,” he says. “It’s a live show. It’s different.” Doing the tribute concerts is starting to get tougher too. Once again, Willner popularized a concept and now has to compete with his followers. “When I started doing [tributes] live, not that many people were doing that at the time,” he says. “These days you see a ton of these shitshows.” He may have to pivot again soon, to begin the next trend in the world of tributes. *** Willner says he doesn’t listen to many modern tribute albums. Most of the ones he’s heard, he doesn’t like. There’s usually, he feels, an obvious desire to sell records. The few he likes are the oddballs, the ones that follow someone else’s

21

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

eclectic and niche interests. He cites the 2004 Stephen Foster tribute album Beautiful Dreamer as a favorite. “Again, that was done for the reason of making a great record,” he says. “There was no other agenda.” He also adores a tribute to The Rutles, Eric Idle’s Beatles parody band that never actually existed. An idea that odd could have sprung straight from Willner’s own brain. The two major tribute albums he’s worked on in recent years have tackled an equally eccentric subject. Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski brought Willner the idea, and it exploded into a two doublealbum project with seventy-nine covers tackling—as the original 2006 Rogue’s Gallery subtitle explains it—“Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys.” Willner researched over 600 different sea songs for it, and recruited everyone from Sting to Michael Stipe to sing them. On 2013 sequel Son of Rogue’s Gallery, Waits and Keith Richards slowly bellow “Shenandoah” together—the longtime friends’ first collaboration since 1991—and then further down the tracklist New Orleans “sissy bounce” artists Big Freedia and Katey Red rap the ribald “Sally Racket.” A Willner tribute album has room for both. As of this writing, he’s preparing to release his next big tribute album, covering the songs of T. Rex’s Marc Bolan. He’s lined up U2, Nick Cave, and Elton John along with some younger artists. At one point, he was in the studio with the young singer Børns, and Kesha charged in from the next room and declared, “I want to be on this.” So she is. His next project, he hopes, will be a tribute to George Harrison’s lesser-known solo songs. The CEO of Harrison’s 22

I N T E R LU D E : HA L W I L L N E R

record label came to him with that idea, and now he dreams of getting Harrison’s guitar solos arranged for horns. He’s still waiting on the Harrison estate’s blessing. He doesn’t legally need it, but he says it sends out “weird vibes” if the artist or their estate isn’t on board with the project. But once he starts work, Willner will always follow his own idiosyncratic muse. His tributes veer in unexpected directions, taking esoteric subject matter and wildly reinventing it. To him, that’s the sign of success. He says he often jokes, “If the artist whose work we’re looking at likes the project, then we did not do a good job.” *** On April 7, 2020, just as this book was going to press, Hal Willner tragically passed away at 64 from symptoms consistent with those caused by coronavirus. He had continued working up until the end on his many projects. The tribute album—and this book—wouldn’t exist without him.

23

24

2 The Idea behind I’m Your Fan

“Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.” CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff reportedly said that to Leonard Cohen in 1984, explaining why Cohen’s label would not be releasing his new album Various Positions in the United States. Commercially, Cohen’s career had hit its low point, following infrequent and inconsistent albums that even Cohen would later say weren’t all that good.* He would always be a legend, a shoo-in for the songwriting hall of fame. But, as his career approached its third decade, did anyone actually care what he was up to now? “I was kind of dying,” Cohen recalled of this period at a 2009 concert. And in the next sentence, he credited a French magazine for helping bring him back to life. *** Ironically, the album CBS refused to release was a return to form, containing, among other things, “Hallellujah.” *

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Christian Fevret launched Les Inrockuptibles in 1986 as a quarterly music magazine (soon to become a monthly). Though only twenty-two years old, the French music fan had experience in the media business. Since he was a teenager, he’d taken advantage of France’s recently loosened radio laws—the government had controlled all national radio until 1981—to host a show he called Les Inrockuptibles, a play on the French translation of 1960s TV crime show The Untouchables. With his magazine, Fevret saw a need and filled it. The need, in this case, was French-language coverage of the new wave of underground bands he and his friends all loved. Groups like R.E.M. and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds had started to emerge from America and Europe. Such bands got raves in Rolling Stone and the New Musical Express, but Fevret didn’t see a similar outlet serving French-speaking fans. So he started Les Inrockuptibles as a side gig while he went to law school. It quickly became his main gig. “That was the be-all and end-all of indie music there,” says Stephen Duffy of Les Inrockuptibles-beloved folk-rock band The Lilac Time. “It was up there with the NME and all the other great rock papers. Everybody wants to break France.” Cohen himself would also praise the “rock magazine in Paris whose name no one can pronounce,” comparing it to Rolling Stone in the sixties, telling an interviewer that Les Inrockuptibles “holds up the flaming torch of rock and roll.”1 With no local competition, the magazine’s editors were able to get pretty much whomever they wanted to talk with them. Their very first issue boasted interviews with Chris 26

T H E I D E A B E H I N D I ’M YOU R FA N

Isaak and Suzanne Vega. It also included, only shortly after CBS had declined to release his record stateside, their first of many interviews with Leonard Cohen. “We got on really well with him,” says Les Inrockuptibles music editor and I’m Your Fan’s co-executive producer JeanDaniel Beauvallet. “He was in Paris a lot, and the magazine was actually very close to where he was staying. We [would] try to bump into him by ‘coincidence.’ It became a bit of a joke.” As their light stalking showed, the French editors adored Cohen. Fevret fondly recalled listening to an early greatesthits album in his father’s record collection as a child. He didn’t speak English well, but Cohen sang-spoke his words clearly enough that Fevret could make them out. “With Leonard, I suddenly found, not a father but an older, wise brother,” he says. They had thought they were the only fans among their peers, but they soon noticed musicians decades younger than Cohen citing him in their interviews. Nick Cave, in particular, seemed to bring him up constantly. The editors conceived a way of introducing more of their peers and readers to Cohen’s music, using covers by the current wave of alternative bands. *** Covers had altered the trajectory of Cohen’s career before. In fact, covers arguably gave Cohen that career in the first place. Before he became a musician, he spent a decade as a poet and novelist. His transition from the page to the record, when 27

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

he was already thirty-three years old, did not begin with his own recordings. It began with Judy Collins. In the mid-1960s, Cohen moved to New York from Hydra, where he’d spent several years living the life of a gentleman poet, to investigate starting a musical career (not many recording studios on Greek islands). A mutual friend soon sent him to Collins’s doorstep. “All the singers with new songs would come to me, because I had the record contract and I could get them out,” Collins told Cohen’s biographer Sylvie Simmons. They had a lovely conversation over wine and Italian food. Then, humble from the start, Leonard left without actually playing her any of his songs. He returned the next day and rectified that, playing her three. She promptly snapped up one for her next album: “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” “Talk about dark,” she told Simmons, “a song about suicide. I attempted suicide myself at fourteen, before I found folk music, so of course I loved it. We were desperately looking for something unusual for my album and when I heard ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag,’ that was it.” That wasn’t it. Her partner, who had been listening in on Cohen’s visit, convinced her to record a second Cohen composition as well: “Suzanne.” When it came out on her 1966 album In My Life, “Suzanne” became a minor hit. That recording, and Collins’s endorsement of an unknown writer, began Cohen’s career in music. Just as Joan Baez introduced the world to Bob Dylan earlier in the decade, Collins introduced the world to Cohen. After releasing her versions of “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag” in 1966, Collins released three more Cohen covers in 1967—all before Leonard had released a single 28

T H E I D E A B E H I N D I ’M YOU R FA N

recording himself. “His songs carried me through dark years like mantras or stones that you hold in your hand while the sun rises or the fire burns,” Collins wrote in her autobiography. “They kept me centered as I stood in front of thousands of people, my eyes closed, my hands around the neck of a guitar, my voice singing his ethereal lyrics. The audience responded to his writing, the songs were like water to a person dying of thirst. They were songs for the spirit when our spirits were strained to the breaking point.”2 Other musicians quickly began covering Cohen’s songs— or rather, covering Collins’s covers of them, having no other versions to learn them by. “Suzanne” in particular became a near-instant standard. British actor and singer Noel Harrison had a hit with it in 1967, still before Cohen had released a note of his own music. Harry Belafonte jumped aboard, and François Hardy translated it into French, in 1968. “Suzanne” remained for decades the most-covered Cohen song, until “Hallelujah” eventually overtook it (spurred by the tribute album those French editors were still twenty years away from dreaming up). Cohen finally released his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, two days after Christmas 1967, and then began releasing albums at a steady clip. By the end of the 1960s, only four years after he’d turned up on Judy Collins’s doorstep, dozens of Leonard Cohen covers had hit the market. Musicians had branched beyond “Suzanne” too, with covers across genres by everyone from soul-belter Joe Cocker (“Bird on the Wire”) to early rock hitmaker Dion (“Sisters of Mercy”) to bluegrass giants Flatt & Scruggs (“Tonight Will Be Fine”). 29

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Throughout his rise, Cohen covers flooded the marketplace. Marketplaces plural, in fact, as international artists translated his lyrics into their own languages. In 1973, popular French singer Graeme Allwright released Chante Leonard Cohen, one of the first Cohen covers albums, translating nine songs into his own language. The next year the popular Italian protest singer Fabrizio de André began translating Cohen’s songs as well. One Polish singer, Maciej Zembaty, has covered over sixty Cohen songs since 1983 (“In Eastern Europe we are so depressed, Leonard Cohen doesn’t bother us,” he once said3). Back in the English-speaking world, the most notable Cohen covers album before I’m Your Fan came from Cohen’s own longtime backup singer and friend Jennifer Warnes. She first began pitching it to labels—with Leonard’s blessing—at the end of the seventies. It was bad timing; Cohen’s career was just beginning his decade-long commercial decline. “Leonard seemed to be A&R poison,” the album’s producer C. Roscoe Beck later recalled.4 Cohen himself told an interviewer, “she went from office to office of the record labels and she was kind of laughed out of the place in each and every one.”5 After years of trying, Warnes finally found a label home for her Cohen tribute album in the mid-1980s. Having a new hit—the Joe Cocker duet “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman—no doubt helped her perceived commercial potential. By that point, she told a BBC interviewer, she felt it was “a record that had to be made,” adding that by 1986 “Leonard had years of mixed reviews and I think he had lost faith.”6 30

T H E I D E A B E H I N D I ’M YOU R FA N

Just two years after CBS had refused to release Cohen’s own record in the United States, Warnes’s covers record was a smash. Within six months it had sold 300,000 copies and went on to top three-quarters of a million worldwide. Though it’s debatable how many younger music fans Famous Blue Raincoat reached—Warnes was best known for a collaboration with one 1960s rocker, and a year later would pair with a second, The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley, to sing “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”—Warnes’s hit album began the Cohen comeback that I’m Your Fan would amplify a few years later. *** The Les Inrockuptibles editors didn’t know Warnes’s album. Nor did they consider I’m Your Fan a tribute album. In fact, they knew few tribute albums. Christian Fevret says there was “no real fashion” for them yet—not quite accurate, as we’ve seen, but they certainly weren’t yet as popular as they would become. “For us, it was not a tribute because Leonard was not for us an old songwriter and he didn’t need a tribute,” Fevret says. “We just wanted young bands to meet his songs.” Young bands, he felt, would not be too intimidated to reinvent Cohen’s songs in their own image. “Maybe today it would be different because today his status is quite different,” Fevret muses. “At that time when he was coming for a show in Paris, he played in a two- or three-thousand seat theater. Ten years ago, when he began to tour again, he played 15,000 seat arenas. He was not the gigantic figure that he is now.” 31

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Their goal, though, was not to make Leonard Cohen widely popular again; they wanted to make him popular for the first time among their own generation. And whether they knew it or not, they were on the cutting edge of another trend: bands in the still-young “alternative rock” movement making a concerted effort to honor their lesser-known influences. In 2019, New York Times Magazine editor Nitsuh Abebe compiled an exhaustive Google doc tracing this phenomenon, which quickly spread among music nerds on Twitter. Abebe writes at the top: In between punk and the mid 90s, there was something sort of interesting about the way so many bands used covers to stake out a whole audience and canon and set of shared references around what was still called “alternative” music. By the end of the 80s, as that whole realm gathered up into a thriving thing, there were a lot of those covers. It’s hard to capture, from today’s perspective, how much they presented as a kind of shared secret, badges for a club.7 Abebe demonstrates how extensively these young bands covered their 1970s and 1980s influences, the punk and rock lifers whose influence on other artists far outweighed their commercial success. These new bands had grown up on these pioneers, and found themselves in positions of enough prominence to bring these underground bands to the surface. Artists like The Vaselines and The Meat Puppets would gain larger audiences from fans like Nirvana covering them than they ever had in their heyday. 32

T H E I D E A B E H I N D I ’M YOU R FA N

Though Cohen was several generations older than these early punk and grunge acts—and, at one time, far more popular—by the early 1990s he might be slotted in the same box: beloved by younger musicians, unknown or ignored by those musicians’ fans. Cohen’s career had already recovered somewhat from his Various Positions low point, with his next album I’m Your Man getting strong reviews (and, yes, being properly released in the United States), but Les Inrockuptibles staff felt his music wasn’t reaching their peers. He was in danger of becoming an oldies act. These musicians raved about Cohen’s music whenever they interviewed them, and the editor hoped to use those artists’ fanbases to spread the Leonard Cohen gospel. They faced an obvious hurdle: they were a Frenchlanguage magazine. A CD that came packaged with their magazine would not reach many people outside the country. So instead of releasing the album themselves, they approached several record labels with the idea, eventually signing deals with Atlantic Records subsidiary East West to release the album in most of Europe and the United States (Cohen’s own label Columbia released it in France). The producers demanded total creative autonomy, and got it. The label would give them money to book studio time, and they’d deliver the finished album when it was ready. Beauvallet says East West tried to change the deal later: “In a typical British manner, they tried to dispossess us of the project and make it sound like it was their own idea. They were playing like we came from the third world.” Taking advantage of their autonomy, they eschewed the album’s honoree for the album cover. Instead, they picked an 33

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

entirely unrelated image by the street photographer Weegee taken in 1937. Titled “Summer on the Lower East Side,” the image shows a dozen kids romping in the spray of an open fire hydrant. I asked the producers to explain the image’s secret connection to Cohen, but there wasn’t one. Beauvallet had found the photo on a postcard in an antique shop and it just felt right. “What we liked about it was the joy and innocence of these kids,” he says. “We don’t want something too dark or gloomy for Leonard Cohen because it would have been so obvious. We wanted it to just be a celebration.” He didn’t know Weegee was one of the most expensive photographers to license in the world. He also didn’t know there had been a recent trend of Weegee photographs covering hip albums, including John Zorn’s Naked City and George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, both from the year prior. They just cold-called Weegee’s widow and asked for her okay. She gave it. The producers had one final step before contacting bands and recording the album: getting Cohen’s permission. In truth, they were not required to do any such thing. To answer a question I get asked often: an artist doesn’t need anyone’s permission to cover a song. Paul McCartney doesn’t need to personally approve your folk-funk “Blackbird” cover. You would, however, have to pay fees to release it. The fees are standardized; famous artists can’t charge more. Called “mechanical licenses,” they give a share of whatever money gets earned back to the original songwriter(s). A tribute album is no different; it’s just a matter of getting a dozen or more mechanical licenses rather than one. But

34

T H E I D E A B E H I N D I ’M YOU R FA N

the French producers were inexperienced and as far as they knew, the project could go no further if Cohen didn’t sign off. Luckily, when they called him up on a private number they’d gotten their hands on, he said yes. The producers say he was quite enthusiastic about hearing younger bands singing his songs. To the extent he paid attention to music in the late eighties—mostly what his teenage kids turned him onto—he was impressed by the new wave of bands. As he told Danny Fields in an unpublished interview, “As the Talmud says, there’s good wine in every generation. You can’t keep ’em down.”8 He was enthusiastic, but as Cohen himself told Q Magazine in 1991, hardly optimistic: [Fevret] presented me with the idea and we ran through some group names. I didn’t know all of them but I knew Ian McCulloch whom I’ve met on several occasions and R.E.M. and The Pixies and Lloyd Cole and John Cale. It seemed like a really nice thing. I said, “Yeah, seems like a great idea. Goodbye and good luck.” I never thought I’d hear from him again.”9

35

Interlude: Ralph Sall

When the Grateful Dead took their tribute project away from The Bridge producer Terry Tolkin, the man they gave it to was Ralph Sall. At the time, the twenty-something had little music experience. He had just left his movie executive gig at 20th Century Fox, disillusioned when he discovered the job wasn’t just sitting around dreaming up good movie ideas. He got into music supervision, with his old movie-studio contacts hiring him to curate their soundtracks—still his primary job twenty years later. A consummate hustler, Sall promptly started a side gig as well: tribute albums. That business also continues twenty years later. Though Sall didn’t invent the format, he more than anyone else deserves credit with making the tribute album a cultural phenomenon in the nineties. He pitched his idea for a Dead tribute album to label executives. He says my asking him about Tolkin’s similar project was the first he’d heard of it. He did know a few of the early tribute albums, citing Hal Willner’s Amarcord Nino Rota record in particular, but mostly stumbled into the format. He wanted to make a record, but couldn’t imagine any label hiring someone with zero experience to produce

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

their artist. His early soundtrack work gave him a little experience producing compilations, though, and he figured tribute compilations could offer a side route into the music business. He’d first completed a covers compilation called Guilty Pleasures a few years prior, recording late-eighties rock bands like Mother Love Bone covering one-hit wonders of the seventies, but label issues led to its being shelved. His Grateful Dead tribute album eventually landed at the band’s own label, Arista Records. His pitch to them: a jam band tribute without any jam bands. “What I wanted to do with Deadicated was showcase the fact that the Dead songwriters were really special, because the whole thing about the Grateful Dead is the live experience, and the Deadheads, and the whole scene, and not really focused that much on songcraft,” he says. “I thought if I got some estimable artists together to perform those songs, stripped away from the whole scene, people would notice the songs of the Grateful Dead.” He brought the idea to the Dead themselves, who were enthusiastic. He modeled the record after a Dead show, mimicking the rhythms of the band’s contemporaneous setlists. Like Willner, he chose the songs and then picked bands he thought could cover them, doing his research to ferret out secret Deadheads among the non-jam band music community. With the blessing of the band and a major label backing his project, Sall recruited unlikely artists from Elvis Costello (“Ship of Fools”) to Jane’s Addiction (“Ripple”). At one point he even traveled with the band on tour in Europe, recording covers by Suzanne Vega (“China Doll,” “Cassidy”) along the way. He even got the Dead’s current keyboardist 37

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Bruce Hornsby to contribute a song (“Jack Straw”). “I always wanted to make it sound like a great song by the artist,” he says. “I wanted people to go, ‘Wow, that’s a great Jane’s Addiction song! Wait, that’s actually the Dead?’” When he completed a song, he’d pass it over to the Dead camp. Jerry Garcia, in particular, seemed thrilled by what he heard. When the record came out in 1991, Bob Weir joined Los Lobos onstage at the release party. Dead lyricist Robert Hunter sent Sall a note saying the record was like getting a dozen roses a day for the rest of his life. The band members weren’t the only people that liked it. Deadicated was a hit, rising to #24 on the Billboard album charts. Almost immediately, other bands began contacting Sall to curate tributes to them. “I got pitched by every band under the sun to make a record about them,” he says. “I passed on all of them.” Sall had already learned that tribute albums entailed a huge amount of work, and he wanted to focus on his personal passions. Those rejected bands, undeterred, often went off and found someone else to make theirs. Tribute albums had moved from novel curiosities to big business, and the gold rush had begun. *** Two years after Deadicated, Ralph Sall conceived an even more ambitious idea. He knew that the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) was among the best-selling records ever.* As of 2018, it took the top slot in the United States, from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. *

38

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

Then he read a Garth Brooks quote in Rolling Stone saying that if the Eagles were still a band—they’d broken up in 1980—they would be a country band. He decided to make the Eagles a country band and brought the idea of a country tribute to the Eagles. They loved it. But Sall didn’t produce the resulting Common Thread. Country superproducer James Stroud did, overseen by the Eagles’ Don Henley and the band’s manager Irving Azoff. Sall still expresses bitterness at not being able to realize his idea, but won’t go into details on the record about what happened. The man who conceived the album ended up credited merely as an ambiguous “Creative Consultant.” He’s currently pitching a Nashville tribute album that he describes as his “revenge” on what happened with Common Thread. Common Thread, featuring then-current genre superstars like Brooks & Dunn (“Best of My Love”), Travis Tritt (“Take It Easy”), and Vince Gill (“I Can’t Tell You Why”), went on to sell three million records, which Sall says makes it the bestselling tribute album ever.† It also boasts an arguably even more impressive distinction: It reunited the Eagles. Though the band members didn’t play on the album itself, Tritt requested that they join him for his music video. Despite not having played or recorded together since their 1980 breakup, the agreed. They officially reunited soon after. Two decades later, they are still together.

With so many contenders, that claim is hard to verify definitively, but after a lot of looking around, I’ve yet to find another tribute album whose sales top it. †

39

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Though Common Thread and I’m Your Fan couldn’t be more different on the surface—country superstars versus indie cult artists—they are arguably the two tribute albums with the most concrete impacts on the actual artists they tributed. One reunited the Eagles; the other gave Leonard Cohen his most famous song. “Sometimes,” Sall says, “you can change rock history.” *** Sall’s early blockbusters allowed him to sometimes make more idiosyncratic tributes, like 1995’s Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits, which saw acts like Liz Phair and The Ramones covering old TV themes (often having to extend 30-second jingles into proper songs). But even there, he’s not aiming for cult classic; he’s aiming for best-seller. And more often than not, he succeeds. Unlike Hal Willner’s more artsy or niche endeavors, for Sall, how an album will perform in the marketplace matters. He respected Willner’s early efforts, but he considers his tribute albums a different beast.‡ That’s not to say the creative side isn’t paramount, but it’s never his only consideration. “The commercial element has to warrant its existence,” he says. “If I’m going to spend the time to make one of these records, I have to believe that, on release, there’s going to be a huge number of people wanting the record. I [am not] Willner agrees. That’s why he’s hesitant to claim to be the founder of the tribute album: his early efforts were weird and didn’t sell as well as the ones that came after, like Sall’s. ‡

40

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

interested in reaching the fifteen people who are like, ‘Yes, finally!’” Even with his track record, labels usually start at no. They always give him the same two excuses: They’re focused on breaking their own artists, and tribute albums are too expensive and difficult to make. “If I had listened to everyone who said that, I would never have made a record,” Sall says. “I specialize in difficult.” He eventually wears the label people down. Even that tribute to TV cartoon theme songs—hardly a sure thing— became a hit. “Almost without exception, when the records succeed, the labels are shocked,” he says. “You’re doing something that’s against the grain of what labels exist for.” He adds, “They’re called special projects [at record labels] for a reason, but when done right, they’re . . . commercially sound investments.” *** Sall has produced more tribute albums than almost anyone. That experience has led him to a few principles of how to do it. Some are principles that many other tribute album curators—including the Les Inrockuptibles editors—would almost certainly object to. His most incendiary is that the artists recording the covers need to be at the same level commercially as whoever’s being tributed. Otherwise, he says, the appropriate word isn’t tribute; it’s exploit. I think what happened in the wake of Deadicated and some of the other successful projects I had is a flood of so-called 41

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

tribute records came out—and I think most probably still do—where the artists on them are not in any way of comparable stature. They couldn’t be in the same sentence as the artists that they’re so-called tributing, such that they’re getting more out of doing that person’s song than they’re giving to the process. I think that’s the spurious tribute. Are they giving to the legacy of the artists, or are they taking the shine of the artists for themselves by doing it? It’s a big difference. If everyone had this philosophy, 90 percent of tribute albums would vanish. You arguably couldn’t even do a Beatles tribute album, since no other band can match their success. But even if Sall’s is a minority opinion in the tribute album world, it can’t be dismissed out of hand. Are lesser-known or newer artists—the sort that populate, well, I’m Your Fan—merely glomming onto a more famous artist’s success? I would argue no. For one, I can’t think of any artist who’s seen a seismic career improvement after performing on a tribute album. A baby step forward for a smaller act, sure; but no massive commercial leaps. So if recording for tribute albums is anyone’s strategy for success, it isn’t working. Also, since the dawn of rock and roll, covering more famous bands has been how many young artists got their start. Paul McCartney might not have been in a position to get his very own Ralph Sall-produced tribute album in 2014 without playing all those covers in Hamburg fifty years prior. Moreover, even baby bands give something quite concrete back to the artist they’re covering: royalties, via the mechanical license. So “exploit” seems a strong word. The 42

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

original artists do benefit financially, at least a little, from a tribute album. Regardless, Sall wants only giant acts for his. To convince them, he does a lot of research. Unlike the sometimes lucrative licensing deals with his movie soundtracks, there’s little money for the artists in tribute albums. They need to love the original artist and genuinely want to “pay tribute” to them. Elvis Costello fits no one’s mental image of a Deadhead, but by reading interviews, Sall discovered he was. He wasn’t the only one surprised. In one of the more amusing anecdotes he tells me, the Dead’s security apparently didn’t expect Costello to be a Deadhead either. Sall tells the story: I was in Europe with the Grateful Dead, I think it was 1990 while I was making the record and I was meeting Elvis Costello. The Dead were playing Wembley and we were going to meet up there. I got there a little later than he did, and the Dead security had him up against the wall, because at the time he didn’t look like Elvis Costello. He had a beard and long hair and just looked different than people had seen him. They were like, “Hey Ralph, this guy says he’s Elvis Costello.” I was like, “Oh yes, well he is.” They were like, “Oh, okay, let’s go see Jerry.” When Sall did his massive The Art of McCartney album in 2014, he pulled off one of the biggest tribute album triumphs in recent years, convincing Bob Dylan, who rarely participates in these sorts of projects, to cover The Beatles’ “Things We Said Today.” In a rarity for Sall, the song was the artist’s own selection. He’d suggested a few other songs to 43

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Dylan—he doesn’t remember which—but happily accepted his choice. “It wouldn’t be a shock to anyone to find out that Bob had his own ideas,” he says. “Certain people get a free pass.” He adds that McCartney was particularly thrilled by the coup. Not many of the hundreds of Beatles tribute albums have Paul in the background tossing in his two cents, but Sall’s did. That’s been the case with every one he’s done. One way he gets all these giant acts to say yes is by having the support of the artists he’s tributing. For 2000’s Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors, he even reunited the three surviving Doors to serve as the backing band for most tracks. Doors superfans like Stone Temple Pilots and The Cult couldn’t pass up an opportunity to play with the actual band members. The reverse happened too: Bo Diddley may not have been much of a Doors fan, but The Doors jumped at the chance to play with one of their heroes. Sall even secured some isolated Jim Morrison vocal tracks to add in for a posthumous collaboration with John Lee Hooker. Like Willner, Sall has been blessed with an increasing rarity in today’s music industry: a substantial budget. It allows him to travel around and produce the bands in person. He would tell bands, “Look, I only need a day, I’ll meet you anywhere.” He’d travel wherever they were and book a studio. All they needed to do was show up. “I try to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes,” he says. He flew to Kingston, Jamaica to record reggae legend Burning Spear for Deadicated. He drove to William S. Burroughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas to tape him reciting Jim Morrison lyrics for Stoned Immaculate. “He was a 44

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

different kind of guy,” Sall recalls of Burroughs. “I remember leaving his house and looking in the rear view mirror of the rental car I had. Maybe an average person would be standing on his front porch waving goodbye, but he was undulating his entire body in one gigantic wave over and over.” Producing all the tracks himself allows Sall some oversight and control. “There’s a consistency of sound and vision on those projects, which I think helped them immeasurably,” he says. “It wasn’t a case of artists mailing in their performances and having disparate sounds and something that didn’t really hang together as its own album.” Sometimes he even records all the backing tracks with the same groups. For Southern Rock Country Style, he convened a group of Nashville’s most experienced session musicians, then found the singers to sing over the instrumental tracks they laid down. With The Art of McCartney, he added a twist: he recorded Paul’s own backing band playing dozens of their boss’s songs (he says he still has many of those instrumentals left over, and may someday find the singers for a second volume). One other similarity Sall has with Willner is that he assigns the songs to the artists. This is a rarity in the tribute album world, where most producers let the bands pick. They feel it makes the bands more likely to agree to contribute, given that they don’t have large paydays on offer. But if you let bands do that, Sall says, you’ll call ten artists and they’ll all want the same song. This approach takes time. A lot of time, in some cases. He worked on that McCartney tribute album on and off for eleven years. Record-label regime change played a role 45

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

in that—Sall eventually funded it himself—but the delays allowed him to get artists he wouldn’t have otherwise. In a career of big name stars, The Art of McCartney, finally released in 2014, boasts the biggest names of all: Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Brian Wilson, B. B. King. And those are just the “B”s. True to his principles, he wasn’t going to have some second-tier artist singing a McCartney song. “At a certain point it became, is there a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that I haven’t brought into this record?” Sall says. Rolling Stone called it “one of the most impressive lineups of any tribute record ever.”1 Sall’s tribute album pace has slowed since his 1990s peak. The Art of McCartney was his first in a decade, and he hasn’t done another in the five years since. As file sharing took a bite out of the record industry in the early 2000s, the business became smaller and less fun. The money dried up for his expensive fly-all-over-the-world efforts, and he had to resort to producing remotely in some cases. But thanks to streaming, the industry has bounced back. Sall now perceives a more hospitable environment to convince record labels to fund his grand ambitions and plans to ramp up his pace. “There’s definitely about to be a renaissance in the genre, if only because I decided there was going to be,” he laughs. He says his long-promised U2 tribute is nearing completion, and he’s working on a sequel to Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits with a whole new generation of artists and TV shows. He won’t say what a few other ongoing projects are, except that they “are so obvious. People will look at them and think, ‘How could this never have existed?’” 46

I N T E R LU D E : R A L P H S A L L

With every tribute album he’s done over the past two-plus decades, Sall says he is trying to make a record that will stand up for years to come. A lofty goal for a sometimes unloved and mocked format, but that’s why Sall puts so much time, effort, and money into getting the biggest names and producing everything himself. “If I go out and try to make a record, I’m really trying to go make Exile on Main St.,” he says, “something like, ‘Okay. This could be the greatest record ever made.’”

47

48

3 Recording I’m Your Fan

Having gotten Leonard Cohen’s personal approval, the two Les Inrockuptibles editors set out to pick the artists for I’m Your Fan. They listed all the musicians who had mentioned Leonard Cohen to them in interviews, or who they otherwise knew to be fans. It turned out to be a long list. They decided to select artists primarily known as songwriters. Many of the biggest Leonard Cohen covers had up until then been performed by artists better known as song interpreters, Judy Collins foremost among them. They wanted people who had experience doing what Leonard did. “I think he’s a great singer, but it’s not his main characteristic,” Fevret says. “We didn’t want people that would be too precious about it. We knew that songwriters would understand really the heart of the songs.” They also selected artists that fit the magazine’s aesthetic, just on the fringes of the mainstream. With the Pixies and R.E.M., they got alternative-rock upstarts just breaking out of the underground. With That Petrol Emotion, they got

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

a band connected to the British punk scene, containing two former members of The Undertones (best known for “Teenage Kicks”). They drew on world music with Ugandan singer Geoffrey Oryema, and local music with Jean-Louis Murat, who translated the lyrics to “Avalanche” into French. They got a few relative veterans who’d made it big with their former bands: Ian McCulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen), Robert Forster (The Go-Betweens), and, the most veteran of all, John Cale (The Velvet Underground). We might call this the Hal Willner approach, following one’s eclectic interests. It can lead to a more interesting and idiosyncratic album. It also runs a risk: Most bands will be forgotten by history. In that moment, as the eighties became the nineties, all these acts seemed like they had at least the potential to become huge. Some did—R.E.M., Pixies. Others very much did not. Even producer Beauvallet, who selected some of the bands, acknowledges that not all his picks panned out: “Some of them stood the test of time, some of them didn’t.”* One of the bands in that “didn’t” box was the New Zealand indie pop band Dead Famous People. They’re notable for one reason though: frontwoman Dons Savage was one of only two women on the entire 18-song tracklist (Pixies bassist Kim Deal was the other). Fevret sighs when The obvious comparison is a Leonard Cohen tribute album that followed I’m Your Fan’s success, 1995’s Tower of Song. The names there are bigger: Bono, Sting, Elton John. And I have also never read anyone argue that, musically speaking, Tower of Song lives up to I’m Your Fan. See Chapter 6 for more on this album. *

50

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

I bring up this rather glaring imbalance. “No, it’s true,” he says. “If there is something I would like to change, maybe this would be the main thing. In those times, we didn’t think in those terms. Maybe because Leonard was such a ladies’ man for us, unconsciously, [it] was obvious that we needed male voices to sing his songs. But it was maybe because we didn’t have enough imagination to ask [female] singers to do covers.” Cohen himself seemed to obliquely comment on the imbalance; when an interviewer asked which artists he himself might have added, the three he named were Jennifer Warnes, Suzanne Vega, and the Roche sisters.1 It’s not just I’m Your Fan. The world of tribute albums has a gender problem. To be sure, many producers do a better job of spotlighting female voices than the Les Inrockuptibles editors. But even then, in some cases the fact that they’re women is the album’s entire “hook.” Women-sing-X tribute albums abound; the most recent as of this writing is 2019’s Tom Waits tribute Come On Up to the House: Women Sing Waits, which featured artists like Rosanne Cash and Aimee Mann tackling Waits ballads. The picture gets even bleaker when you look at the credits on almost any tribute album. The curators, producers, people actually putting these together: almost entirely men. This is true for the music industry in general, of course. In 2019, the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released a study looking at the people behind the 700 songs to top the Billboard Hot 100 between 2012 and 2018. Only 21.7 percent of the artists were women. That’s a disappointing enough number on its own, but it gets worse: women made up only 2.1 percent 51

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

of the producers of those songs. Tribute albums may not be alone in this regard but, in a format explicitly designed to raise up and celebrate other people, one wishes they were at the forefront of change. *** Most of the artists Fevret and Beauvallet asked to cover Cohen songs agreed. Whenever possible, the producers had gone to the musicians directly to avoid label or managers getting in the way. They got the Pixies by asking frontman Frank Black when he was literally trapped, driving the editors to a train station in Amsterdam. Once the musician said yes, avenues for outside interference grew narrower. Morrissey said no, and Beauvallet thinks maybe De La Soul did as well, but eighteen other artists all quickly signed on. A few agreed primarily out of gratitude to Les Inrockuptibles for championing their music to French audiences, but most signed on for the reason you’d expect: their own fandom. When you start talking to these artists about Cohen, many tell a personal story. Often an older brother or sister brought home an album when they were kids. For instance, Tim Booth, frontman of the band James, one of the producers’ bets that did pay off (two years after I’m Your Fan James would score an international hit with the indie classic “Laid”), recalls: My sister played me his early music in probably 1968. She loved Leonard Cohen and she would make me sit down and listen to the lyrics. Then I remember later, probably when I was about 18, my other sister Mandy 52

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

playing me “Chelsea Hotel” and saying, listen to this lyric, and being blown away by her explaining to me that it was about Janis Joplin in the Chelsea Hotel. That incredible final line, “I don’t think about you often”— I’m just going, wow, what a hard way to end a song. It’s shocking and brilliant at the same time. . . . It’s hard to know who influences you, but I’m guessing that a boy of eight hearing his sister playing these words . . . had some kind of deep influence on me. In promotional materials sent to press with the album, David McComb, leader of Australian eighties-rock giants The Triffids, recalled, “I first heard him when I was eight. My eldest brother had returned from Vancouver with his Canadian bride. ‘So Long, Marianne’ was playing in his house in South Perth. I kept going to the record player and putting it back on. I first liked the pretty tunes and the words that didn’t make any sense.” For precisely that last reason—the sometimes-inscrutable words—some of the artists were slower to come around. In those same materials, That Petrol Emotion frontman Steve Mack said Cohen’s music initially seemed “too severe” and singer Peter Astor said, “The words sounded like an old hippie’s.” In conversation today, Astor says he was bound to come around eventually; he calls being a Leonard Cohen fan “a job requirement for a sad white boy.” Frank Black of Pixies came to Cohen later as well. He told Cohen biographer Sylvie Simmons that he bought Cohen’s latest album I’m Your Man at a highway service station on a Pixies tour in 53

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

1990. Circumstances led to him listening to it more than he’d planned. He’d tried to escape the rest of the band at one tour stop by checking into a distant hotel, only to discover that bassist Kim Deal—the main person he wanted to escape from—had had the same idea. She had been booked in the room next to his. So, to avoid contact, he remained locked in his room with his new cassette. “It was summer, bright and sunny, but I had all the curtains drawn and it was very dark and black in my little room, and I played I’m Your Man on my boom box,” he told Simmons. “It was all I listened to for three days straight, over and over. I was in the right kind of emotional state—kind of lonely, frustrated, bored, a whole combination, and alone in this empty place, this hotel at the end of the universe—and I got it.” He specifically cites that album’s stereotypically eighties production, the cheap synthesizers and drum machines. Among the bands from I’m Your Fan, this period proved as divisive as it was to Cohen’s other fans. Some, like British singer-songwriter Bill Pritchard, who covered “I’m Your Man,” loved the juxtaposition of a cheap, tacky sound scoring Cohen’s poetic lyrics. “Presumably another bloke would’ve just said, ‘Oh, these are my demos. Now, can we do the album for real?” he says. “But he didn’t do that. It was brilliant in its way because it was so incredibly cheesy. The lo-fi and the hi-fi meet. It was like listening to Frank Sinatra with his mate playing on the Bontempi organ.”† Astor calls Cohen’s A very inexpensive plastic keyboard sold in the seventies and eighties.

†

54

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

foray into 1980s production “punk,” “confrontational,” and “slightly perverse” (he means that as a compliment). “I mean, if you upset the purists, you’re always doing something right,” he adds. Tim Booth of James probably speaks for more Cohen fans at the time when he bemoans the “rather tacky drum machines and synthesizer sound that nobody has bothered to work on. . . . The production sounds dated, whereas somehow those sixties ones, they sound universal and eternal. I figured he probably ran out of money. That way of recording is very cheap compared with having a full band making all those amazing Gypsy-type sounds he had on the earlier records.” The only I’m Your Fan artist confirmed to have actually met the reclusive Cohen was Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch. He wrote in the liner notes about their ill-fated meeting backstage in Dublin on Cohen’s 1988 tour: “I was so nervous. I arrived completely drunk. I was so moved that I told him, ‘I love you.’ He was very happy that I loved him so. I gave him a copy of Ocean Rain; he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s you. I was told you were a genius.’ I was sweating. I didn’t know what to say next and answered: ‘No, you’re the genius.’” A couple decades later, Booth attempted to meet Cohen during Cohen’s 2008–2010 comeback tour. At a show in Manchester, he attempted to bring Leonard a gift. He’d read that a prominent health store had created an herbal product called “Golden Voice,” inspired by Leonard. He brought some of the herbs to the show, but had to leave them for Leonard at the box office without getting backstage. Cohen’s manager told him that even Bono didn’t get backstage. “I got 55

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

a message back saying, ‘So sorry I didn’t see you,’” he says. “I didn’t take it as an insult.” He later learned that the herbs had been made for Keith Richards, not Cohen. *** Once the eighteen artists signed on, they had to pick which songs they’d cover. Unlike Willner and Sall’s handson approach, the Les Inrockuptibles editors acted like most tribute album producers: they let bands choose their own songs. They simply directed traffic as best they could. Fevret remembers constantly running to the drug store across the street from their magazine’s office, using the fax machine there to inform all the bands and their managers when a song had been taken off the table. That system only broke down once. Robert Forster claimed “Tower of Song” and the other bands were dutifully notified. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds had hoped to cover that song. Their typically confrontational response to learning it was spoken for was, according to band member Mick Harvey: “‘Fuck it. We’ll just do ‘Tower of Song’ [anyway]. They can have two versions.’” He adds that the editors “accepted that somewhere along the line, possibly begrudgingly.” For the artists themselves, choosing which song to cover, on this or any tribute album, required weighing a number of considerations. Perhaps the first decision to be made: Cover a hit or a deep cut? Pick “Suzanne” and you can count on the audience already knowing the song, but you risk suffering by comparison—not just to Cohen’s own recording, but to all the previous covers people have heard. Pick something 56

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

obscure and you avoid the comparisons, but risk getting ignored entirely. Artists came down on different sides of that line. For instance, Stephen Duffy of ornate folk-pop band The Lilac Time figured, “Go for the big ones. Let’s not mince around with some obscure thing that nobody knows. Really embarrass yourself.” He picked “Bird on the Wire.” Whereas Astor said he explicitly thought to himself, “I can’t do ‘Bird on the Wire,’ because it’s just too iconic. Sometimes as a fan, you end up gravitating towards the smaller songs just because . . . you can’t really get your head ‘round ‘Suzanne’ or anything like that. It’s almost hard to hear them properly.” He picked “Take This Longing,” off Cohen’s somewhat lesserknown 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony. Ideally, as on I’m Your Fan, the artists adopt a mix of both mindsets. A tribute album where everyone gravitates toward someone’s greatest hits seems unimaginative, but one packed with deep cuts risks appealing only to superfans. (Though the latter approach can work if one leans into it; 2014’s Bob Dylan in the 80s tribute album inspired countless thinkpieces about how Dylan’s oft-maligned 1980s output was underrated.) After the I’m Your Fan artists answered the iconic-orobscure question, they still had twenty years’ worth of material to choose from. The next question, this one less an explicit decision and more an unconscious pull, would be whether to choose a song for its lyrics or music. Of the bands I spoke with, all seemed drawn primarily to one or the other. Since the producers had deliberately chosen songwriters for the album—and since the artist in question was, after 57

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

all, known as one of music’s greatest wordsmiths—many bands felt drawn to a certain song by its words. Tim Booth of James says he considers himself a lyricist before he considers himself a singer. He picked “So Long, Marianne,” though upon recording it, he regretted picking a song with quite so many lyrics. “We probably should have been a little less ambitious in retrospect,” he says. Guy Chadwick of British psychedelic indie band The House of Love picked “Who By Fire” for the same reason. “The big thing about it for me was it’s just such an unusual lyric,” Chadwick says. “I never understood what it was about. The words don’t seem to relate to each other, do they?” Cathal Coughlan of The Fatima Mansions did understand his lyrics, as he told Les Inrockuptibles when the album came out: “I identify with the lyrics of ‘A Singer Must Die’ because he denounces the State Police. However, his point of view is very ’70s, so far removed from the way we would understand it today.”2 He later said he preferred the cover of “Paperthin Hotel” he’d sent the producers, which he had tried to make sound like a horror film; it got relegated to a four-track More Fans outtakes set.3 On the other side of profundity, The Triffids’ McComb and Adam Peters also chose their song for its lyrics. That song: “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On,” easily the mostderided lyric of Cohen’s career (it doesn’t improve from its title). McComb said he chose it because the words were “trashy and sick and a little different from what people expect of Cohen.” Peters adds today, “I was vehemently like, ‘I don’t want to do “Bird on a Wire” or “So Long, Marianne” and all that. I don’t want to go near that because there’s other people 58

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

that will want to do that. Let’s take a song that no one’s going to look at and do that.’” The bands who chose their songs based on the music rather than the lyrics seem to be, on the whole, the artists less enamored with Cohen’s discography. Robert Forster admits he wasn’t a huge fan at the time (he is now), and picked “Tower of Song” because he felt it sounded like his current band, which leaned more Americana than The GoBetweens had. “It’s got that three-chord country thing,” he says. “It wasn’t a dirge; it wasn’t a minor chord whispered thing over six minutes. This was quite uptempo, and poppy in a way. Van Morrison could have written it in the ’60s or something.” British singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole landed on his song for a similar reason, writing simply “I chose ‘Chelsea Hotel’ because the chords are quite easy and somebody else was doing ‘I’m Your Man.’” Dead Famous People’s Dons Savage is the only artist on the album who openly disliked Leonard Cohen’s music (or at least the only one who will admit it). “I think he was a bit dreary for us,” she says. She followed in a small and mostly ignoble tradition of covering a song one hates for purely commercial reasons. That usually works out as well as you’d expect, but it can occasionally yield good results. For an Elvis tribute concert, Pet Shop Boys picked the first Elvis song they heard simply so they wouldn’t have to listen to any more; “Always On My Mind” became one of the band’s biggest hits. Similarly, Dead Famous People’s “True Love Leaves No Traces” would end up being a high point of the album. Since they were a pop band, Savage says she simply picked the poppiest Cohen song she could find (“poppiness” not being a 59

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

quality he was exactly known for). They increased the tempo and tried to give it a Beatles sound. “He makes me glad I am not as miserable as he is,” Savage wrote in the liner notes. “We covered this song because it was the only one that didn’t make us want to slit our wrists.” Shortly thereafter, the Australian magazine Basta interviewed Cohen, and brought up her quote. “I’m glad that I could serve my colleagues as an awful warning,” he responded. “Sometimes I’m glad, sometimes I’m sad. But my black image is well established, although I still fight against it.”4 *** Songs selected, the bands set about recording them. Which brought them to one more decision any band covering any song faces, and the most consequential of them all: how closely to mirror the original recording. That could prove an especially tricky decision when covering a towering icon like Cohen. Luckily, his recordings weren’t considered as unimpeachable as his songwriting, giving bands room to maneuver. In an interview on French television around when the album came out, James guitarist Larry Gott spoke of the difficulty of capturing Cohen: “It’s a delicate thing to tamper with, a Leonard Cohen song, because his delivery of it, his recordings of them are so fragile, like a spider’s web, almost. Every instrument is very sparsely used and played.” The I’m Your Fan artists offer a variety of tips for how to do a good cover, of Leonard Cohen or anything else. Astor has a particularly good mantra: act like you wrote it yourself. “You have to own it to quite a large degree in order to be 60

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

able to sing it properly,” he says. “For example, I couldn’t do [The Byrds’] ‘Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man.’ It would sound stupid, because I’m English. Cover versions are very much about inhabiting the song in a cultural way.” Peters, who recorded “Don’t Go Home with Your HardOn” with David McComb, adds a related piece of advice to the prospective cover-er: Don’t deify the original. “Leonard Cohen can be taken so seriously,” he says. “I think he can be put on a pedestal. He is the last person that would want that. We chose the song because it was not one of the holy songs, as it were.” The only songs off the album Fevret criticizes are the few where the artists mimicked the original recordings; he points to Bill Pritchard’s “I’m Your Man” and The Lilac Time’s “Bird on the Wire” as culprits. (Though he loves “Who By Fire” by The House of Love, whose singer Chadwick admits, “I just went for a straight copy really.”) Pritchard objects; he brought a “late-night lounge” feel to it, he says, and had to change the key to suit his voice. “I tried to do it at his pitch, but I just couldn’t get that low. The only person I know who can get lower than that is Captain Beefheart.” The Lilac Time’s Stephen Duffy, though, actually agrees with Fevret’s dim assessment of his contribution. He feels he messed it up during mixing, deciding to speed it up and put on special effects like backwards guitar. He wishes he’d left his recording more simple, and had taken that lesson into his own writing. “If I only could go back and say, ‘Look, this is so simple and so easy, and everything you’re trying to do with your music is so complicated, convoluted, and destined not to be remembered. Learn from this,’” he says frankly, adding, “Anyway, let’s not look back with regrets.” 61

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Booth is the other artist I spoke with who admits some chagrin with how his cover turned out. It was only the second cover James had done, after contributing a stellar “Sunday Morning” to Imaginary Records’ Velvet Underground tribute album the year before. “Afterwards, I kind of went, ‘not sure we quite captured the spirit of the thing,’” Booth remembers about his band’s “So Long Marianne.” “The thing needs to have a slight sense of nearly-about-to-fall-apart. It needs a wild Gypsy feel to it. We all felt a bit like: ah, didn’t quite nail that one.” Most of the other bands did nail them, though, often by changing the songs dramatically: new arrangements, instrumentation, tempos, melodies, singing style. Sometimes all of the above. Pixies took “I Can’t Forget,” one of those cheesy synth songs Black had fallen in love with in his hotel room, and turned it into a blast of punky grunge. Ian McCulloch transformed Cohen’s early folk-rock song “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” into a dose of thundering post-punk. Ugandan singer Geoffrey Oryema took “Suzanne”—the most-covered song of the bunch, and in some ways the most intimidating—global, with an entirely new arrangement of Spanish guitar, skittering percussion, and prominent flute. Forster, true to his word, amplified the country elements of “Tower of Song” up to a regular honky-tonk, while R.E.M. brought in their trademark driving rhythms and chiming guitars to make “First We Take Manhattan” sound like it was theirs to begin with. Astor took the most meta approach of the bunch, deciding to cover one of the songs from Cohen’s revered acoustic recordings as if Cohen had recorded it for one of his 62

R E C O R D I N G I ’M YOU R FA N

divisive synth-and-drum-machines ’80s records. His guiding philosophy, he says, was WWLD: What Would Leonard Do? His haunting reverb lament “Take This Longing” sounds like something from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks soundtrack. The most dramatic reinvention—well, the second most dramatic (see Nick Cave, next chapter)—came with, of all things, that little-loved Leonard song “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On.” McComb and Peters’ strategy of picking a song no one would mind if they messed with paid off. The pair had been listening to a lot of hip-hop, a genre that had exploded in the past five years. They decided to incorporate those techniques into their cover, doing, Peters says, their best Eric B. & Rakim impression with samples, loops, and drum programming. The fact that the one semi-rap song on the album came from two non-rappers says something about the world of cover songs. Covers mirror many trends in popular music, but one enormous exception over the past couple decades is the rise of hip-hop. Simply put: rappers rarely cover songs. They honor their heroes and influences in other ways, particularly via remixes and samples. Though the inverse, rap songs covered in other genres, proliferate on YouTube especially (sometimes leading to unfortunate visuals of earnest young white people shouting the n-word), a cover by a rapper is a rare beast indeed. The few exceptions—Snoop Dogg joyously rhyming his way through Cave’s “Red Right Hand” in 2019—make one wish it happened more often. McComb and Peters spent months building their hip-hop Cohen cover in the studio. They incorporated influences from Kraftwerk to LL Cool J. McComb’s Triffids bandmate Martyn 63

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

P. Casey, who had only months prior joined Cave’s Bad Seeds and thus appeared twice on the album, came in to play a Sly Stone-style bassline. McCulloch’s Echo & the Bunnymen compatriot Will Sergeant joined on guitar (“it was like a wifeswapping party,” Peters says of how much band-member overlap the I’m Your Fan tracks had). McComb even opened the track with his impression of a favorite recent Saturday Night Live character, Eddie Murphy’s jive-talking huckster Velvet Jones. “It was just a reflection of what we were fucking around with at that time in our lives,” says Peters. “Looking back on it, it sounds like a couple of young naïve kids in 1991 trying to stretch themselves. I think people were a little like, ‘What the fuck is this?’” Had they picked a more revered Cohen song, their efforts might have backfired. But they offer an ideal example of matching your approach to the right song. No one cared if young rap-obsessed musicians mucked about with “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On.” To many fans, you couldn’t make the song worse than it already was. Even Cohen himself, when asked about the album, said theirs was the one cover he liked more than his own version. But even the insanity of McComb and Peters’ hip-hop cover pales in comparison to the album’s penultimate track. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Tower of Song” ranks today as one of the most bizarre covers ever recorded. And the track that followed it would change music history—and Leonard Cohen’s career—forever.

64

4 Cave and Cale

Christian Fevret says he wanted to begin I’m Your Fan on a calm note—The House of Love’s “Who By Fire” filled that role—and he wanted to end it with the biggest surprises. On the album’s final two tracks, he did just that. The first of the two closing songs deconstructs a classic. The second creates one. *** Nick Cave was one of the few artists on the album who had covered Cohen before. In 1984, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds opened their debut album with a loud and thundering version of Cohen’s acoustic ballad “Avalanche,” one of the greatest covers ever.* Thirty-two years later, when Cohen died, Cave wrote “For many of us, Leonard Cohen was the greatest

In a rarely seen move in the covers world, Cave covered the same song again in an entirely different way three decades later, performing “Avalanche” as a somber piano-and-violin meditation in 2015. *

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

songwriter of them all. Utterly unique and impossible to imitate no matter how hard we tried.” Guitarist Mick Harvey, the Bad Seeds co-founder who had played with Cave from his earliest bands The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party, recalls the two of them growing up in Australia adoring Cohen. In ’77, ’78, a lot of us in Australia, or in England and Europe and so forth, dispensed with a lot of music we’d been listening to up to that point and just made a fresh start. In the aftermath of punk, it was really a time to clear out the cupboards and forge an entirely new outlook and approach. There were certain people, [though], that we held onto, that we held dear and didn’t really let go of. People like Dylan and Leonard Cohen who were in their own world, they didn’t really belong to any larger rock industry mirage. They were really by themselves as complete individuals. Cave first discovered Cohen growing up in the small Australian city of Wangaratta. A girlfriend had Cohen’s third album, Songs of Love and Hate, and Cave had heard nothing like it. “You’ve got to understand that the climate in this particular town was ultraconservative,” he told the BBC decades later. “People just didn’t know about anything, let alone Leonard Cohen. It was just the strangest music I’d ever heard. I guess in some way you had this secret thing that you liked, that you knew nobody else in this country town would ever even hear.”1 When Cave liked someone, Harvey says, he would sift through that person’s catalog with a fine-toothed comb. Cave prioritized lyric-writing over all else, and would study a writer like Cohen to try to break down how they did what 66

C AV E A N D C A L E

they did. The connection might have surprised listeners of Cave’s music then, loud and abrasive as opposed to Cohen’s pensive stillness. But Cave pointed fans to his influences often in those early years. He followed the “Avalanche” cover on his first album with a Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash cover on his second (“Wanted Man”) and then recorded an entirely covers collection for his third, Kicking Against the Pricks, tackling songs popularized by the very non-punk likes of Tom Jones and Glen Campbell. “I think a lot of musicians don’t mind one way or the other if they’re recording their own work or [other people’s] songs,” Harvey says. “It’s all stuff that’s grist for the mill.” He goes on to aptly summarize how musicians treated the cover song after the start of rock and roll: It’s a phenomenon that came after the Beatles and Stones: everyone should just be trying to write their own material. I don’t think that’s always the best foot forward, to be perfectly honest. I’ve said often in interviews that people who have been most influential to me, particularly Nina Simone and Johnny Cash, they never did that. They only ever wrote one or two songs per album of their own. They were always doing other people’s work. Nobody ever talks about them doing a cover version. Even [Johnny Cash’s] American Recordings don’t really refer to it as “cover versions.” They just treated them as Johnny taking possession of the songs. That’s what it’s about. It’s about finding your voice inside the music, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter where the song’s coming from. *** 67

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Beauvallet describes Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Tower of Song” cover perfectly: “like vandals arriving in Leonard Cohen’s home and destroying everything.” He means that as a compliment. It remains, to this day, one of the most radical covers I’ve ever heard. The band’s key inspiration was not to cover the song just once. Instead, they covered it a dozen or so times, in a dozen or so different styles, all smashed together. Harvey thinks maybe he suggested this, but can’t remember for sure (after all, the band had spent the afternoon preceding the recording session getting drunk at a nearby pub). When they arrived at the studio, they spent over an hour playing the song without stopping. As they played, Cave would call out a musical inspiration: “Johnny Cash!” “New York Dolls!” “John Lee Hooker!” The band would then attempt to play “Tower of Song” in that style. They did this for over an hour. Cave had a printout of the lyrics in front of him, and when he completed the last line, he’d start right at the beginning again as the band played on. Cave hadn’t prepared enough to realize the song had a middle eight, with a melody different from the verse’s, so when he came to that section, he just powered through, cramming far too many extra lyrics into the verse melody he already knew. Things started loose and got looser. A 33-minute edit leaked out at some point, which is a fascinating listen. It’s still only a fraction of the full recording, which remains unreleased but various sources say reaches at least 70 minutes, and maybe more. You can hear Cave calling out the genres—“pub rock!” goes over particularly poorly, as the 68

C AV E A N D C A L E

band appears to have no idea how to ape Dr. Feelgood—and gradually growing frustrated. “Come on, we’ve been doing this for an hour now,” he complains at one point. Cave begins to improvise his own lyrics as things devolve. He repeats the apparently improvised line “I don’t want to touch you, I just want to die” like a mantra. At another point, he imagines an entirely incoherent conversation between Cohen, Hank Williams, and himself. That’s to say nothing about an earlier section all about, and I’ll quote him to preserve the nuance, “Hank Williams’ dick.” These lines were not, needless to say, in Cohen’s original song. Williams was, though. Cohen included a lyric honoring one of his own songwriter heroes: “I said to Hank Williams: How lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn’t answered me yet.” Cave took out Hank Williams and swapped in the name of his own songwriting hero: Leonard Cohen. In later press materials, Cohen responded poetically to his name being swapped in for Williams’s, “I didn’t replace Hank. Cave is just knocking on another door. We all have a room in the Tower of Song.” They emerged from this session with a marathon cover—70 minutes in Harvey’s memory, three hours in Cave’s. Harvey and recording engineer Victor Van Vugt were tasked with chopping it down into something usable. The logical move would be to select just one of the styles—Leonard Cohen in the style of John Lee Hooker, say—but Harvey suggested pulling one verse from each. While the rest of the band went out to dinner, he and Van Vugt painstakingly went through the tape. They picked out the funniest or most interesting moments and quickly cut them together. 69

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

It makes for an abrasive listen, a song abruptly lurching from genre to genre. At one moment, it sounds like country music; at another, slam poetry, with little transition in between. Cave later referred to it as “one fucked-up version of that song.” Cohen himself agreed it was “weird” in a 1991 interview with Q Magazine, but added that “it’s a really intelligent approach . . . he’s caught the spirit of the song.”2 Harvey agrees, pointing out that “Tower of Song” is, after all, a song about the process of songwriting. So showing how one puts a song together in such an unfiltered way makes sense on a conceptual level, even if it surely didn’t make much sense to many people listening for the first time. Harvey calls it “a tower of different versions of the same song.” As for Robert Forster, the Go-Betweens musician who had claimed “Tower of Song” first and had every right to be miffed that Cave had stolen some of his thunder by recording the song anyway, he thinks the saving grace of having two versions of the same song—perhaps the ultimate tribute album faux-pas—is that they landed in such different places. “Nick and the band just have a way where they impose themselves on the material,” he says. “That’s not my way. I think it’s a reflection of what I was with my band at the time and what Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were at the time as well. I think it represents both artists well.” *** Unlike with “Tower of Song,” no one was competing with John Cale to cover “Hallelujah.” It’s unlikely many of the other artists even knew the song. Though technically 70

C AV E A N D C A L E

released as a promo single in Europe, the song didn’t trouble the charts. The album it promoted, 1984’s Various Positions, made equally little impact. In the case of the United States, it made zero impact—Cohen’s US label had refused to even release it stateside (it was licensed to an independent label called Passport Records, but only a few thousand copies were pressed).3 Being a genius only gets you so far if no one’s buying your new records. So when it came time for the I’m Your Fan artists to pick songs, “Hallelujah” was nothing more than an obscure song on an obscure album. A pair of Cohen’s 1960s peers were among the only people to recognize the song’s genius. The first, Bob Dylan, covered “Hallelujah” twice in concert in 1988 (abysmally, but it was the thought that counted). Dylan, in fact, may have been among the first people to ever hear the song, and directly from the lips of the man himself. In a 1985 interview when Various Positions came out, Cohen told a different French magazine, “I remember singin’ [‘Hallelujah’] to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics. Dylan especially liked this last verse.”4 Looking at Dylan’s touring history, that meeting must have taken place in early July 1984—six full months before Cohen’s recorded version came out.† Cohen said elsewhere of that cover, In other tellings of this story, Cohen says the meeting took place after Dylan had started covering the song, but the timing doesn’t appear to line up for that. Cohen told Dylan he loved his then-new song “I and I,” which had come out in late 1983 and confirms that the meeting likely took place after that 1984 concert. †

71

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

“Everybody’s interested in Dylan, but it’s pleasant to have Dylan interested in me.”5 The second of Cohen’s 1960s peers to immediately recognize the song’s genius heard Cohen himself perform it in 1988. In a 2010 interview on Australia’s ABC Radio, Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale revealed he attended a show at New York’s Beacon Theatre on Cohen’s I’m Your Man tour. He said “Hallelujah,” a song he’d never heard (Cohen’s label having not released it in America), “knocked me sideways.” When he was asked to contribute to the tribute album a couple years later, he remembered the deep cut that had blown him away that night.‡ Cale was a decade older than anyone else on I’m Your Fan, but Fevret wanted him anyway. The editor had witnessed the Velvet Underground’s one-song reunion the year before, where Cale, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker played together for the first time in twenty-two Cale also apparently forgave Cohen for an amazing, perhaps apocryphal, interaction he claimed they had earlier. He told Les Inrockuptibles about it when the album came out (note: the original transcript has been lost so this was translated from the French magazine, itself presumably translated from Cale’s English): “It was many years ago, at the time of Fear and Slow Dazzle [Cale albums from 1974 and 1975, respectively]. I was in London. One evening, I go home and I find a message on the answering machine: my ‘love of the day’ left me the number where I had to call back. It was two o’clock in the morning and she had phoned me only ten minutes earlier, so I throw myself at the handset. A sleeping man’s voice, Leonard’s, answers the phone: ‘I’m in bed, I’m passing it to you.’ She recognizes my voice immediately and realizes that she left me the wrong number. I hang up, mumbling. . . . ‘Hallellujah.’” ‡

72

C AV E A N D C A L E

years, delivering an apparently unrehearsed “Heroin” at the opening of an Andy Warhol exhibition outside Paris. Fevret was a huge fan of the Velvet Underground. These days, he actually works with the band, having recently curated the museum exhibition The Velvet Underground Experience which came to New York City with much fanfare in 2018 (Cale himself toured it, with a New York Times photographer trailing along). Fevret loved Reed just as much as Cale, but chose Cale due to Reed’s prickly reputation. “I would have loved to have Lou Reed, but we wanted this album to be a pleasure to do and so we wanted to have only artists that would be—not easy, but that would be enthusiastic and that would not put their own ego before everything,” he says. Once Cale selected “Hallelujah,” he encountered an immediate problem: he didn’t know the words. Living in America, he couldn’t buy the album to learn them. So he went to the man himself. As producer Beauvallet recalls, Cale came to the producers and asked, “‘Do you think that Leonard Cohen would accept for me to cut off some of the lyrics to, you know, make it a bit lighter?’ We said, ‘Well, we can’t answer that for him, but here is his telephone number.’” “I called and asked [Cohen] to send the lyrics,” Cale told the Boston Globe in 2008. “I had one of those old fax machines. I went out to dinner and my floor was covered in paper. There were 15 verses of this song.” Cale has elsewhere claimed Cohen faxed him fifteen pages of verses, which, as author Alan Light notes in his essential book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, & the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah,” would accord with Cohen’s own description of the song’s initial length. 73

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Cale said he went through and picked out “the cheeky verses.” Cohen’s original recording delicately balanced spirituality and sexuality. Cale leaned toward the latter, saying he couldn’t relate to the lines reflecting Cohen’s Jewish upbringing (though he retained the opening Old Testamentinspired verse about King David). Most of the verses Cale recorded had never been heard by anyone before. The Les Inrockuptibles editors said they were immediately blown away when Cale turned in his “Hallelujah” cover. Cohen’s original recording suffers from those eighties production techniques that so divided fans: drum machines, cheap synthesizers, disconcertingly chipper backing vocalists. It’s like the Mona Lisa drawn with Microsoft Paint. Cale recorded it much more simply, just his voice and piano. He stripped away the gloss preventing the song from being heard. In doing so, he set the template for all the covers that came after. “When you hear ‘Hallelujah’ by John Cale, it doesn’t sound like a tribute or like a usual cover,” Fevret says. “You can really feel two master songwriters meeting. And the fact that it changed the career of the song—and a little bit of Leonard, also—that was of course, a great reward for us.” *** As the recordings came in, Fevret and Beauvallet kept Cohen updated on the album’s progress. Leonard was careful to a fault not to interfere. He would never even explicitly ask to hear one of the new tracks—but he always enthusiastically said yes when the option was offered. “Each time he took 74

C AV E A N D C A L E

it as a gift,” Fevret says. “He never told me, well, this one I like, this one I dislike. I remember that he always wanted to be very respectful of the choice each band did. He told me, ‘Well, they chose it, so these are not my songs anymore in these recordings. [These are now] their songs, and I’m very flattered.’” When I’m Your Fan came out, Cohen told an interviewer why he would never give specific feedback on a cover: “I’ve never gotten over the pleasure of somebody covering one of my songs. My career has really been quite modest in the world and not many people have done so.§ Somehow my critical faculties go into a state of suspended animation when I hear someone’s covered one of my tunes. I’m not there to judge it, just to say thank you.”6

Cohen is being, as always, humble. As we’ve seen, this is not even close to accurate. §

75

Interlude: Juliana Hatfield

Almost all the I’m Your Fan artists I spoke with waxed rhapsodic about their love for Leonard Cohen. No surprise there; I assumed reverence for the original artist was why a musician would contribute to a tribute album. To confirm this, I wanted to speak with someone who had appeared on many such records. What moves a musician to cover a song for a tribute album? How does he or she pick all those songs? Why would someone do many tribute albums? No one made more sense to discuss this with than Juliana Hatfield. A veteran of the music business, she’s now in her third decade of appearing on tribute albums, spanning genres, labels, and trends in the tribute business. She’s one of only two artists to appear on tribute albums by three of the four producers highlighted in the other Interludes (Los Lobos is the other; no one has gone four for four). Hatfield got her start in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s was a bona fide college-rock queen. A steady stream of albums—first with her band The Blake Babies, and then under her own name—earned her appearances on the covers of the cool-kids magazines like SPIN and Sassy and praise from the likes of Kurt Cobain. Though in the nineties she

I N T E R LU D E : J U L IA NA HAT F I E L D

occasionally dipped a toe into the mainstream with an MTV hit or prominent soundtrack placement, like on 1994’s Reality Bites (that soundtrack’s “Spin the Bottle” is still her most-played song on Spotify), since then she’s settled into life as a beloved cult artist who every year or two drops another critically acclaimed album. Counting an array of side projects, she’s up to her twenty-fifth record. She’s proven almost as prolific on tribute albums. She’s done the big major-label tributes; her first was Ralph Sall’s 1995 Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits. She’s also popped up on more esoteric indie tribute albums, reciting a Jack Kerouac poem here, singing her favorite song from a Wes Anderson film there. That last one even led her to her current label American Laundromat, where in the past couple of years she’s begun recording her own tribute albums: 2018’s Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and 2019’s Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. She promises more in the series are coming. I’ve encountered few musicians with as rich and varied a side gig in tribute albums as Hatfield, so I wanted to ask her why she did them. From all those I’m Your Fan conversations, I thought I knew the answer: She adored the artists she was paying tribute to. As I promptly learned, I’d thought wrong. The truth turns out to be more complicated, and illuminates some murkier corners of the tribute album business. *** Despite recording for so many, Hatfield doesn’t particularly like tribute albums. She rarely listens to them, even the ones she 77

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

appears on. She echoes the complaints so many fans have about the format. “There’s always a few really great versions, but then there’s a bunch of other things like, is this really necessary?” she says. “There’s always people who I feel are not getting it and they’re not doing it right, or I don’t like their taste or their approach or something. . . . I’m just a very picky listener.” That pickiness extends to her own recordings. She’s quick to critique her contributions to various tributes over the years, starting with the very first, Sall’s 1995 blockbuster Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits. To start with, she couldn’t have cared less about her cartoon, Josie and the Pussycats. The story I’d anticipated—she grew up loving the show, was honored to reinterpret the iconic theme song, etc.—never materializes. “It’s not my favorite song in the world, but it’s also not the worst song in the world,” is about the highest praise she musters during our conversation. So why did she do it? The money certainly never amounts to much on these. “I do everything on a whim,” she says. In this case, she imagines the selling point was recording with her friend Tanya Donelly, co-founder of The Breeders, Belly, and Throwing Muses. That was enough reason to cover a song she didn’t care about. Opportunities like that would come through her label at the time, Atlantic Records. “When I was on the major labels, sometimes these things would come along like, ‘Hey, do you want to work with this person? Do you want to do this one-off thing for this movie?’” she says. “If I have the opportunity to go into the studio and do something on someone else’s dime, it’s usually a win-win for me because I like being in the studio. It’s interesting to work with materials I might not have chosen myself.” 78

I N T E R LU D E : J U L IA NA HAT F I E L D

The pair turned the silly cartoon theme into a grungy pop song, bringing some alt-rock edge to an earworm melody. To me, it’s a high point of the album, irreverent and loose but still insanely catchy. Hatfield disagrees. “I think that if I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure that our version of the song is that great,” she says. “Number one, it’s a goofy song and at the time I was in a very depressed period of my life and I’m sure I did not bring the right attitude to the song.” This thread runs throughout our conversation. She likes a couple of the tribute albums she appears on, to be fair, and we’ll get to those. But more often she did them for reasons that had little to do with the artist being tributed. For instance, for 1999’s Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, she and Evan Dando of the Lemonheads recreated Parsons and Emmylou Harris’s 1970s harmonies, revered by so many. But not Hatfield. She doesn’t like Parsons or Harris one bit. “When Evan and I were living in Boston in the late ’80s and we were hanging out a lot, he was kind of obsessed with Gram Parsons and he would play Gram Parsons’ music all the time,” she says. “Whenever he would play the stuff with Emmylou, I would just think like, ‘Emmylou was so flat. She’s so out of tune. How did they not deal with that at that time?’ It just always really drove me crazy. I didn’t like Gram Parsons on his own either.” Again, her disdain for the music hardly comes across in her cover of it, a beautiful duet with Dando on Parsons’ 1974 song “$1000 Wedding.” She says she only agreed because legendary producer Glyn Johns was behind the board. She wanted to make him tell her stories about working with the 79

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Stones. Plus, Dando was a huge Parsons fan, and he wanted an Emmylou to his Gram. She agreed to meet Johns and to help Dando. “Also,” she thought, “I’ll sing it in tune.” Two other records in her tribute album discography elicit equal ambivalence. She calls “Don’t Lie to Me,” the Big Star song she covered for 2006’s Big Star Small World, “not much of a song,” praising it only for being so dumb and easy that her band could bang it out quickly. And when I ask her about contributing a track to 2009’s Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, where artists from Thom Yorke to The National covered the Polaris and Miracle Legion songwriter to raise money after his wife’s sudden passing, she professes no memory whatsoever of the song in question. She certainly didn’t know the artist’s work, but respected the other musicians involved and wanted to help the cause. *** I’d expected Hatfield to tell me she covered these songs because she loved the artists. So far, it seems she gave me every reason but that one. But she does point to two tribute compilations where she did cover the songs for the reason you’d expect. More or less. For instance, as a huge Jack Kerouac fan who in her twenties had tried to read everything the author ever published, she was thrilled to be asked to join 1997’s spokenword-plus-music Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness. Even there, though, she cares little about the specific Kerouac piece she recorded, “Silly Goofball Poems.” She felt more connected to the novels than the poems, she says. Plus, she wishes she’d 80

I N T E R LU D E : J U L IA NA HAT F I E L D

demanded a Kerouac piece with some weight rather than a whimsical poem about animals. “I think I was probably pigeonholed by being given that one—or maybe I chose it, I can’t remember,” she says. “I was known for having this girlish voice and for being the ‘alterna-waif,’ quote-unquote. It was a little typecast-y.” Hatfield only has unequivocally positive things to say about one tribute album: 2014’s I Saved Latin! A Tribute To Wes Anderson. She doesn’t care about Wes Anderson movies one way or the other, but she adored Elliott Smith, whose song “Needle in the Hay” appeared in Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. “Just something about the way he recorded the songs was so striking and so powerful,” she says. “They’re very close. You feel like he’s singing right into your ear.” She did her best to puzzle out Smith’s idiosyncratic chords and guitar parts, and feels she nailed it. Two years later, her cover ended up appearing on a second tribute album, Say Yes!: A Tribute to Elliott Smith. That and the Wes Anderson tribute came out on the record-label American Laundromat, a label primarily known for its tribute albums. After a good experience working with label head Joe Spadaro on the tributes, Hatfield now records for the label full-time. She releases her own albums there, thrilled by Spadaro’s willingness to release records as fast as she can record them. Plus, after years of appearing on other people’s tribute albums with mixed feelings, she’s decided to just make them herself. Despite her disdain for the format, she clearly appreciates the core tribute album goals: Honoring influences, introducing one artist’s fans to another artist’s 81

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

work, reinterpreting music in one’s own voice. Now that she’s no longer beholden to other people and has full control over the projects herself, she seems much more bullish on tribute albums. *** When Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John was announced in 2018, the indie-rock world didn’t know quite what to make of it. One of the coolest artists of the past couple decades covering songs by one of the least cool when she was a kid? Was this an extreme iteration of a Gen X’er’s stereotypical love of irony? Just the opposite, Hatfield says. She adored NewtonJohn growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, and continued her fandom even as she entered middle age. In 2017, she planned to see Newton-John in concert, but the pop singer canceled the tour after a breast cancer diagnosis. If Newton-John couldn’t sing her own songs, Hatfield thought, she would sing them herself. She hoped in the process to convince her peers to take the singer more seriously. “There are always people who wrote her off as a cupcake or something,” she says. “But I know from experience trying to sing her songs that she was a serious artist with serious chops. I think I did make some people go and listen to her again, maybe re-appreciate or learn how to appreciate her for the first time.” Though planned as a one-off, Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John proved such a pleasure that Hatfield released a sequel the following year: Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. 82

I N T E R LU D E : J U L IA NA HAT F I E L D

Sonically, Olivia Newton-John and The Police seemingly couldn’t be much further apart, but Hatfield says she chose them both for a similar reason. “The Police were really important to me at a certain time in my life when I was in adolescence and in high school,” she says. “I spent a lot of time listening to them, reading about them, talking about them with friends, going to see them in concert. With this and the Olivia Newton-John record, [I have] been exploring things that were important when I was forming myself.” The first time she sang in front of a crowd came when she belted out “Roxanne” with a high school band. She also thinks that, like Newton-John, The Police are underappreciated by younger generations. Seen as classicrock dinosaurs with a frontman who gets constantly mocked (tantric sex, lute music, a reggae record with Shaggy), The Police don’t get their due as a killer power trio, she feels. “When you go back and listen to the first three albums, it’s surprising how raw and unpolished they sound,” she says. “They just sound so fresh because they haven’t been all glossed over. It sounds like three guys banging out the songs in a room together.” Even before she released the album, she felt it was a success: some of the recording studio’s interns had never heard the songs she played and went to seek out the Police’s original records. To familiarize such listeners with songs beyond the classicrock radio staples, she chose to cover some deeper cuts that resonate in the current political moment. She compares the context of “Rehumanize Yourself,” which the Police wrote in response to a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the 1970s, to the Brexit debacle and hears echoes of Donald Trump’s 83

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

entitled son-in-law Jared Kushner in “Landlord.” As an artist who’s never shied away from making political music herself, Hatfield feels this helps her connect these songs to her own. Though some may view these tribute albums as a side project or a novelty, she sees them as of a piece with her own work, and plans to continue issuing them even as she keeps recording her own compositions. This, Hatfield feels, is her tribute album future. After joining so many different tribute albums for so many different reasons, doing them on her own feels more pure—and more fun. Though she never plans things too far in advance, she envisions R.E.M. as the series’ next chapter. At the rate she’s going, she may have added one or two more installments by the time you read this. That said, don’t be surprised if she does pop up on some other tribute compilation in the future. “At this point, if someone offered me a lot of money to record a song that I was not emotionally connected to, I would probably do it,” she says. “I would try to find something in the song that was valuable or something interesting or some saving grace that made the song less than worthless. Like if you adopt a troubled stray dog, you just figure out a way to love it. You whip it into shape, you train it, and you turn the bad dog into a good dog. I could do that with a song, I think.”

84

5 The Release of I’m Your Fan

Cohen never expressed anything but gratitude to the producers and artists who contributed to I’m Your Fan, but he didn’t expect it to make much difference to his career. Right around when it came out, he spoke frankly about his popularity among younger people in an unpublished interview with Danny Fields: It hasn’t happened until now. I thought the Jennifer Warnes album might turn it around. It did help. I thought that my own record that was acclaimed by so many perceptive journalists as being important and good [I’m Your Man], I thought that might turn it around. That didn’t. Again, I’m hopeful that bands like R.E.M. and the Pixies and singers like Lloyd Cole. . . . I happen to know groups like Nick Cave and Fatima Mansions. I know those guys because I have two kids. . . . Since [my daughter] was 15 she’s been telling me, you know there’s a lot of kids doing your songs, dad? I mean people that aren’t even recorded, garage bands and local bands here and there. So this is a very pleasant surprise, but as to whether I feel deeply it’s going

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

to revise my reputation, a whole productive revisionism set in motion, I’m not entirely convinced.1 He was due for a surprise. In late September 1991, I’m Your Fan hit shelves in Europe and America. One concession was made for the States: R.E.M. swapped places with The House of Love for the opening-track slot, in deference to the former’s exploding popularity there. The album sold well on both continents—not a blockbuster, but steady. Most albums get an initial burst the first month and then sales taper off, but I’m Your Fan kept selling as the months and eventually years went by. Some of the bands got bigger profiles in the subsequent years, which certainly helped; Nirvana’s Nevermind came out the week after I’m Your Fan, and Kurt Cobain championing the Pixies made them far bigger than their own albums had ever done. Cohen did his part to help spread the word, telling the Associated Press, “I’m doing my little bit to get the album off the ground, since everybody on the record is too busy. I’m the only one whose career allows him these leisurely gaps to reflect on my life and work.”2 He even contributed a blurb to the album’s press materials, writing, “It’s nice to know your songs have lasted that long, as long as a Volvo, the car that’s supposed to last 30 years. It’s like you’re up there with other well-made items in the marketplace. To be affirmed in one’s tender years such as I am enjoying is always agreeable.” As sales and buzz around the album continued to grow, I’m Your Fan amplified the comeback that began with I’m Your Man, the 1988 album that had earned favorable reviews and helped revive his career in the United Kingdom, but 86

T H E R E L E A SE O F I ’M YOU R FA N

did not sell well in the United States. Cohen’s later manager Robert Kory says I’m Your Fan helped generate interest in Cohen’s next album, 1992’s The Future, which, unlike Various Positions, was properly released in the States and sold significantly better there than his past few albums had. Cohen told Entertainment Weekly he was “tickled pink” by the tribute, feeling validated that younger bands would translate his material into the latest popular sounds. “I’ve never chosen a style that was deliberately obscure,” he said. “I’ve always tried to write hits. I never came up with the idea of writing a song that would mystify anybody or prevent anyone from tapping their foot to it.” (After a beat, he added, “It’s just that nobody tapped their feet to it.”)3 He expressed as much to the producers. “The fact that it came from a young generation, that was the key thing for him,” Fevret says. Beauvallet adds: “He was hoping that this compilation would bring a new generation to his music, instead of the old-folk fans, and it did. It brought a lot of attention from kids, and he was over the moon.” Q Magazine sat with him and played the album track-bytrack and Cohen called out thoughts on the covers. “Wow, hear the conviction in that?” he says of the Pixies’ “I Can’t Forget.” Of the Ugandan singer Geoffrey Oryema’s “Suzanne,” he says, “When you hear a guy singing a song like this, which you wrote before he was born, it gives you a good feeling.” The writer reports Cohen was choked with emotion as he adds, “This isn’t a casual moment for me.”4 In another interview Cohen did then, he said hearing these new sounds gave him new ideas for arrangements and production.5 Though he didn’t copy any of the 87

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

rearrangements precisely, he moved away from the worst of his 1980s production excesses, perhaps realizing how much better those songs sounded with more timeless recordings. On his later tours, he delivers some of his 1980s songs more like the I’m Your Fan covers than his own recordings. When in 2009 he shared a concert bill with the former band of I’m Your Fan contributor David McComb, he told the crowd, “It’s an honor to be up here with The Triffids. They did a piece on a tribute album for me many years ago when I was kind of dying. It was very kind of them.” (He was out of date on the band members—McComb, the one Triffid on I’m Your Fan, had died a decade prior—but a nice sentiment regardless.) For the producers’ part, they seem amazed that an album they conceived in a small French magazine’s office would have such sustained impact. “What was most impressive for us is that the album really lasted for a very, very long time,” Fevret says. “People were talking about the record three, four, five, ten years after we did it.” The Les Inrockuptibles producers tried to do other tribute albums after the success of I’m Your Fan, but their two follow-ups both proved to be much bigger headaches. When they curated 1996’s Smiths tribute The Smiths Is Dead, Beauvallet describes being “overpowered” by lawyers and labels and managers. Tribute albums had become big business by then, and people smelled money. They could only secure lesser-known bands, and the producer feels it didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. The magazine’s third and final tribute album, 2006’s Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, turned 88

T H E R E L E A SE O F I ’M YOU R FA N

out better, but proved just as hard to wrangle. Though they got engaging performances from Franz Ferdinand (“Sorry Angel,” with Jane Birkin) and The Kills (“I Call It Art”), Serge Gainsbourg’s estate provided endless obstacles, Beauvallet says—a far cry from how easy-going Cohen had been. “Some of them were very old-fashioned and wouldn’t change anything to the songs,” Beauvallet says. One Gainsbourg estate manager objected to Cat Power and Karen Elson recreating the passionate moans of a Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin duet. “They kept on telling us, ‘Serge Gainsbourg would have hated lesbians.’” Other tribute album ideas—Scott Walker, David Bowie, a folk tribute to hip-hop—got explored and abandoned. After 1991, the tribute album business became too much work, not enough fun. The success of I’m Your Fan ironically made it harder to make the next I’m Your Fan. Perhaps that’s why one of Fevret’s main memories about I’m Your Fan is simply how easy the whole thing was. “Easy because Columbia said yes, we are interested and here is the budget for each of the bands. Easy because each of the bands we asked for said yes, and chose songs and recorded them very quickly. Easy also on Leonard’s side.” None of the other tribute album producers I spoke with said the process was easy. Just the opposite. Fevret and Beauvallet lucked into an unusually smooth process and proved unable to replicate it. “[I’m Your Fan] was very pure—and naïve, to be fair,” Beauvallet adds. “We were just music fans who wanted to pay tribute to our hero.” *** 89

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

It took a couple more years for the biggest impact I’m Your Fan made to become apparent. It turned an aging songwriter’s deeply obscure album cut into one of the most-covered songs of the twenty-first century so far. As we’ve noted, upon its release in 1984, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was hardly a hit and no one followed Dylan’s lead in covering it. Cohen later called him “the only person who seemed to recognize the song.”6 For Cohen, this must have been devastating. As detailed in Light’s book, Cohen struggled for four or five years to write the song. He amassed eighty verses—presumably what he would later send to John Cale—before paring it down to the four on his album. In one interview he recalled, “I filled two notebooks and I remember being in the Royalton Hotel [in New York], on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor and saying, ‘I can’t finish this song.’”7 He finally unveiled his masterpiece to the world and . . . crickets. His label didn’t even bother releasing it in America. “I’ve always been touched by the modesty of their interest in my work,” he joked years later when accepting an award. Cale’s cover changed all that. But not immediately. I’m Your Fan was a hit when it came out, and some singled Cale’s cover out for special praise (Britain’s influential NME called it “a thing of wondrous, savage beauty.”)8 It was released as a single in the UK (with Cohen’s original version on the B side) and raised the song’s profile, but wasn’t a huge hit by any stretch. At best, it bumped “Hallelujah” up from the forgotten dustbin to the respectable midtier of Cohen songs. 90

T H E R E L E A SE O F I ’M YOU R FA N

The real impact of the Cale cover wouldn’t come for another three years. That happened when a young musician was killing time catsitting at a friend’s Brooklyn apartment. *** In 1992, Jeff Buckley was still best known—to the extent he was known at all—as Tim Buckley’s son. His introduction to the music world had taken place at Hal Willner’s tribute concert to Jeff ’s dad, when Jeff covered “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain” and a handful of other songs. The young Buckley grew to be friends with the two women who ran the arts series at that concert venue and would sometimes catsit for them at their Park Slope apartment. On one such occasion, he was pawing through their record collection and came across I’m Your Fan. Though his late father had crossed paths with Cohen in the 1960s folk scene, Jeff didn’t know Cohen’s music well. He had certainly never before heard the song that would make him a legend. But sitting there playing I’m Your Fan, Cale’s “Hallelujah” floored him. He decided to perform it himself. Beauvallet recalls Buckley raving about I’m Your Fan in later interviews. Beyond just “Hallelujah,” Buckley told Beauvallet he’d discovered some of his favorite bands on it, like the Pixies. “I was amazed that he worshiped a piece of work I’d been involved with,” Beauvallet says. “That’s one of my proudest moments as a music journalist really, him telling me that this compilation changed his life.” Buckley drowned in 1997, while his “Hallelujah” cover was still climbing toward its current omnipresence, so his 91

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

comments on why he chose to cover it are relatively few. But in one interview, he said, “Whoever listens closely to ‘Hallelujah’ will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on Earth. The hallelujah is not a homage to a worshipped person, idol or god, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. It’s an ode to life and love.” After earning enormous buzz among the music cognoscenti from his early New York concerts and a live EP, Buckley released his debut album Grace on August 23, 1994— almost three years after I’m Your Fan, and a full decade after Cohen’s original recording. Though one assumes someone must have played him the Cohen original by then—Various Positions had finally been released in America by Cohen’s label in the early 1990s—Buckley stuck with the version he’d fallen in love with, mirroring Cale’s rearranged lyrics exactly. He also mirrored Cale’s general approach—just a man and his instrument (piano in Cale’s case, guitar in Buckley’s), with none of the gloss and production Cohen had attempted. The main difference between the two covers is that, while Cale’s voice is lovely in its understated way, Buckley’s was otherworldly, a soaring croon that could bring chills to even the most jaded listener. Matched with a composition that let that voice hit its full, stunning heights, “Hallelujah” finally became the song it remains today. Those who saw Buckley perform “Hallelujah” live haven’t stopped talking about it since. In Light’s book, veteran music journalist Bill Flanagan recalls, “I think a lot of people didn’t know the song, and just assumed Jeff had written it. And then it very quickly became the real high point in Jeff ’s show; it became his signature pretty early. It was the perfect song 92

T H E R E L E A SE O F I ’M YOU R FA N

for him—because of his voice, because of how he looked singing it.” At one point, Flanagan complimented Buckley on his amazing rendition of the Leonard Cohen song. He says Buckley responded: “I haven’t heard Leonard Cohen’s version. I know it by John Cale.” *** Everyone who’s covered “Hallelujah” ever since has more or less covered Jeff Buckley’s cover of John Cale’s cover. I’ve never heard a version that sounds much like Cohen’s original recording. Even Cohen himself began to sing the Cale/Buckley verses in concert, rather than the ones he’d first recorded. The once-ignored song has become a modern standard. Like many standards, it offers both a surefire crowdpleaser as well as an opportunity to a singer to show off a bit (or, in some overwrought covers, more than a bit). Cohen’s biographer Sylvie Simmons called “it a kind of all-purpose ecumenical/secular hymn for the new millennium.” Buckley’s version shone a light back on Cale, whose “Hallelujah” got used in the smash 2001 children’s movie Shrek, introducing a whole new generation to the song. Beauvallet said licensing the Cale cover for Shrek was the biggest financial windfall Les Inrockuptibles ever saw from I’m Your Fan. Since Buckley’s recording, “Hallelujah” has overtaken “Suzanne” to become Cohen’s most-covered song. Cohen expert Arjatsolo estimates that a full 20 percent of Cohen interpretations today are of “Hallelujah”—an impressive number for a songwriter who had a dozen songs firmly entrenched in the canon well before he wrote “Hallelujah.” 93

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Everyone from Bono to Willie Nelson has covered the song. Cohen’s countrywoman kd lang alone has sung the song at the Olympics Opening Ceremony—watched by a reported three billion people—and at awards shows on two different continents.9 The covers show no signs of stopping: As I write this, over a dozen new “Hallelujah” covers have been uploaded to YouTube in the past twenty-four hours. When I asked Light for his personal favorite version— who better than the man who literally wrote the book on the subject?—he points to Hawaiian ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro’s instrumental cover. “It’s Leonard, and it’s really easy to get caught up in just talking about the words— which verse, which lines, who reads, who delivers,” he says. “We know a song’s got to work first with a melody and a hook. If people don’t feel that, then it doesn’t matter what the words are. To talk to [Jake] about it, where he’s like, ‘I don’t even really know the words. It’s this chord progression and this thing in the melody that I react to.’ . . . In the end, people love singing it because they love the sound of it.” One reason the song gets covered so much is that it has become a go-to selection for two specific circumstances. The first is opportunities for a singer to show off his or her voice—notably, the twenty-first-century phenomenon of televised singing competitions. In 2014, Vulture did the math and included “Hallelujah” among the most-performed songs on American Idol, The Voice, and the like (it probably would have ranked even higher had the song not already earned a reputation as something of a cliché).10 In 2008, a cover by X Factor winner Alexandra Burke became the UK’s muchcoveted “Christmas #1” that year. The song just behind it at 94

T H E R E L E A SE O F I ’M YOU R FA N

the number two slot? Buckley’s cover from fourteen years prior, buoyed by a fan campaign to top Burke. The second specific circumstance where “Hallelujah” gets trotted out: tragedy. In particular, tragedy on television. In 2016, Entertainment Weekly posted a recap of the song’s various television show appearances, from The West Wing to One Tree Hill. Almost all of them soundtrack a moment where someone has just died.11 The song gets used for genuine tragedies, too. The centerpiece of the Hope for Haiti Now telethon after the 2010 earthquake? Justin Timberlake singing “Hallelujah” (which became a Top 20 single). A few years earlier, VH1 called up Buckley’s version for their tribute video after 9/11. That’s not to mention, of course, the more personal tragedies, the wakes and funerals where “Hallelujah” gets played. In Light’s book, Paul Simon compares “Hallelujah” to his own “Bridge Over Troubled Water”: “It’s part of the mystery that there are songs that are like that, and if you’re lucky enough to be the writer of the song—well. In a certain sense, if there’s such a thing as immortality, then there’s a little bit of immortality attached to that.”12 Awards shows in particular love to soundtrack their “In Memoriam” montages with “Hallelujah.” The Emmys alone used it for their 2011 montage, performed by the Canadian Tenors, and then again five years later, performed by pop singer Tori Kelly. Willner said that Saturday Night Live considered parodying this trope in a sketch about a pornography award show’s “In Memoriam” segment—the jokes were as tasteful as you’d imagine. Five years later, the show did use the song to soundtrack what many viewed a 95

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

double tragedy. Kate McKinnon performed the song in character as Hillary Clinton to open the first show after the 2016 election. Cohen had died five days earlier. His death prompted the inevitable new wave of “Hallelujah” covers. The songwriter might have had mixed feelings about that. In 2009, shortly after Burke and Buckley’s covers topped the British charts, a British interviewer asked him about the song’s ubiquity. Cohen spoke of the “mild sense of revenge” he felt recalling how his US label had once refused to release the song, but added that twenty-five years later, “I think it’s a good song, but I think too many people sing it.”13

96

Interlude: Jarkko Arjatsolo

In the course of researching this book, someone in Leonard Cohen’s camp pointed me to a Finnish man named Jarkko Arjatsalo, saying he ran a Cohen fansite and liked covers. He recommended I reach out to see what he knew about I’m Your Fan. So I emailed him. He promptly replied with two full pages of notes—plus an Excel spreadsheet that ran fortynine pages of very small font. I knew I needed to talk with him. When we first get on the phone, Arjatsalo conceded that cataloging Cohen covers is “kind of a strange hobby.” If anything, that spreadsheet might be the least strange thing about his story. Few superfans manage to turn their obsession into a two-decade friendship with the artist themselves. *** Born in Finland in 1950, Arjatsalo didn’t know any other Leonard Cohen fans growing up. He bought every album as it came out, he says, but the music didn’t play a huge role in his life yet; he was equally interested in a variety of Finnish artists whose names would mean nothing outside the

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

country. Arjatsalo only became obsessed after Cohen played Helsinki on his 1988 I’m Your Man tour. He soon began subscribing to a UK fanzine and participating in a Cohenrelated web newsgroup. In 1995, his teenage son Rauli grew interested in the nascent internet and asked his father for help creating a website. Without giving the subject matter too much thought, Arjatsalo and his son designed a rudimentary Leonard Cohen fansite. Cohen did not have any sort of official website yet, and that UK fanzine had just ceased publication, for what turned out to be a truly misguided reason. Cohen had several years prior retired to a Zen monastery on top of Mount Baldy, outside Los Angeles. For all anyone knew, he might never come back down. The UK fanzine editor “was thinking there is not news enough in the years to come to be able to fill the pages,” Arjatsalo says. “[An] underestimate, I would say.” He and his son worked for a couple months to code the site, learning as they went. LeonardCohenFiles.com went online in the fall of 1995, and Arjatsalo figured that was the end of it. He had a busy day job as an auditor, so would just leave the site online in case it proved useful to other Cohen fans. “I thought that was it,” he says. “I had no plans to make it bigger.” Unexpectedly, though, he began to hear from other fans all over the world. Many, like him, didn’t know anyone else in their own towns who liked Cohen. Like the early internet did for so many niche communities, LeonardCohenFiles. com helped them connect with like-minded people. Fans began sending him more material for the site: local editions 98

I N T E R LU D E : JA R K KO A R JAT S O L O

of Cohen’s books, newspaper clippings, taped interviews on local radio stations, and covers done by artists in their area. He put it all up on the site, eventually adding a discussion board for these fans to talk with one another (which they did in abundance: it boasts 330,000 posts to date). They soon started meeting in person annually, half the time at Leonard Cohen’s old Greek home, the island of Hydra. The meet-ups continue to this day. The fans’ emails surprised Arjatsalo, but not as much as the email he got one day in 1997, two years after his site went online. The sender claimed to be Leonard Cohen himself. Arjatsalo didn’t believe it at first. “First I was thinking it was someone that was joking,” he says. “But the text I was reading, it looked genuine.” Cohen, emailing from the Zen monastery—which had just gotten dial-up internet access and allowed him a little time on the computer every week—expressed his happiness at seeing such a lively fan site online. He even offered to contribute material from his archives. What convinced Arjatsalo the email was genuine was an odd personal request. For reasons that remain somewhat opaque, Cohen wanted a piece of software that could mimic his own voice. New to computers but intrigued by their possibilities, he asked Arjatsalo if he could program such a code. Arjatsalo couldn’t, but he eventually found a researcher at Berkeley university’s sound lab who could, and did. “No guy making a joke could invent that kind of request,” Arjatsalo says. (As far as Arjatsalo knows, the only thing Cohen ever used the software for was to record his answering machine message.) 99

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Cohen and his then-manager Kelley Lynch began sending Arjatsalo material for the site—pages from his notebooks, drawings, books, even some handwritten lyrics to old and new songs (including the original lyrics of “Suzanne”). In the era when fax machines used paper spooled on big rolls, the first fax spat out a length of paper about 20 yards long. As the years progressed, Cohen kept sending Arjatsalo material. “He felt that the internet will be a great channel to share information with people,” Arjatsalo says. “As he was living a very isolated life on Mount Baldy, I think he thought this was his channel to let people know he was still alive.” A year later, Cohen told Billboard that Arjatsalo’s fan site was “an amazing piece of work” and spoke admiringly about the ways the internet helped his fans connect: “There’s a kind of family that is gathered around my work. It’s not fixed in my work, but merely uses it as a reference to their own lives and to their own very amusing and touching flirtations, communications, confessions, exchanges.”1 A personal relationship developed between the Finnish accountant and the monk living in seclusion. “It’s quite much to say we had become friends by email, but I had the feeling that something like that happened, and he said the same many times,” Arjatsalo says. Cohen took to calling him “the general secretary of the party.”2 Two years into their digital relationship, Cohen invited Arjatsalo and his family to visit him in Los Angeles. Though the world didn’t know it yet, he was plotting his return after a years-long seclusion at the monastery. He extended the invitation during his last weeks on Mount Baldy. “Maybe he was interested in what kind of crazy guy is putting so 100

I N T E R LU D E : JA R K KO A R JAT S O L O

much energy to this website,” Arjatsalo jokes. Two months later, Arjatsalo got on a plane with his wife and son to meet Cohen. Arjatsalo and his family spent three days hanging out at Cohen’s house while Cohen made them food. One night, Cohen took them to his favorite Greek restaurant with his two children and manager. They talked about everything from what Cohen would do next to the Arjatsalos’ life back home. “He was very interested to hear about Finland, because we are located next to Russia,” Arjatsalo says. “He was interested to hear about the politics in this area and the life of our family.” Arjatsalo mentioned they wanted to visit Hydra, and Cohen saw to it that Suzanne Elrod, his former partner and mother of his children,* would give them a personal tour of Cohen’s house and garden. When Arjatsalo’s family visited Montreal in 2000, Cohen’s sister Esther showed them her brother’s house. After that first trip to Los Angeles, Arjatsalo estimates he and Cohen met in person twenty-five or thirty times. It got much easier when Cohen resumed touring in the final years of his life and gave Arjatsalo and his wife an all-access pass, allowing them to hang out backstage all day with Leonard and his band. Arjatsalo sent me a photo of the two backstage at the Royal Albert Hall, wine glasses in hand. The excited smile on Arjatsalo’s face bears the look of a fan. But Cohen’s ease sitting with his arm around Arjatsalo looks more someone like posing with a friend. Though not, despite popular rumor, the inspiration for "Suzanne." Cohen would later say he wrote the song to summon her. *

101

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Cohen continued sending Arjatsalo material for the site. As Cohen resumed his musical career, that began including breaking news. When Cohen had a new album coming out, LeonardCohenFiles.com readers knew about it first, and often got an early listen at their annual meet-ups. Ditto when Cohen announced his first tour in fifteen years. At one point, Rolling Stone sourced information on a new album to Arjatsalo’s site and interviewed Arjatsalo about how this Finnish superfan scored his big scoop. The answer was disappointingly simple: Leonard just told him. *** Now, about that forty-nine-page Excel spreadsheet. “Some people collect stamps,” Arjatsalo says. “I became very interested in cover versions.” He has been collecting Cohen covers since early in the site’s run. At one point, he asked Cohen how many covers he thought there were of his songs. Leonard guessed somewhere around 200. Way off. Arjatsalo currently has 3,500 covers listed in the spreadsheet, and a few hundred more he will add when he has time. Even that is but a fraction of the Cohen covers that are out there. Arjatsalo only catalogs covers released on physical media (CD, vinyl, etc.), as monitoring everything posted online would be impossible. He also knows of 115 tribute albums—including I’m Your Fan—that have been released on CD or LP. On his 1999 trip to Los Angeles, Arjatsalo gave Cohen some mix CDs of Cohen covers and continued sending mixes to him as the years went by. “He always very nicely 102

I N T E R LU D E : JA R K KO A R JAT S O L O

thanked me when I sent him compilations of covers we had found, but never, ever said that this and that song are great or are really bad,” Arjatsalo says. “He was also a gentleman who certainly didn’t want to say something negative about an artist who had covered his songs.” Covers have, as we’ve seen, been crucial to getting Leonard’s songs out in the world since the very beginning of his career. That has continued through to the present. Artists covering Leonard often show a reverence for his work. Robert Kory, who started managing Cohen in 2008 after working for eight years as his lawyer, remembers being struck by how many artists would contact Leonard about their covers before releasing them. Legally, they didn’t need to do this, but they seemed to want his approval. “There were a remarkable number of people who would let us know and just ask for a blessing,” Kory says. “I’d never heard of that. There was a genuine desire for contact.” Leonard himself knew how important covers had been to his career, and appreciated other musicians’ continued interest in his work. “The covers were personally very, very gratifying to him,” Kory says. “We talked about the covers, although he didn’t like to pick favorites. On the other hand, he was deeply appreciative of both covers in English and also the translations because he saw it as keeping his music alive. He was deeply grateful that so many artists thought his work was worth that attention.” Arjatsalo knows better than anyone just how prevalent those translations were; he has Cohen covers in thirty languages, sent to him by fans around the world. For “Tower of Song” alone, he has versions in French, German, Spanish, 103

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Swedish, Hungarian, Danish, Polish, and Hebrew—two separate translations of that last one. He’s been sent translated covers from as far afield as Iran and Madagascar, and remains particularly impressed by Maciej Zembaty’s eight full albums of self-translated Polish-language Cohen covers. “In eastern European countries, many don’t understand English,” Arjatsalo says. “The only way to get an idea what the songs are about is to hear a local version.” He and Leonard spoke about this, and Arjatsalo says Cohen was particularly aware of the importance of these translated covers. Though Cohen was loath to choose favorites, he mentioned particularly liking 1993 Norwegianlanguage tribute album called Hadde Månen En Søster: Cohen På Norsk. (If that’s not esoteric enough, a 2008 tribute, In Frysk earbetoan oan Leonard Cohen: Cohen in het Fries, translated Cohen songs into Frisian, a language only spoken in one Netherlands province.) And when a flamenco tribute album Omega came out in Spain in 1996, Cohen went as far as to tell a local paper, “I’m very touched that my songs are played in flamenco style. Nobody has performed my songs in this way before!”3 *** So what does the man who has probably heard more Leonard Cohen covers than anyone alive want to hear next? For one, he hopes musicians will give “Hallelujah” a rest. Arjatsalo estimates the song now comprises 20 percent of the covers in his database, and that percentage keeps growing. Though he loves “Hallelujah” as much as anyone—both he and Cohen’s 104

I N T E R LU D E : JA R K KO A R JAT S O L O

manager Kory cite kd lang’s versions as personal favorites— it’s become something of a cliché. Even worse, Arjatsalo says, artists treat “Hallelujah” too reverently, mirroring someone else’s version without making the song their own. “Often I have the feeling when I listen to another cover that the artist doesn’t know at all what he or she is singing about,” he says. “They just sing the lyrics without any depth in their minds. In my opinion, nobody does ‘Hallelujah’ better than Leonard himself.” He hopes artists will choose lesser-known or newer songs. He says there is a pool of maybe 20-25 Cohen songs, in a career spanning hundreds, from which most artists seem to pick. “There would be space for artists to find something new and perform in their own way,” Arjatsalo says. Cohen’s critically acclaimed later albums offer a wealth of road-lesstraveled options, he says. He points to the gorgeous cover of Cohen’s final single, “You Want It Darker,” a synagogue choir performed at a big posthumous Montreal tribute concert organized by Cohen’s son Adam. Around the time he released that final single, a quote Cohen gave the The New Yorker’s David Remnick made international news. “I am ready to die,” Cohen said. “I hope it’s not too uncomfortable.” Following public distress at his remarks, he walked it back at a Q&A a week later, saying, “I think I was exaggerating. I’ve always been into selfdramatization. I intend to live forever.” Less than a month later, he was gone. His passing shocked fans as much as an eighty-two-yearold’s death can, but Arjatsalo sensed it was coming. What Cohen had told Remnick on the record, he’d also more or 105

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

less told Arjatsalo off it. In his last months, he sent Arjatsalo several emails that were clearly written as final thank-you’s. Arjatsalo says he wrote back and “promised to keep the flame burning” after Cohen was gone. He has, too. LeonardCohenFiles.com is still going strong, with over 200 people attending the latest in-person meet-up in Hydra in 2019, two and a half years after Leonard’s death. But they are getting older, Arjatsalo says, as is he. Sooner or later he’ll have to hand over the reins to a new webmaster. There will inevitably be less news in the Leonard Cohen world as the years ago on—though a brand-new album did come out in 2019, three years after the songwriter’s death— but he wants his massive archive of information to stay online. And the covers, no doubt, will keep coming. *** On his final tour in 2012, Cohen played a stadium in Helsinki in front of a sell-out crowd of 11,000. His concerts by this point were pretty scripted—the same setlists, the same jokes. But at one point he veered off the script to talk about one of those 11,000 fans filling the stadium: “There was someone from this town that began a website called The Leonard Cohen Files. Through his efforts, my work was kept alive for all these years. The man’s name is Jarkko Arjatsalo. I want to thank him for the spectacular effort he’s made on my behalf. I am deeply grateful.”

106

6 The 1990s Tribute Album Explosion

In 1991, the same year as I’m Your Fan, two other major tribute albums came out: Two Rooms, a splashy Elton John tribute album featuring covers by the likes of The Who, Hall & Oates, and Kate Bush,* and superproducer Ralph Sall’s first tribute album Deadicated. From there, the proverbial floodgates opened. They haven’t closed since. Why tribute albums exploded as they did in the 1990s is a somewhat open question. Stephen Deusner, who wrote the 2016 Stereogum article “Various Artists: A Tribute To ’90s Tribute Albums,” theorizes that the decade’s CD boom made the tribute album explode. He points to labels rushing to repackage old material for the new format—reissuing individual albums, of course, but also releasing all manner of box sets and compilations. “I feel like it was hitting a point where suddenly our relationship to older music had changed,” Deusner told me, with younger fans rushing to discover all these older artists and sounds as if they were new. In 2007, readers of British newspaper The Observer voted Bush’s reggaeinflected “Rocket Man” the greatest cover ever. *

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Alan Light, whose career as a music journalist started right around when the tribute album blossomed, agrees that listeners started looking back more than ever before. When we zoomed out from “Hallelujah” to talk about covers and tribute albums more generally, he recalls an experience interning at Rolling Stone in 1987. For the magazine’s twentieth anniversary issue, it put together a list of the 100 best albums of its lifespan. These sorts of lists come out all the time today. But in 1987, “people went nuts,” Light recalls. “Nobody had done that as a cover of a magazine. That was really the first time that somebody did that sort of historic treatment looking at rock and roll catalog and rock and roll history in that way. That was what was starting to happen at that time.” Deusner also notes that being able to fit more songs onto a CD than one could an LP facilitated what streaming services would now call “discovery.” It’s no accident that many tribute albums of the era run between 70 and 80 minutes, right at the limit of a CD’s storage capacity (I’m Your Fan clocks in at 75:41). Producers packed in as many covers as possible to attract as many fan groups as possible. Fans would track down tribute albums their favorite bands appeared on and discover not only the artist being tributed, but all the other bands. A hodgepodge collection packed to the gills may or may not work as a cohesive album, but it proved a smart sales tactic. Deusner recalls the ups and downs of that from his own purchases as a nineties kid. On one hand, he discovered the cult-favorite songwriter Vic Chesnutt for the first time when he bought the cumbersomely titled 1996 charity tribute album Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation (The Songs Of Vic Chesnutt) to hear R.E.M.’s track. On the other, he 108

T H E 1 9 9 0 s T R I BU T E A L BUM E X P L O SIO N

felt burned by the terrible 1993 Jimi Hendrix tribute album Stone Free which he bought to hear his beloved The Cure attempting “Purple Haze.” “I’m not much of a Cure fan today, and I think it might have to do with that,” he says. Following the success of I’m Your Fan and the other lateeighties/early-ninties tribute albums, the format quickly settled into the mold it fits today: many artists covering one artist. The many artists may or may not be well-known; the one almost always is (though the subgenre of “famous artists shine a light on an underappreciated influence” still thrives). Tribute albums began to touch on all genres, with tributes honoring pioneers in niches from Christian rock (1995’s One Way: The Songs of Larry Norman) to industrial noise (1995’s Entertainment Through Pain: A Tribute To Throbbing Gristle) to surf rock (1996’s Twang!: A Tribute To Hank Marvin & The Shadows). As the format calcified, tribute albums came to be divided into two camps: labors of love and record-label cash-ins. And the latter came to dominate popular attention. Deusner’s Stereogum article takes a rather disparaging look. He writes: Even the best tribute albums were never consumed in their entirety, but heard piecemeal: Skip that cover by the guy your parents like, ignore the song by the MTV buzz band that no one will remember in a year, disregard that Elvis Costello track (there’s almost always an Elvis Costello track), and play the songs by the band you actually like. Even then it’s hit or miss. You might pick up ‘I’m Your Fan: The Songs Of Leonard Cohen’ because you love R.E.M., only to discover that their cover of “First We Take Manhattan” is actually pretty awkward and forgettable. 109

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that R.E.M. cover, but a certain level of cynicism from someone who lived through the tribute album boom is understandable. As music industry suits saw money, tributes became seen less as the work of passionate fans and more as attempts to pry every possible dollar out of those fans’ wallets. “‘How do we sell Led Zeppelin to a new generation that maybe hasn’t heard them?’” Deusner imagines label heads discussing in board rooms. “‘Well, the kids like the Hootie and the Blowfish . . .’” He adds, “I think it’s trying to make these connections in a way that’s cynical. I don’t think it’s just a matter of just naked greed; I think it’s just more like, ‘What’s the best way to maximize these commodities that we have?’” That Zeppelin tribute album is no hypothetical example; Deusner’s referring to 1995’s Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin, in which a seemingly random assortment of popular artists with no obvious connection to Led Zeppelin—Duran Duran, Sheryl Crow, the aforementioned Hootie—covers the band’s hits. He also singles out for particular scorn that Cure-featuring Hendrix tribute Stone Free (“the whole thing sounds awful and pointless and it feels just like there’s no reason for it to exist in the world”), 1993’s The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (“the most boring take on Bob Dylan that you could imagine”), and 1994’s Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved (“they’re trying to convince me that Kiss are really good songwriters, and they are not successful”). To be fair, the artists contributing to the nineties boom’s cash-in tribute albums may have genuinely loved the artists they were covering. Though tribute albums could be highly 110

T H E 1 9 9 0 s T R I BU T E A L BUM E X P L O SIO N

profitable for labels and even for the artist being honored, they rarely were for any one band out of a few dozen on a CD track list. Bands might contribute to a tribute album for a host of reasons, but many appear to go in with the best of intentions. To take that “Purple Haze” cover that disappointed Deusner so much, The Cure only wanted to honor a personal hero. Frontman Robert Smith has said, “Jimi Hendrix changed my life.”1 Good intentions alone don’t make a good cover. *** As the format became a phenomenon, the artists being tributed began appearing on their own tribute albums. Robert Plant himself joined Tori Amos to sing Zeppelin’s “Down By the Seaside” on Encomium, Curtis Mayfield reprised his “Let’s Do It Again” for 1994’s unimaginatively titled A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield, and Ron Wood played guitar on “It’s Not Easy” for 1998’s Cover You: A Tribute to the Rolling Stones (though in that case the song Wood chose did predate him joining the band). Some artists went even further. Willie Nelson sat in with two young bands on 1996’s alt-rock focused Twisted Willie, singing “Bloody Mary Morning” with Supersuckers and “Hello Walls” with The Reverend Horton Heat. Nick Cave traveled to Wrocław, Poland for the tribute concert that was released as 2001’s Nick Cave i Przyjaciele, joining artists who sang his lyrics in Polish (he kept his parts in English). And the surviving Doors play on every track of Sall’s 2000 tribute Stoned Immaculate. 111

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

Some artists didn’t wait around for someone else to curate a tribute album to them; they did it themselves. Van Morrison was an early adopter, personally selecting the artists on 1994’s No Prima Donna: The Songs of Van Morrison. Dylan’s team initiated the massive Madison Square Garden concert that became the 1993 album Deusner hated, with Dylan himself performing a few songs (a decade later, he would again appear on his own tribute album, joining Mavis Staples for “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” off 2003’s Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs Of Bob Dylan). In 2009, artists from Bruce Springsteen to Paul McCartney selected both the artists to cover them and the song those artists would perform for the charity covers album War Child Presents Heroes (Springsteen picked The Hold Steady and “Atlantic City”; McCartney picked Duffy and “Live and Let Die”). Leonard Cohen himself, after being so hands-off for I’m Your Fan, would get more deeply involved in his next tribute album. A few years after I’m Your Fan, Cohen’s then-manager Kelley Lynch† and her producer husband Steve Lindsey initiated a sequel of sorts, but with more mainstream names. They leaned on Cohen to personally secure his famous friends and peers for 1995’s Tower of Song, requiring him to leave the monastery to hit the phones. He persuaded pop stars from Billy Joel (“Light as the Breeze”) to In 2005, it was discovered that Lynch had stolen millions from Cohen while he was ensconced in a monastery. The loss of this money left Cohen in a dire financial situation that precipitated his return to the stage. A court ordered Lynch to repay Cohen $9.5 million, which she never did. In 2012, she was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for threatening and harassing Cohen. †

112

T H E 1 9 9 0 s T R I BU T E A L BUM E X P L O SIO N

Bono (“Hallelujah”) to sing his songs. He was also sent out to promote it. In a Billboard article, he was frank about his and his team’s commercial goals for the album: “I have hopes that I’ll be able to at last address the American marketplace from a position that is a little broader than the one I’ve occupied with my own work. These are mainstream artists, and it is my hope that they have presented these songs in such a way that many people can hear them for the first time.”2 Hardly a ringing endorsement, and a far cry from his poetic words about how deeply I’m Your Fan moved him. AllMusic’s review was typical: “Tower of Song strikes one as a venture likely devised by the Marketing Department, rather than those elitist projects with artists who actually share an affinity for Cohen’s work.”3 *** By the time Tower of Song came out, the tribute album backlash had already begun. Reviewing Beat the Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson, the Washington City Paper called tribute albums “an extremely tired idea.” And that was back in 1994! Little did that writer know the boom had just begun. The major labels didn’t heed early warnings of oversaturation and continued churning them out en masse. But while the majors chased bigger and bigger names, sometimes with little regard to whether the collections made any sense artistically, fans continued to release labors of love like I’m Your Fan. Many followed in the Hal Willner model, exposing cult-favorite artists to a wider audience. Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson was 113

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

one of the first in this mold, coming in 1990. Everyone from ZZ Top to The Jesus and Mary Chain helped bring a psychrock pioneer to broader acclaim while raising money for his ongoing medical issues (he’d long suffered from paranoid schizophrenia). In fact, fundraising for medical bills soon became a standard impetus for these made-from-love tribute albums, particularly those dedicated to songwriters who were not household names. Bill Bentley, the producer of the Roky Erickson fundraising tribute, tried to repeat the feat a decade later with 1999’s More Oar: A Tribute to Skip Spence. Unfortunately, the former Moby Grape songwriter died several weeks before the album’s release. When Alejandro Escovedo could no longer pay his hepatitis C medical bills in 2003, a who’s-who of Americana musicians from Lucinda Williams to Steve Earle covered his songs on a tribute album literally titled Por Vida—“for life.” On the indie-rock side, that 2009 tribute album Hatfield barely remembered raised money for Mark Mulcahy after his wife’s sudden death. More recently, an all-star lineup of indie-rock Replacements fans from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy to The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn contributed to 2013’s double-album Songs for Slim to help Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap after a stroke. In an industry where few have health insurance, tribute albums can be lifelines. Other smaller tribute album producers simply wanted to honor or showcase a personal hero. The world mostly remembers costumed sixties band Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs for their novelty hit “Wooly Bully,” but in 1994, twenty-six artists made the case for the entire catalog 114

T H E 1 9 9 0 s T R I BU T E A L BUM E X P L O SIO N

with Turban Renewal: A Tribute To Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs. The following year, New Zealand’s hip indie-rock label Flying Nun put together an unironic tribute to a band usually thought of as a guilty pleasure at best: ABBA. (In a format filled with bad-pun titles, Abbasolutely ranks as one of the better efforts.) One of the odder examples I’ve ever seen came in 2010, when experimental electronic music label Tri Angle—the sort of label that signs artists with names like oOoOO—put together an apparently sincere “witch-house” tribute to the short-lived musical career of Lindsay Lohan. Such esoteric and niche subjects continued to find their way onto tribute albums in the nineties and beyond. Smaller groups and networks produced their own tribute albums, from a 1998 tribute to Prince by Austin, Texas musicians to a group of Chicago blues musicians covering the Rolling Stones in 2017, paying tribute to the band who had so long paid tribute to them. As the twentieth century became the twenty-first, deciding to curate a tribute to your favorite artist became even easier thanks to high-speed internet. These days, many if not most of the tribute albums I hear exist only on Bandcamp or Spotify, populated by no-name artists and posted online for other fans to discover. They’re often quite good too. A tiny San Francisco digital label called UnderCover ropes in local singers and rappers to honor rarely tributed artists like A Tribe Called Quest, and a similar Portland digital label called Curry Cuts managed to collect new covers of every single James Bond theme song (yes, even the Madonna one). 115

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

The earliest example of an internet-driven tribute album I have found came in 1996, on a Usenet message board devoted to comedy singer “Weird Al” Yankovic. A group of decidedly amateur musicians who frequented the message board covered a variety of Weird Al deep cuts and mailed their recordings off to forum member Joe Krause. Krause compiled them all—he didn’t realize that as a producer he could have (and definitely should have) rejected some for, as he puts it today, “quality control reasons”—and mastered them onto a professional-looking cassette. He titled it Prosthetic Lips, after a Weird Al lyric. He says he sold them out of his living room for $6, plus $1.50 for shipping. People had to mail a personal check to a post office box near his house. Several hundred orders came in. That money could have funded a decent eighth grade graduation party. Because, when he produced that album, Joe Krause was all of fourteen years old. In the internet era, truly anyone could now create a tribute album.

116

Interlude: Jim Sampas and Joe Spadaro

Jim Sampas and Joe Spadaro have never met. They’re never even spoken. But the two of them have done more than anyone to bring the tribute album into the twenty-first century. They run the biggest two tribute album-focused record labels of the past decade: Reimagine Music for Jim and American Laundromat for Joe. Both come to the music business from other art forms. Sampas has literature in his blood, literally; he’s Jack Kerouac’s nephew and manages his uncle’s literary estate. His tribute albums often have a literary bent. Spadaro, for his part, is a movie buff from Long Island who fondly recalls Saturday afternoons sneaking into the cinema long before he became a music fan. Many of his tributes incorporate his favorite movies. Before either started their tribute labels, though, they had other entries into the music business. Sampas attempted a short-lived career as a singer-songwriter in the Boston area. Though his own recording career didn’t last, he did meet and work with a number of prominent musicians; new wave

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

pioneer Graham Parker sang and played harmonica on his album. Semi-famous friends like Parker would populate his early tribute projects. Spadaro’s own musical endeavors led him to tribute albums too. He had a band called The Sewer Rats—later to be changed, when they decided the name was terrible, to The Atomic Hep Cats (is that really better?). Living in Connecticut, he met other bands through the New England music scene and started a label to put out his friends’ music. He called it American Laundromat, a mostly meaningless name inspired by a photo he bought outside the Museum of Modern Art (Sampas’s label name, Reimagine Music, has a much clearer tribute album connotation). Spadaro used a tax rebate to fund it and quickly realized he didn’t have the budget to put out a bunch of different albums. So he collected songs by all the bands on a compilation called Transistor. He’d envisioned the label as a collective, all these artists working together. As he recalls now, “One of the bands out of Boston said, ‘Well it’s a great idea in theory, but most bands from my experience tend to be very lazy—including my own. You’re probably going to find out you have to do most of the work yourself.’ And he was 100% right.” American Laundromat soon became Spadaro’s label. Though neither musician had entered the music business intending to make tribute albums, they both loved the format from their childhood. Sampas used to collect the early Hal Willner tribute albums, and still speaks of them with reverence. “He’s the guy,” Sampas says, “the founder, the purveyor, the first person. His work was an incredible influence on me. Just the whole concept of taking something and making it something else really fascinated me.” 118

I N T E R LU D E : J I M S A M PA S A N D J O E SPA DA R O

Spadaro discovered the format a few years after Willner, during the nineties boom. He cites Ralph Sall’s Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits as a favorite, and traces a line from that to some of his own tributes a decade later. He also liked a few smaller tribute albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s produced by New Jersey label Face Down Records, with local bands tackling The Who and The Replacements. The label’s founder Mick Chorba mentored Spadaro early on, giving him advice on all the minutiae of putting together a tribute album: how to license the covers, how to structure deals, what the bands should expect, etc. *** Sampas kept his subject close to home for his first tribute album: his uncle, Jack Kerouac. He worked for Kerouac’s estate in a more junior role in the nineties and devised the idea of creating a spoken-word album to expose the writer’s lesser-known works to a wider audience. A few years away from starting his own record label, Sampas pitched the idea to the label Rykodisc, home to the likes of Yoko Ono and Morphine. They were intrigued, so he put together a demo of sorts: a concert version of the tribute, held at Boston’s small nightclub the Middle East. He filled the room, and they signed the project. He used every connection he had from his uncle’s estate— Kerouac’s old friend Allen Ginsberg, signed on early— and his youthful hustle. At one point, Sampas cornered Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo backstage at a different Middle East show to pitch him. Once Ranaldo agreed, he helped 119

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

introduce Sampas to his friends. “I was very aggressive,” Sampas says. “I just believed in this project so much.” He eventually got Eddie Vedder aboard, which opened the floodgates. Michael Stipe, Patti Smith, and Johnny Depp all ended up reciting Kerouac’s works over a soundtrack of experimental jazz. Juliana Hatfield, too. Sampas financed it on credit cards, spending $21,000 in all to produce Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness. When it came out in 1997, he recouped his investment almost immediately. In fact, this odd jazzpoetry record became Rykodisc’s second best-selling record of the year. Sampas’ career of tribute albums had begun. Being a spoken-word release, Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness hardly followed a traditional tribute album template. Sampas’s second record did, though—with a twist. In 2000, he devised Badlands, a full-album tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s revered 1982 solo album Nebraska. Sampas wanted all the musicians to record their covers on rather primitive four-track, just like Springsteen did on the original album. A series of record-label machinations led to Badlands coming out on Sub Pop, the most storied indie label of the nineties. The association helped Sampas secure huge names from Ben Harper (“My Father’s House”) to Los Lobos (“Johnny 99”) to a man who’d already been the subject of a few tribute albums himself: Johnny Cash. Cash ignored the album’s conceit, not recording “I’m on Fire” on four-track, but are you really going to say no to Johnny Cash? (also, “I’m on Fire” comes off Born in the U.S.A., but Springsteen first recorded it during the Nebraska sessions, so it skates by on a technicality). This led to one of Sampas’s best memories of two decades of doing tribute records, the 120

I N T E R LU D E : J I M S A M PA S A N D J O E SPA DA R O

day Cash’s recording was delivered to his door. “I actually said to a FedEx guy, ‘Do you see what you just delivered to me?’ He looked at me, he’s like, ‘What the . . .?’ He couldn’t believe it. [That sort of moment] just keeps you going.” A couple Beatles-related tribute albums followed—2003’s Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney—From a Window, on a short-lived label he started, and 2005’s This Bird Has Flown: A 40th Anniversary Tribute To The Beatles’ Rubber Soul on the much bigger label Razor & Tie—before Sampas decided he needed to create a dedicated label to release all the tribute albums he envisioned. He wanted more money and more freedom than he got working with bigger labels. On the financial side, the labels’ budgets for these albums ballooned so much—$100,000 apiece for his Springsteen and Beatles tributes—that, after cashing his advance, he would never see another dime. He also didn’t want to keep chasing bigger and bigger names. He’s gotten plenty of good-sized names for Reimagine Music albums—Cowboy Junkies, Father John Misty, Gregory Alan Isakov—but no one so big it required endless negotiations with teams of lawyers and managers. “I really, really, really like the idea of discovering artists myself through these projects and helping to introduce their work,” he says. “In many cases, it’s folks that are on the cutting edge, if you will. I really wanted that to be the thing that drove Reimagine.” Reimagine Music has produced fifteen tribute albums to date, honoring artists as varied as Bessie Smith and Nirvana. In addition to these more traditional tributes, Sampas has continued to bring his day job to the label. In 2013, he staged an arguably even more ambitious Kerouac tribute album, 121

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

getting artists like Isakov, Marissa Nadler, and his old friend Ranaldo to put music to sections of Kerouac’s 1960 novella Tristessa. *** If Jim Sampas’s first artistic passion was literature, Joe Spadaro’s was movies. And like Sampas, that circuitously led him into the tribute album business. In the early 2000s, Spadaro dedicated an issue of his film fanzine to the iconic John Hughes movies of the 1980s: Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. These films’ soundtracks encapsulated their era. For what became his first of many tribute albums, he decided to compile an album paying tribute not to a musician, but to an era, with covers of iconic eighties movie songs like “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” (The Breakfast Club) and “In Your Eyes” (Say Anything). Where Sampas employed some old-school networking and gladhanding to find his first bands, Spadaro got them the way so many tribute album producers lacking industry connections do today: the internet. He scoured early social networks to discover bands he liked. He read interviews and listened to unsigned acts, trying to suss out who else might be a film buff. Those bands led him to others; he says one of the bands he discovered on the social network, The Bennies, introduced him to their friend Frank Black, one of the biggest names on that eighties-movie album. As a proof of concept, Spadaro created the album cover before it had an album to cover: A Say Anything still of 122

I N T E R LU D E : J I M S A M PA S A N D J O E SPA DA R O

John Cusack holding up his boombox with all the films he hoped bands would cover songs from listed underneath, arranged like the credits on a movie poster. With no track record or reputation, he still got a lot of “no”s. He says it took him longer to compile than any he’s done since. Eventually, though, enough bands came on board, from The Dresden Dolls covering “Pretty in Pink” to Matthew Sweet covering “American Girl” to Black singing “Repo Man,” that he was able to release High School Reunion in 2005. It became American Laundromat’s first tribute album. It got easier after that. Spadaro leveraged his Frank Black connection into a pair of Pixies-related tributes he created with the band’s webmaster, 2007’s Dig For Fire: A Tribute To Pixies and the following year’s Gigantic: A Tribute to Kim Deal. Artists began reaching out to him asking to be involved; he says he really fanned out when Josie Cotton, who’d performed on some of those eighties movie soundtracks, reached out on MySpace. Spadaro compiled tributes to the artists he grew up loving: The Cure, The Smiths, and Elliott Smith. He even used a tribute album to pay a more personal tribute. One of the first Christmas presents his mother ever gave him was Neil Young’s greatest-hits collection Decade. “We didn’t have a lot of money, so that was a big gift,” he says. When she died, he honored her with 2008’s Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young For Charity. He donated all the proceeds to breast cancer research. He also continued finding ways to incorporate his love of films. He produced an album honoring the music from Wes Anderson films, his most successful tribute, and one honoring B-movie classic Repo Man, his least successful (“I 123

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

got a lot of copies sitting on the shelves”). Through his Wes Anderson tribute, he got to know Hatfield, whose Olivia Newton-John and Police tributes were released on American Laundromat. *** Having overseen thirty tribute albums between them, Sampas and Spadaro may have more insight than anyone about how to make a tribute album in the twenty-first century. For instance, when choosing his tribute subject, Sampas follows an old adage from the movie business: one for them, one for me. That means mixing his own idiosyncratic interests with tributes to household name figures. He’s released five Beatles-related tribute albums alone at this point. He raps excitedly about esoteric ideas like tributing Spirit of St. Louis, a 1981 album The Clash’s Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote for Night Court actress Ellen Foley, but adds, “I gotta keep the label going.” No surprise that tributes to Bob Dylan and Nirvana tend to sell better. How well known the artist being tributed is can affect how he produces the covers, he says. If he’s honoring a niche band like alt-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, he aims to keep the covers sounding relatively similar to the originals. “I didn’t really go against the grain on that,” he says. “I want people to discover this record, so why try and reinvent the wheel?” When he’s producing a Nirvana tribute album, on the other hand, he needs the covers to veer far afield to get anyone to pay attention. He recalls a reviewer saying he liked Sampas’s Nevermind tribute more than he liked the original 124

I N T E R LU D E : J I M S A M PA S A N D J O E SPA DA R O

recordings. “That’s kind of blasphemy,” he laughs, “but [these covers] made him realize the depth and beauty of the actual songs themselves. That, to me, is very intriguing, that you can have a song somebody may not even like at all, but if it’s created and arranged in a different way, the same person might love [it].” Regardless of how famous the original band is, and how faithful the covers will be, both Sampas and Spadaro have found that keeping a tight genre focus when selecting artists works. Many tribute albums, Spadaro complains, “have bands that are all over the map. It’s like they’re trying to hit every genre. They’re trying to get rappers involved, and country artists, and real big R&B stars, and . . . maybe some Americana artists involved. It just seems like there’s no cohesiveness to it.” He says the various bands need not sound exactly alike, but should live in the same world: “Sometimes it’s like you pick Tanya Donelly, then you might think of The Breeders or you might think of Juliana Hatfield or you might think of The Lemonheads. They’re all six degrees of separation. You take a little circumference and just keep widening it.” It’s a somewhat conservative impulse. Wildly genre-jumping collections can turn out great if lovingly curated, but they’ve so often been simply a major label cramming together as many big stars as possible. One can understand a small label wanting to play it a little safer. Ever since recruiting musician film-buffs for High School Reunion, Spadaro’s taken care to keep each album conceptually cohesive. For his Wes Anderson tribute album, he sought out bands that were quirky in their own ways. For an album he made of bands covering lullabies, he selected indie bands 125

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

that tended toward the mellow. He and Sampas both do a ton of research. Though he started by accosting bands at shows, Sampas now relies on the internet as well for his discoveries, digging deep into Metacritic review aggregation, Last.fm personal recommendations, and Spotify playlists. Sampas says keeping a close eye on sonic consistency has become more important than ever in the streaming era. He thinks the tribute album’s biggest enemy these days is the skip button. “The thing that concerns me is that somebody could be listening to the record, and they click the next track button on Spotify or whatever,” he says. No longer can someone in his position count on listeners buying a CD for the one band they like; he needs those listeners to like all the bands and stream the full album. That arguably leads toward more conservative choices. It also arguably leads toward collections that offer a smoother listening experience beginning to end, in an era where the slightest bum track might cause a streaming user to click away. Unlike Willner and Sall, Sampas and Spadaro operate on a shoestring budget. They don’t have the money to fly all over the world overseeing recording sessions. So they send out their asks, sort which band gets which track, and hope for the best. That’s the norm for most tribute albums these days; even Sall, king of the big-budget tribute albums, produces over the phone more. But it comes with risks. The producer relinquishes control over the production and has to pray that the band comes back with something good. Occasionally they don’t. Despite all their best efforts to mitigate against disaster—carefully picking bands, advising on song selection—sometimes the producers have to reject 126

I N T E R LU D E : J I M S A M PA S A N D J O E SPA DA R O

a track. Spadaro says it’s only happened once, and recalls playing the track in question to various friends to confirm his impression. “I felt bad about it, but I just couldn’t jeopardize the project for that one track,” he says. Sampas calls rejecting covers “the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.” You can practically hear the high-energy producer deflate when he recalls a manager berating him about cutting his artist. But, he says, you have to keep that skip button in mind. *** In the last couple years, both producers have moved away from tribute albums. After producing as many as anyone else ever has, they finally succumbed to the same hurdle that stopped so many other producers after one or two tributes: It is so much work. When Sampas took over from his father as literary executor of the Kerouac estate, his day job left little room for a time-consuming hobby. He wants to get back into it, and says he has a couple records in the can, waiting until he has time to release them properly. And he still dreams of a few other projects—that Clash/Ellen Foley tribute, and his sixth Beatles-related tribute, with artists covering the songs Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello wrote together in the 1980s. “I’d like to see the label experimenting more with different genres and taking things in different directions even more,” he says. But, unless he finds himself with more free time, those dreams will remain just that. Spadaro, too, feels like it’s time to move on. “It’s a tremendous amount of work,” he says. “You’re contacting maybe 15-20 artists. You’re working with managers, 127

I’m Your Fan : T he S ongs of L eonard C ohen

sometimes their lawyers, and there’s a lot of back and forth. Even bands that I had on earlier tributes now have managers or now have attorneys, and they’re busting my chops about this, that, and the other. I gotta write up 15 master license agreements, it’s clearing the mechanicals, it’s reporting to the artists—if you’re doing something like a Wes Anderson tribute, there’s just as many publishers. It’s just a lot of work.” He finds working with a single artist like Hatfield is much easier. Even when she’s recording her own full-album tributes, there’s just one artist and one publisher to deal with. Much less paperwork. Plus, he says, he’s already done the tributes he wanted to do. He still imagines one that covers Willie Nelson’s early songs—he’d try to get people like disco-country queen Kacey Musgraves or Memphis roots-punk band Lucero—but otherwise, he’s already paid tribute to all the bands that mean enough to him to make it worth his while. You have to be so passionate, he says; it’s not worth it to do a tribute album to a band you aren’t obsessed with. “I’m not making a list of bands I like and think would make a good tribute,” he says. “Every time I started one, I was like, ‘Do I really want to do this? This is going to be a pain in the ass.’ And then, ‘All right, let me get the Excel doc out.’” But even if American Laundromat becomes a more traditional record-label releasing Juliana Hatfield and a couple other in-house artists, he’s grateful. “I think if I would have started with just very small indie bands that nobody ever heard of, I don’t think the label would have ever survived,” he says. “The reason I’m here still 15 years later is because I did those tribute compilations.” 128

7 The Tribute Album Today

In the thirteen years since I started the cover songs blog Cover Me, I have been sent hundreds, maybe thousands, of new tribute albums. Every year brings more than the year before. Despite being less ubiquitous in the cultural consciousness than it was in the 1990s, the tribute album is thriving. Even in the last decade, we’ve seen the format grow. Tribute albums had already fully entered the internet era by the time I started paying attention, but they continued to shift with the internet. In the first decade of the 2000s, web-driven tribute albums abounded. But they tended to come attached to music publications. Prominent music blog Stereogum released four in those years, getting huge indierock names to cover entire albums by Radiohead, R.E.M., Björk, and The Strokes. SPIN magazine curated a couple themselves, for Prince and Nirvana. Even smaller blogs got in on the action, with tributes to everyone from Hall & Oates to The Postal Service to Leonard Cohen himself popping up on little-read blogs featuring no-name bands (some of those albums were quite good, include now-defunct Canadian

I’M YOU R FA N : T H E S O N G S O F L E O NA R D C O H E N

folk blog Herohill’s twenty-five-track Cohen set The Bard of Montreal). Culture moves fast, and those late-2000s tribute albums seem like a million years ago. The only media outlets regularly curating tribute albums today are the British rock magazines like Mojo and Uncut—and those don’t get released digitally at all. On the digital side, a wide array of new distribution platforms has cut out the middleman. The wave of blogs curating tribute albums crested in the first decade of the new millennium. In the second decade, bands and fans simply created them themselves. Tribute albums of sometimes uncertain origin appear daily on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. One person in São Paolo, Brazil, has curated fifty-eight tribute albums in six years on Bandcamp, all featuring entirely unknown bands covering the likes of The Cure and Nick Cave. Quality control can be lacking when churning out tribute albums at this rate, but then again, quality control was often lacking in the major-label tribute boom too. Those big-name, headline-grabbing releases still come with some regularity. 2018 saw a pair of massive Elton John tributes: the pop-focused Revamp with stars like Ed Sheeran and Lady Gaga and the country Restoration with Kacey Musgraves and Miley Cyrus. Two years before that, The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner sucked up all the tribute album oxygen for months with Day of the Dead, which got fifty-nine of the coolest bands around—The War on Drugs, Wilco, Courtney Barnett—to cover songs by one of the traditionally least cool bands around: The Grateful Dead. Such splashy tribute albums in the nineties mold live 130

T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM T O DAY

on, but now they share Spotify space with all the fan-curated internet oddities. One nineties tribute trend seems to have actually grown in the last few years: artists curating their own tributes. In the 1990s, one typically had to scour CD credits or the pages of Billboard to discover when someone initiated his or her own tribute. Artists often appeared to prefer their role remained in the background, perhaps so they could feign surprise at what appeared to be a spontaneous outpouring of love. These days, artists are not only curating their own tribute albums; they’re crowing about it. Everyone from Tegan and Sara to superproducer Jack Antonoff has prominently organized tributes to themselves. Such projects typically raise money for a favored charity, presumably to not seem quite so selfserving. Americana icon Brandi Carlile topped them all. She not only got household names like Adele and Pearl Jam to cover her songs; she got Barack Obama to write the liner notes. It is, to my knowledge, the first presidential appearance on a tribute album. *** The tribute album has thrived in the twenty-first century, but trouble lurks on the horizon. In the past few years, streaming has radically altered how fans consume music and restructured the music industry. Every month, another publication or industry observer proclaims the death of the album, and with some justification. Physical album sales have plummeted, and users of platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have shown a desire to consume music as stand-alone 131

I’M YOU R FA N : T H E S O N G S O F L E O NA R D C O H E N

songs, particularly via playlists. As of 2019, Spotify estimates that two-thirds of listening time is spent on playlists.1 The opening sentence of a Rolling Stone article at the end of 2018 put it bluntly: “Make no mistake, the album is fighting for its life.”2 The tribute album would seem particularly vulnerable to such trends. As we’ve seen over and over again, even the best tribute albums usually have a skippable track or two. If they don’t hold up as albums, why would consumers today treat them as such? Pick the bands you like, put their covers on a playlist, and ignore the rest. As the user interfaces of Spotify and its competitors stand now, one could easily discover and love a cover without even realizing it came from a tribute album in the first place. The curators I’ve spoken to, however, seem optimistic about the prospects of the tribute album in the streaming era. Spadaro has seen that streaming users do in fact click through from a favorite band’s page to stream the tribute album as a whole. He doesn’t make the money he used to selling CDs and vinyl, he admits, but streaming gives a new lease on life to tributes he released a decade ago. “It’s not really about the money,” he says, “just the satisfaction that people are still discovering stuff you worked so hard on for a year of your life.” Sampas goes even further. “There’s no way Reimagine would still exist without Spotify,” he says. “To be honest, actually the label is doing better now than it was when I first started, financially . . . even though I haven’t been doing barely anything with it.” The so-called “long tail” of streaming—the idea that work done years ago will continue earning money 132

T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM T O DAY

for creators—works for him. Listeners keep discovering even his oldest tribute albums, Sampas says, making him a little money each time. And when something happens that brings one of his albums or covers some renewed attention, the music is right there at the user’s fingertips. A short while ago his label suddenly got 2.5 million streams in a single day. He never did figure out why (his best guess is a song might have been added to some popular Spotify playlist or been used in a TV show), but he happily cashed the check. However, for all these newer label heads’ optimism, streaming presents a major problem for tribute albums that came out before music went online. Many—including, as of this writing, I’m Your Fan—remain unavailable on official streaming platforms. The obstacle is a legal one: the licenses labels signed with the artists in the CD era did not cover digital releases. How could they, when no one knew “digital releases” would be a thing? This was true for CDs across the board, of course, and labels have negotiated new digital contracts with Nirvana and The Beatles and everyone else. With a tribute album though, the situation becomes more complicated. To release Nirvana’s Nevermind to streaming, the label only needs one new contract with one band. To release a tribute album to streaming, though, the label might need twenty new contracts with twenty different bands, most of whom probably weren’t signed to that label in the first place. It seems like a hassle, so many labels don’t bother. Even the most beloved 1980s and 1990s tribute albums often exist only in the murky world of fan-uploaded YouTube videos. Though YouTube remains the most popular music streaming platform, not having albums like I’m Your Fan on Spotify or 133

I’M YOU R FA N : T H E S O N G S O F L E O NA R D C O H E N

Apple Music presents a risk of them being forgotten as such services increasingly dominate music consumption. For the next wave of new tribute albums, though, the streaming future looks bright. Competing with the entire recorded history of music at a user’s fingertips could force labels and curators to raise their game. The 1990s strategy of cramming unrelated artists onto one CD to force all their fan groups to buy it wouldn’t work today; all those fan groups can just stream the band they like and ignore the rest. This recalls something Stereogum writer Stephen Deusner told me when I asked him if he had any advice for tribute album producers. “Make sure it’s a labor of love,” he said. “Make sure it’s something that you believe in, and not just something that’s a commercial enterprise.” The tribute album will be only consumed as an album if it works as an album. Otherwise it will get divided up into a million personal playlists. The individual covers may live on, but the albums will become lost in the noise. More than ever, a tribute album needs more curatorial thought than simply “bands that are famous.” Those sorts of projects haven’t entirely vanished—witness the aforementioned Elton John tribute Revamp, mixing Coldplay and Mary J. Blige and Demi Lovato with little regard to whether their performances work together—but they seem to be subsiding. The nineties tribute album gold rush is over. The big bucks have, as they have in the rest of the music industry, evaporated. More and more, a new tribute album only comes into being when some individual superfan—the next Hal Willner, Jim Sampas, maybe even the next editor at the next French magazine—passionately, personally wants it to. After the 134

T H E T R I BU T E A L BUM T O DAY

tribute album grew so big it threatened to collapse under an avalanche of disillusioned music fans, the more boutique model seems to be winning out. In that way, I’m Your Fan was years ahead of its time. As two fans with no prior producing experience, Christian Fevret and Jean-Daniel Beauvallet had to use every one of their connections to put together a tribute in the era of faxes and FedExes. Nowadays, they could have curated it over email in a couple weeks and tossed it up on Bandcamp or Spotify. Yet, as it approaches its thirtieth birthday, I’m Your Fan still regularly appears on lists of the best tribute albums of all time. With the barriers to entry lower than ever, the next I’m Your Fan could be just around the corner. Hallelujah.

135

136

Notes

Introduction 1 Leonard Cohen, Interview with Danny Fields. Unpublished, November 1991. 2 Cohen, Interview with Danny Fields.

Chapter 1 1 Stephen Deusner, “Various Artists: A Tribute To ’90s Tribute Albums,” Stereogum, May 16, 2016, https​://ww​w.ste​reogu​ m.com​/1839​176/v​ariou​s-art​ists-​a-tri​bute-​to-90​s-tri​bute-​album​ s/fra​nchis​es/we​ird-9​0s/. 2 Robert Palmer, “RECORDINGS; Rock’s Icons: Hero Today, Homage Tomorrow,” The New York Times, October 15, 1989, https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/1​989/1​0/15/​arts/​recor​dings​-rock​s-ic​ons-h​ero-t​oday-​homag​e-tom​orrow​.html​.

NOTES

Chapter 2 1 Deborah Sprague, “‘Leonard Cohen and the Death of Cool.’” Your Flesh, Spring 1992. Reprinted in Jeff Burger, ed., Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen (London: Omnibus Press, 2014), 250. 2 Judy Collins, Trust Your Heart: An Autobiography (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1989). Reprinted in Jarkko Arjatsalo, ed., “Judy Collins,” The Leonard Cohen Files, accessed October 14, 2019, https​://le​onard​cohen​files​.com/​cover​0.htm​l. 3 Jarkko Arjatsalo, “Covers by Maciej Zembaty,” Leonard Cohen Files, August 17, 2019, https​://le​onard​cohen​files​.com/​cover​ 4.htm​l. 4 Michael Bonner, “He Would Anoint Us with Essential Oils,” Uncut, February 2017. 5 Leonard Cohen, Radio Interview, interview by Vic Scelsa, Idiot’s Delight, WXRK-FM, 13, 1993. Reprinted in Burger, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen, 355. 6 Jennifer Warnes, Radio Interview, interview by Kevin Howlett, BBC Radio One, August 7, 1994. Reprinted in Sylvie Simmons, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (2012; repr., New York: Ecco, 2013), 349. 7 Nitsuh Abebe, “Our Band Could Be Your Band?,” Google Docs, 2019, https​://do​cs.go​ogle.​com/s​pread​sheet​s/d/1​foplE​kEHuX​ hcw2l​sT5-W​vhUho​EF0eV​CPAGE​RMmNm​vKE/e​dit#g​id=0.​ 8 Cohen, Leonard. Interview by Danny Fields. Unpublished, November 1991.​ 9 Adrian Deevoy, “Leonard Cohen: Porridge? Lozenge? Syringe?,” Q Magazine, November 1991, https​://ww​w.leo​nardc​ ohenf​i les.​com/q​mag.h​tml.

138

NOTES

Interlude: Ralph Sall 1 Andy Greene, “‘The Art of McCartney’: The Making of a Massive Tribute LP,” Rolling Stone, November 13, 2014, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​-news​/the-​art-o​ f-mcc​artne​y-the​-maki​ng-of​-a-ma​ssive​-trib​ute-a​lbum-​23565​6/.

Chapter 3 1 Cohen, Interview with Danny Fields. 2 Translated from the French by the author. “Cohen vu Par,” Les Inrockuptibles, September/October 1991, 44. 3 Cathal Coughlan, interview by Dave Fanning, The Dave Fanning Show, RTE, 1992, https​://fa​nning​sessi​ons.w​ordpr​ess.c​ om/20​13/04​/14/c​athal​-coug​hlan-​1991-​inter​view/​. 4 Jarkko Arjatsalo, “I’m Your Fan,” Leonard Cohen Files, accessed October 14, 2019, https​://ww​w.leo​nardc​ohenf​i les.​ com/c​over5​.html​.

Chapter 4 1 Hall, BBC Four. 2 Deevoy, “Leonard Cohen: Porridge? Lozenge? Syringe?.” 3 Nadel, Ira. Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen (University of Texas Press, 2007), 241. 4 “Leonard Cohen, l’Interview,” Paroles et Musiques, Vol. 47, 1985. Reprinted via Larry Bartleet, “These Five Live Versions of

139

NOTES

Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Might Bring You to Tears,” NME, November 7, 2017, https​://ww​w.nme​.com/​blogs​/nme-​blogs​/ leon​ard-c​ohen-​halle​lujah​-cove​rs-18​46415​. 5 Paul Zollo, “‘Leonard Cohen: Inside the Tower of Song,’” SongTalk, April 1993. Reprinted in Burger, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen, 284. 6 Sprague, “‘Leonard Cohen and the Death of Cool.’”

Chapter 5 1 Cohen, Interview by Danny Fields. 2 “Album a Tribute to Leonard Cohen.” Associated Press. February 9, 1992. 3 David Browne, “Leonard Cohen Is the Next-Best Thing to God,” Entertainment Weekly, January 8, 1993, https​://ew​.com/​ artic​le/19​93/01​/08/l​eonar​d-coh​en-ne​xt-be​st-th​ing-g​od/. 4 Deevoy, “Leonard Cohen: Porridge? Lozenge? Syringe?.” 5 Basta, issue unknown. Reprinted via Arjatsalo, “I’m Your Fan.” 6 Leonard Cohen, TV and Radio Interview, interview by Jian Ghomeshi, Q with Jian Ghomeshi, CBC Radio One, April 16, 2009. Reprinted in Burger, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen, 560. 7 Neil McCormick, “Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah!,” The Telegraph, June 14, 2008, https​://ww​w.tel​egrap​h.co.​uk/cu​lture​/musi​c/355​ 4289/​Leona​rd-Co​hen-H​allel​ujah.​html.​ 8 Simmons, I’m Your Man, 382. 9 The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006, with Cohen himself in the audience, and the Australian TV Logie Awards in 2010.

140

NOTES

10 Benjamin Solomon, “Which Songs Are Performed Most Often by Reality-Competition Contestants?,” Vulture, New York, January 15, 2014, https​://ww​w.vul​ture.​com/2​014/0​1/rea​lity-​ compe​titio​n-son​gs-fr​equen​cy-am​erica​n-ido​l-voi​ce-xf​actor​.html​. 11 Nick Romano, “Leonard Cohen Dead: Hallelujah on TV, from The West Wing to The O.C. and More,” Entertainment Weekly, November 11, 2016, https​://ew​.com/​artic​le/20​16/11​/11/l​eonar​ d-coh​en-de​ad-ha​llelu​jah-t​v-mov​ies/.​ 12 Light, The Holy or the Broken, xxii. 13 Jian Ghomeshi, “Jian Ghomeshi Interviews Leonard Cohen,” the Guardian, July 9, 2009, https​://ww​w.the​guard​ian.c​om/mu​ sic/2​009/j​ul/10​/ghom​eshi-​inter​views​-leon​ard-c​ohen.​

Interlude: Jarkko Arjatsolo 1 Susan Nunziata, “The Billboard Interview: Leonard Cohen,” Billboard, November 28, 1998, 51. 2 Simmons, I’m Your Man, 415. 3 Jarkko Arjatsalo, “Omega,” Leonard Cohen Files, accessed October 14, 2019, https​://ww​w.leo​nardc​ohenf​i les.​com/o​mega.​ html.​

Chapter 6 1 Médioni Gilles, “C’est Le Meilleur et Le Dernier Cure,” L’Express, February 10, 2000. 2 Susan Nunziata, “Cohen Songs Are Focus of A&M Set,” Billboard, August 5, 1995: 16. 141

NOTES

3 Roch Parisien, “Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen—Various Artists,” AllMusic, accessed October 14, 2019, https​://ww​w.all​music​.com/​album​/towe​r-of-​song-​thes​ongs-​of-le​onard​-cohe​n-mw0​00017​9432.​

Chapter 7 1 Mansoor Iqbal, “Spotify Usage and Revenue Statistics (2019),” Business of Apps, May 10, 2019, https​://ww​w.bus​iness​ofapp​ s.com​/data​/spot​ify-s​tatis​tics/​. 2 Tim Ingham, “The Album Is in Deep Trouble – and the Music Business Probably Can’t Save It,” Rolling Stone, November 9, 2018, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​-feat​ures/​ the-a​lbum-​is-in​-deep​-trou​ble-a​nd-th​e-mus​ic-bu​sines​s-pro​ bably​-cant​-save​-it-7​53795​/.

142

Index

ABBA 115 Adele 131 Aerosmith 7 Allwright, Graeme 30 Alpert, Herb 19 American Idol 94 American Laundromat 77, 81, 117–18, 123–4, 128, 132 Amnesty International 14 Amos, Tori 111 Anderson, Wes 77, 81, 123–5, 128 Anthology of American Folk Music 21 Antonoff, Jack 131 Astor, Peter 53–5, 57, 60, 62–3 Azoff, Irving 39 Baez, Joan 28 Barnett, Courtney 130 Barrett, Syd 9 Beatles, The 5, 7–8, 11, 17, 42–4, 60, 67, 121, 124, 127, 133 Beck 21 Bee Gees, The 7 Belafonte, Harry 29

Bennies, The 122 Big Freedia 22 Big Star 80 Birkin, Jane 89 Birthday Party, The 66 Björk 129 Black, Frank 122–3 Blige, Mary J. 134 Blind Melon 3 Blondie 18 Bono 18, 50 n.1, 55, 94, 113 Børns 22 Bowie, David 89 Boys Next Door, The 66 Breakfast Club, The 122 Brickell, Edie 14 Bridge School, The 12–13 Brooks, Garth 39 Brooks & Dunn 39 Buckley, Jeff 20, 91–6 Buckley, Tim 20, 91 Burke, Alexandra 94–6 Burning Spear 44 Burroughs, William 44–5 Bush, Kate 107 Byrds, The 9

I ndex

Cale, John 1–2, 35, 50, 70, 72–4, 90–4 Campbell, Glen 67 Canadian Tenors 95 Captain Beefheart 9, 11, 61 Carlile, Brandi 131 Carlin, George 17 Carolina Chocolate Drops 7 Cash, Johnny 5, 9, 67–8, 120–1 Cash, Rosanne 51 Cave, Nick 1–2, 22, 26–7, 56, 63–70, 85, 111, 130 charity 12–14 Chesnutt, Vic 108 Chuck D. 18 Clash, The 124, 127 Cobain, Kurt 76, 86 Cocker, Jarvis 21 Cocker, Joe 29–30 Cohen, Adam 105 Cohen, Esther 101 Cohen, Leonard, albums by The Future 87 I’m Your Man 1, 4, 33, 53–4, 72, 85–6, 98 New Skin for the Old Ceremony 57 Songs of Leonard Cohen 29 Songs of Love and Hate 66 Various Positions 25, 33, 71, 87, 92 Cohen, Leonard, quotes from Bob Dylan covering “Hallelujah” 71–2, 90 Columbia Records 90 covers of his songs 75

David McComb and Adam Peter’s “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On” 64, 88 Dead Famous People’s “True Love Leaves No Traces” 60 Geoffrey Oryema’s “Suzanne” 87 “Hallelujah,” covers of 96 “Hallelujah,” writing 90 his death 105 I’m Your Fan 35, 51, 86–8 I’m Your Man 1 Jennifer Warnes’ Famous Blue Raincoat 30 LeonardCohenFiles.com 100, 106 Nick Cave’s “Tower of Song” 69–70 Omega 104 Pixies’ “I Can’t Forget” 87 popularity among younger people 85 Tower of Song 113 Cohen, Leonard, songs by “A Singer Must Die” 58 “Avalanche” 50, 65, 67 “Bird on the Wire” 29, 57–8, 61 “Chelsea Hotel” 53, 59 “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On” 58, 61, 63–4 “Dress Rehearsal Rag” 28 “Everybody Knows” 3 “First We Take Manhattan” 62, 109

144

I ndex

“Hallelujah” 4, 25 n.1, 29, 70–4, 90–6, 104–5, 108, 113 “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” 62 “I Can’t Forget” 62 “I’m Your Man” 54, 59, 61 “Light as the Breeze” 112 “Paperthin Hotel” 58 “Sisters of Mercy” 29 “So Long, Marianne” 53, 58, 62 “Suzanne” 28–9, 56–7, 62, 93, 100, 101 n.1 “Take This Longing” 57, 63 “Tonight Will Be Fine” 29 “Tower of Song” 21, 56, 59, 62, 64, 68–70, 103 “True Love Leaves No Traces” 59 “Who By Fire” 58, 61, 65 “You Want It Darker” 105 Coldplay 134 Cole, Lloyd 35, 59, 85 Collins, Judy 28–9, 49 Costello, Elvis 14, 21, 37, 43, 109, 127 Cotton, Josie 123 Cover Me 4, 129 Cowboy Junkies 121 Crow, Sheryl 110 Cult, The 44 Cure, The 109–11, 123, 130 Curry Cuts 115 Cusack, John 123 Cyrus, Miley 130

Dando, Evan 79–80 de André, Fabrizio 30 De La Soul 52 Depp, Johnny 22, 120 Dessner, Aaron and Bryce 130 Diddley, Bo 44 Dinosaur Jr. 12 Dion 10, 29 Donelly, Tanya 78, 125 Doors, The 17, 44, 111 Dresden Dolls, The 123 Duffy 112 Dunlap, Slim 114 Dupree, Cornell 20 Duran Duran 3, 110 Dylan, Bob 6, 14, 28, 43–4, 46, 57, 66–7, 71–2, 90, 110, 112, 124 Eagles, The 38–40 Earle, Steve 114 Earth, Wind, and Fire 7 Elrod, Suzanne 101 Elson, Karen 89 Eric B. & Rakim 63 Erickson, Roky 10, 113–14 Escovedo, Alejandro 114 Exile on Main St. 47 Face Down Records 119 Father John Misty 121 Fatima Mansions 85 Fatima Mansions, The 58 Fellini, Federico 8, 17 Firesign Theatre, The 17 Fitzgerald, Ella 5

145

I ndex

Flaming Lips, The 12 Flatt & Scruggs 29 Flying Nun Records 115 Foley, Ellen 124, 127 Forster, Robert 50, 56, 59, 62, 70 Foster, Stephen 22 Franklin, Aretha 5 Franz Ferdinand 89

Imaginary Records 9, 11, 62 Isaak, Chris 27–6 Isakov, Gregory Alan 121–2

Gabriel, Peter 7 Gainsbourg, Serge 89 Gender imbalance on tribute albums 50–1 Gill, Vince 39 Ginsberg, Allen 119 Grateful Dead 14–15, 36–8, 43, 130

Jackson, Michael 38 n.1 James 1, 52–3, 55–6, 58, 60, 62 James Bond 115 Jane’s Addiction 37–8 Jesus and Mary Chain, The 10, 114 Joel, Billy 3, 46, 112 John, Elton 3, 22, 50 n.1, 107, 130, 134 Johns, Glyn 79–80 Jones, Tom 67 Joplin, Janis 53 Josie and the Pussycats 78

Hall & Oates 107, 129 Hardy, François 29 Harper, Ben 120 Harris, Emmylou 79–80 Harrison, George 22–3 Harrison, Noel 29 Harvey, PJ 21 Hatfield, Juliana 76–84, 114, 120, 124–5, 128 Hendrix, Jimi 109–11 Henley, Don 3 Hold Steady, The 112, 114 Holly, Buddy 9 Hooker, John Lee 44, 68–9 Hootie & the Blowfish 3, 110 Hornsby, Bruce 38 House of Love, The 58, 61, 65, 86

Katey Red 22 Kelly, Tori 95 Kerouac, Jack 77, 80–1, 117, 119–22, 127 Kesha 22 Kicking Against the Pricks 67 Kills, The 89 King, B. B. 46 Kinks, The 9 Kirk, Rahsaan Roland 17 Kiss 10, 110 Kraftwerk 63 Kronos Quartet 7 Lady Gaga 130 lang, kd 94, 105 Led Zeppelin 3, 17, 111 Lennon, John 14, 121

146

I ndex

Les Inrockuptibles 2, 25–7, 31, 33, 41, 49, 51–2, 58, 72 n.1, 74, 93 Less than Jake 3 Lilac Time, The 2, 26, 57, 61 LL Cool J 63 Lohan, Lindsay 115 Los Lobos 38, 76, 120 Lovato, Demi 134 Lucero 128 Luna 12 n.1 Lynch, Kelley 100, 112

Morrison, Jim 44 Morrison, Van 59, 112 Mother Love Bone 37 Mount Baldy 98, 100 Mulcahy, Mark 80, 114 Murat, Jean-Louis 50 Musgraves, Kacey 128, 130 Nadler, Marissa 122 National, The 80, 130 Nelson, Willie 94, 111, 128 Neville Brothers, The 17 New York Dolls 68 Newton-John, Olivia 77, 82–3 Night Court 124 Nilsson, Harry 19 Nirvana 10, 32, 86, 121, 124, 139 Norman, Larry 109 NRBQ 18

McCartney, Paul 13, 34, 42–6, 112, 127 McComb, David 53, 58, 61, 63–4, 88 McCulloch, Ian 1, 35, 50, 55, 62, 64 McKinnon, Kate 96 Madonna 115 Mann, Aimee 51 Maroon 5 7 Marsalis, Wynton 18 Martin, Steve 7 Marvin, Hank 109 Mayfield, Curtis 111 Meat Puppets, The 32 Medley, Bill 31 Melvins 10 Michael, George 34 Mingus, Charles 18 Monk, Thelonious 18 Moore, Thurston 11 More Fans 58 Morphine 119 Morrissey 52

Obama, Barack 131 One Tree Hill 95 Ono, Yoko 119 oOoOO 115 Oryema, Geoffrey 50, 62, 87 Parker, Graham 118 Parsons, Gram 79–80 Partch, Harry 18 Pearl Jam 131 Peters, Adam 58–9, 61, 63–4 Pet Shop Boys 59 Phair, Liz 40 Pink Floyd 9 Pirates of the Caribbean 22

147

I ndex

Pixies 1–2, 12, 35, 49–50, 52–4, 62, 85–7, 91, 123 Plant, Robert 111 Police, The 77, 82–4, 124 Porcupine Tree, The 9 Porter, Cole 14 Postal Service, The 129 Power, Cat 89 Presley, Elvis 10, 13, 59 Pretty in Pink 122 Prince 115, 129 Pritchard, Bill 54, 61

Sall, Ralph 15–6, 26, 37–47, 56, 77–8, 107, 111, 119, 126 Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs 114–15 Saturday Night Live 8, 17, 64, 95–6 Say Anything 122 Seal 7 Sheeran, Ed 130 Shimabukuro, Jake 94 Shrek 93–4 Simon, Paul 95 Simone, Nina 67 Sinatra, Frank 54 Sixteen Candles 122 Smith, Bessie 121 Smith, Elliott 81, 123 Smith, Patti 120 Smiths, The 88, 123 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour 17 Snoop Dogg 63 Sonic Youth 11–12, 119 Spence, Skip 114 Springsteen, Bruce 112, 120–1 Staples, Mavis 112 Starr, Ringo 9, 19 Stereolab 12 n.1 Stewart, Rod 7 Sting 9, 18, 22, 50 n.1 Stipe, Michael 1, 22, 120 Stone Temple Pilots 44 Strokes, The 129 Sub Pop 120 Supersuckers 111 Sweet, Matthew 123

Radiohead 129 Ramones, The 40 Ranaldo, Lee 119–20, 122 Razor & Tie 121 Reality Bites 77 Redbone, Leon 17 Reed, Lou 8–9, 19, 73 Reel Big Fish 3 Reimagine Music 117–18, 121, 132–3 R.E.M. 1–2, 26, 35, 49–50, 62, 84–6, 108–10, 129 Replacements, The 9, 19, 114, 119 Repo Man 123 Reverend Horton Heat 111 Richards, Keith 22, 56 Roches, The 51 Rolling Stones, The 9, 67, 111, 115 Rota, Nino 8, 17–18 Royal Tenenbaums, The 81 Rundgren, Todd 18 Rutles, The 22 Rykodisc 119–20

148

I ndex

Come On Up to the House: Women Sing Waits 51 Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles 39–40 Cover You: A Tribute to the Rolling Stones 111 Day of the Dead 14, 130 Deadicated 15, 37–8, 41, 44, 107 Dig For Fire: A Tribute To Pixies 123 Ella Sings Gershwin 5 Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin 110–11 Entertainment Through Pain: A Tribute To Throbbing Gristle 109 Everyday Is a Holly Day 9 Famous Blue Raincoat 31 Fast ‘n’ Bulbous 11 Gigantic: A Tribute to Kim Deal 123 Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs Of Bob Dylan 112 Guilty Pleasures 37 Hadde Månen En Søster:Cohen På Norsk 104 Hard to Believe: A Kiss Covers Compilation 10 High School Reunion 123, 125 In Frysk earbetoan oan Leonard Cohen: Cohen in het Fries 104 I Saved Latin! A Tribute To Wes Anderson 77, 81, 123–5, 128

Taylor, James 9 Tegan and Sara 131 That Petrol Emotion 49, 53 Throbbing Gristle 109 Timberlake, Justin 95 Tolkin, Terry 11–14, 36 T. Rex 22 Tri-Angle Records 115 A Tribe Called Quest 115 Tribute Albums Abbasolutely 115 All This and World War II 7 Amarcord Nino Rota 8, 17–18, 36 The Art of McCartney 43–6 Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska 120 The Bard of Montreal 130 Beat the Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson 113 Beautiful Dreamer 22 Big Star Small World 80 Bob Dylan in the 80s 57 The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young 11, 16, 36 Chante Leonard Cohen 30 Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan 7 Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy 80 Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young For Charity 123 Come As You Are: A 20th Anniversary Tribute To Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ 124

149

I ndex

Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams 5 Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John 77, 82–3 Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police 77, 82–4 Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness 80–1, 119–20 Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved 110 The Last Temptation of Elvis 10 Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man 18, 20–1 Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill 9 Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney: From a Window 121 Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited 89 More Oar: A Tribute to Skip Spence 114 No Prima Donna: The Songs of Van Morrison 112 Omega 104 One Way: The Songs of Larry Norman 109 Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo 114 Prosthetic Lips: The “Weird Al” Yankovic Tribute CD 116 Red Hot + Blue 14, 16

Restoration: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin 130 Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons 79–80 Revamp: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin 130, 134 Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys 18, 22 Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits 40, 41, 46, 77–8, 119 Say Yes!: A Tribute to Elliott Smith 81 Sgt Pepper Knew My Father 9, 11 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 7 The Smiths Is Dead 88 Songs for Slim 114 Son of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys 22 Southern Rock Country Style 45 Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films 9, 18–19 Stoned Immaculate: The Music of The Doors 44, 111 Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix 109–10

150

I ndex

Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation (The Songs Of Vic Chesnutt) 108 Tangled Up In Blues: Songs Of Bob Dylan 6 The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration 110, 112 This Bird Has Flown: A 40th Anniversary Tribute To The Beatles’ Rubber Soul 121 Til Things Are Brighter: A Tribute to Johnny Cash 9 Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen 3, 50 n.1, 112–13 A Tribute to Andy Warhol 9, 62 A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield 111 Turban Renewal: A Tribute To Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs 115 Twang!: A Tribute To Hank Marvin & The Shadows 109 Twisted Willie 111 Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin 107 Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington 5 War Child Presents Heroes 112

Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson 10, 113–14 Tristessa 122 Tritt, Travis 39 Tweedy, Jeff 114 U2 21–2, 46 Uncle Tupelo 124 UnderCover Presents 115 Vaselines, The 32 Vedder, Eddie 120 Vega, Suzanne 27, 37, 51 Velvet Underground, The 9, 62, 72–3 Verlaine, Tom 14 Voice, The 94 Wainwright, Rufus 21 Waits, Tom 19, 22, 51 Walker, Scott 89 Warnes, Jennifer 30–1, 51 War on Drugs, The 130 Washington, Dinah 5 Weegee 34 Weill, Kurt 9, 18–19 West Wing, The 95 Who, The 107, 119 Wilco 21, 130 Williams, Hank 5, 69 Williams, Lucinda 8, 114 Willner, Hal 8–10, 16–23, 36–7, 40, 44–5, 50, 56, 91, 95, 113, 118–19, 126, 134 Wilson, Brian 46

151

I ndex

Withers, Bill 20 Wood, Ron 111

Yorke, Thom 80 Young, Neil 11–13, 123

X Factor, The 94

Zembaty, Maciej 30, 104 Zorn, John 34 ZZ Top 114

Yankovic, “Weird Al” 116 Yetnikoff, Walter 25

152

Also Available in the Series

1. Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes 2. Love’s Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans 3. Neil Young’s Harvest by Sam Inglis 4. The Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller 5. The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice 6. Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh 7. ABBA’s ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits by Elisabeth Vincentelli 8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland by John Perry 9. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott 10. Prince’s Sign “☮” the Times by Michaelangelo Matos 11. The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard

12. The Beatles’ Let It Be by Steve Matteo 13. James Brown’s Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk 14. Jethro Tull’s Aqualung by Allan Moore 15. Radiohead’s OK Computer by Dai Griffiths 16. The Replacements’ Let It Be by Colin Meloy 17. Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis 18. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. by Bill Janovitz 19. The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli 20. Ramones’ Ramones by Nicholas Rombes 21. Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno 22. R.E.M.’s Murmur by J. Niimi 23. Jeff Buckley’s Grace by Daphne Brooks 24. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. by Eliot Wilder

A lso Available in the Series

25. MC5’s Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese 26. David Bowie’s Low by Hugo Wilcken 27. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes 28. The Band’s Music from Big Pink by John Niven 29. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper 30. Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan Le Roy 31. Pixies’ Doolittle by Ben Sisario 32. Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Miles Marshall Lewis 33. The Stone Roses’ The Stone Roses by Alex Green 34. Nirvana’s In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar 35. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti 36. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless by Mike McGonigal 37. The Who’s The Who Sell Out by John Dougan 38. Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth 39. Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns 40. Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark by Sean Nelson 41. Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard

42. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy 43. The Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck 44. Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier 45. Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier 46. Steely Dan’s Aja by Don Breithaupt 47. A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor 48. PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me by Kate Schatz 49. U2’s Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite 50. Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef 51. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich 52. Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson 53. Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 54. Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel 55. Patti Smith’s Horses by Philip Shaw 56. Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality by John Darnielle

154

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

57. Slayer’s Reign in Blood by D.X. Ferris 58. Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs 59. The Afghan Whigs’ Gentlemen by Bob Gendron 60. The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen 61. The Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl 62. Wire’s Pink Flag by Wilson Neate 63. Elliott Smith’s XO by Mathew Lemay 64. Nas’ Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier 65. Big Star’s Radio City by Bruce Eaton 66. Madness’ One Step Beyond… by Terry Edwards 67. Brian Eno’s Another Green World by Geeta Dayal 68. The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka by Mark Richardson 69. The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol 70. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Facing Future by Dan Kois 71. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten 72. Pavement’s Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles

73. AC/DC’s Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo 74. Van Dyke Parks’s Song Cycle by Richard Henderson 75. Slint’s Spiderland by Scott Tennent 76. Radiohead’s Kid A by Marvin Lin 77. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk by Rob Trucks 78. Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr 79. Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese by Hank Shteamer 80. Johnny Cash’s American Recordings by Tony Tost 81. The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls by Cyrus Patell 82. Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me by Nick Attfield 83. Television’s Marquee Moon by Bryan Waterman 84. Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen 85. Portishead’s Dummy by RJ Wheaton 86. Talking Heads’ Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem 87. Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson by Darran Anderson 88. They Might Be Giants’ Flood by S. Alexander Reed and Elizabeth Sandifer 89. Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet by Phillip Crandall

155

A lso Available in the Series

90. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum 91. Gang of Four’s Entertainment by Kevin J.H. Dettmar 92. Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation by Pete Astor 93. J Dilla’s Donuts by Jordan Ferguson 94. The Beach Boys’ Smile by Luis Sanchez 95. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven 96. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold 97. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves 98. Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild 99. Sigur Rós’s () by Ethan Hayden 100. Michael Jackson’s Dangerous by Susan Fast 101. Can’s Tago Mago by Alan Warner 102. Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha 103. Hole’s Live Through This by Anwen Crawford 104. Devo’s Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy 105. Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley

106. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann 107. Beat Happening’s Beat Happening by Bryan C. Parker 108. Metallica’s Metallica by David Masciotra 109. Phish’s A Live One by Walter Holland 110. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr. 111. Blondie’s Parallel Lines by Kembrew McLeod 112. Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead by Buzz Poole 113. New Kids On The Block’s Hangin’ Tough by Rebecca Wallwork 114. The Geto Boys’ The Geto Boys by Rolf Potts 115. Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out by Jovana Babovic 116. LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver by Ryan Leas 117. Donny Hathaway’s Donny Hathaway Live by Emily J. Lordi 118. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy by Paula Mejia 119. The Modern Lovers’ The Modern Lovers by Sean L. Maloney 120. Angelo Badalamenti’s Soundtrack from Twin Peaks by Clare Nina Norelli 121. Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth by Michael Blair and Joe Bucciero

156

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

122. The Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by Andrew Barker 123. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein 124. Bob Mould’s Workbook by Walter Biggins and Daniel Couch 125. Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night by Patrick Rivers and Will Fulton 126. The Raincoats’ The Raincoats by Jenn Pelly 127. Björk’s Homogenic by Emily Mackay 128. Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee by Rachel Lee Rubin 129. Fugazi’s In on the Kill Taker by Joe Gross 130. Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by Ronen Givony 131. Lou Reed’s Transformer by Ezra Furman 132. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Peepshow by Samantha Bennett 133. Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera by Rien Fertel

134. dc Talk’s Jesus Freak by Will Stockton and D. Gilson 135. Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele by Amy Gentry 136. Odetta’s One Grain of Sand by Matthew Frye Jacobson 137. Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible by David Evans 138. The Shangri-Las’ Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las by Ada Wolin 139. Tom Petty’s Southern Accents by Michael Washburn 140. Massive Attack’s Blue Lines by Ian Bourland 141. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach by Roshanak Kheshti 142. The Wild Tchoupitoulas’ The Wild Tchoupitoulas by Bryan Wagner 143. David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler 144. D’Angelo’s Voodoo by Faith A. Pennick 145. Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall by Manuel Betancourt 146. Elton John’s Blue Moves by Matthew Restall

157

158