Leonard Cohen – The Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967)

!967, and the air was full of joss sticks and the sound of bells and the swirl of caftans and psychedelic music.  But not for Leonard.  He was almost from another world, a published poet, and 33 when he released this, his first album, a dark catalogue of love and loss and religious intensity sung in a deep baritone that at first seems tuneless, but actually it is his melodies as much as his words and his delivery that is so hypnotic.  I first heard this record in ’69.  Three Canadians invited me to their flat in Stockwell and while we were drinking Leonard was singing in the background about it being time to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.  And that image struck me and has stayed with me forever as a metaphor for life itself.  He sung about Suzanne feeding him tea and oranges and about a man who told you he was a stranger and the Sisters of Mercy; of the teachers of the heart, about that’s no way to say goodbye, and best of all how one of us cannot be wrong.   As soon as the record stopped one of them turned it over and played it again.  As soon as I could afford a record player it was the first record I bought.  Leonard has recorded 15 albums, each brilliant in their own way and many live recordings too – but none of them are so fixed in my brain as this incredible debut.