Death of a Ladies' Man (album)


Death of a Ladies' Man is the fifth studio album by Leonard Cohen. Produced and co-written by Phil Spector, the voice of typically minimalist Cohen was surrounded by Spector's Wall of Sound, which included multiple tracks of instrument overdubs. The album was originally released by Warner Bros., but was later picked up by Cohen's long-time label, Columbia Records.

Background

By the mid-1970s, both Cohen and Spector were on a downward slide commercially. Although he remained popular in Europe, Cohen had never achieved the success in the United States that Columbia had hoped for. Spector had created hits such as "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" with his "wall of sound" production technique in the 1960s, and had some success in the early 1970s by producing albums by John Lennon and George Harrison; however, his behaviour became increasingly erratic.
The craziness would escalate when Spector reunited with Lennon to record a rock and roll oldies project called , which would eventually come out in 1975 under the title Rock 'n' Roll. The sessions took place in a chaotic fog of drugs, booze, and hangers-on as the equally troubled Lennon drank his way through his infamous "lost weekend." In the 2003 book Phil Spector: Wall of Pain, biographer Dave Thompson recounts one famous incident when Spector fired a pistol in the studio. "Listen Phil, if you're goin' to kill me, kill me," Lennon remarked dryly, "but don't fuck with me ears. I need 'em." Such behaviour did Spector's reputation no favors, and as the hits dried up he was viewed more and more by the rock press as an oldies act.
As Ira Nadel notes in the 1996 Cohen memoir Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen, stories differ as to how Cohen and Spector became collaborators:
Biographer Anthony Reynolds writes in the 2010 book Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life that friend and fellow Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell tried to warn Cohen about working with Spector, Mitchell having witnessed some of the insanity between Spector and Lennon in L.A., but initially - at least at the songwriting stage - the pair worked well together. Songwriter John Prine, who had also witnessed the producer's bizarre antics when he had been invited to his house to compose a song together, later marveled to Paul Zollo of BluebirdRailroad magazine that as soon as Spector "sat down with an instrument, he was normal." Things would change once Cohen and Spector entered a studio, with the producer's paranoia taking over and Cohen becoming increasingly disengaged from the project.

Recording

Spector would use three studios for the album, although his favorite remained the Gold Star Studios complex located at 6252 Santa Monica Boulevard near the corner of Vine Street in Hollywood. Spector recruited a plethora of top-shelf L.A. studio musicians to play on the songs, including guitarists Dan and David Kessel, drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Keltner, and pedal steel player Al Perkins, among many others. It was precisely in front of an audience, however, that Spector's megalomaniacal switch turned on, and soon Cohen felt overwhelmed. Speaking to Mojos Sylvie Simmons in 2001, Cohen described his feelings at the time:
During a cryptic exchange detailed in Ira Nadel's Cohen memoir Various Positions, Spector pointed a loaded pistol at Cohen's throat, cocked it, and said, "I love you, Leonard." Quietly, Cohen responded, "I hope you love me, Phil." Nadel also writes that the recording of the nine-minute title track began at 7:30 in the evening and lasted until 2:30 in the morning with the session musicians working on quadruple time, typical of the sessions as a whole. Another night, poet Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan showed up and were ordered by Spector to sing background vocals on the raucously burlesque "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-on." Most of the songs deal with themes of unbridled sexuality and brutal voyeurism, such as "Paper Thin Hotel", and are couched in Spector's bombastic sprawl of sonic grandeur. The buoyant "Fingerprints" is a fiddle-infused hootenanny that recalls Cohen's love of country music. Early versions of "Iodine" and "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-on" were performed in concert as early as 1975 and are widely available on bootlegs. As Anthony Reynolds reports in his 2010 Cohen biography, the sessions did not even "officially" end:
Marty Marchet's son Steven secured a deal with Warner Bros. to release the record, one that Cohen would always harbor mixed feelings about. "I’m too ashamed to tell the whole truth of what happened there," Cohen confessed to Adrian Deevoy of The Q Magazine in 1991. "People were skating around on bullets, guns were finding their way into hamburgers, guns were all over the place. It wasn’t safe. It was mayhem, but it was part of the times. It was rather drug-driven. But I like Phil, and the instinct was right. I'd do it again." Interviewed for the 2005 documentary ', Cohen expressed disappointment in the record and felt that the songs "got away" from him; he also noted that it was a favorite among "punksters" as well as his daughter. At the time of the album's release, however, Cohen was much less generous in his public response to the album, calling Spector's production "a 'catastrophe.'" Of the album's eight selections, "Memories," is the only track Cohen regularly performed in concert. Cohen apparently liked the song enough that he included it in his 1983 experimental art film, I Am a Hotel, as the sole non-acoustic piece alongside four other songs which have generally enjoyed more positive fan response, "Suzanne," "Chelsea Hotel #2," "The Guests," and "The Gypsy's Wife." A "de-Spectorized" version of "Memories" ended up being released when Cohen's album, was issued in 2001. This version includes a saxophone solo different from that of the album version's.
In 1978, Cohen would release a book of poetry with the slightly altered title Death of a Lady's Man''. It has nothing in common with the album, with only one exception: it contains the poem "Death of a Lady's Man", which is identical to the lyrics of the album's title song.

Album cover

The photo shown on the cover of Death of a Ladies' Man is very similar to that of Art Garfunkel's 1975 album Breakaway. The liner notes of the Cohen album disclose that the photo was taken by an "Anonymous Roving Photographer at a Forgotten Polynesian Restaurant." It features Eva LaPierre, Cohen himself and Suzanne Elrod—mother of Adam and Lorca Cohen.

Reception

Death of a Ladies' Man was released to universal confusion and largely bad reviews, leaving many die-hard Cohen fans stunned. Rolling Stone headlined its review with "Leonard Cohen's doo-wop Nightmare" and observed, "Too much of the record sounds like the world's most flamboyant extrovert producing and arranging the world's most fatalist introvert." The Toronto Star declared in large type, "Leonard Cohen is for Musical Sadists." While defending the album, AllMusic writer Dave Thompson concedes, "It is also true that a cursory listen to the album suggests that the whole thing was simply a ragbag of crazy notions thrown into the air to see where they landed." In 2010, Cohen biographer Anthony Reynolds singled out "True Love Leaves No Traces" for praise, describing the song, which Cohen sings with Ronee Blakley, "incandescently beautiful as anything either man would ever commit to tape."

Commercial performance

Up to 1978, the album was one of Cohen's biggest sellers in Sweden.

Cover versions and live performances

Death of a Ladies' Man has inspired fewer cover versions than any preceding Cohen album, but both "True Love Leaves No Traces" and "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-on" were covered on the Cohen tribute album I'm Your Fan. The songs were performed by Dead Famous People and the duo David McComb & Adam Peters, respectively. "Memories" has also been covered at least five times by other artists, including John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. "Iodine" earned three known performances in Cohen's European tour of 1979. The Last Shadow Puppets performed a version of "Memories" on their Autumn 2008 tour. Swedish singer Svante Karlsson mentioned the album title in the song "I Nöd & Lust" in which the female character listens to it in her head phones during a train ride. In 2013, Guitars and Bongos Records released Greg Ashley's cover version of the entire Death of a Ladies' Man album. Kimberly Morrison, a.k.a. "The Duchess" from The Duchess and The Duke! provides some backing vocals. Greg’s cover photo mimics Cohen's original photo, but replaces actual women with two mannequins.

Track listing

All songs written by Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector.

Side one

  1. "True Love Leaves No Traces" – 4:26
  2. "Iodine" – 5:03
  3. "Paper Thin Hotel" – 5:42
  4. "Memories" – 5:59
  5. *Outro includes a quotation from The Shields' 1958 single "You Cheated, You Lied" and a reference to classic-era pop singer Frankie Laine.

    Side two

  6. "I Left a Woman Waiting" – 3:28
  7. "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" – 5:36
  8. "Fingerprints" – 2:58
  9. "Death of a Ladies' Man" – 9:19

    Personnel

Book

Cohen published the book Death of a Lady's Man in 1978. It has nothing in common with the album, with only one exception: it contains the poem "Death of a Lady's Man", which is identical to the lyrics of the album's title song.
In 2009, Scottish author Alan Bissett released his third novel, Death of a Ladies' Man, which makes references to Cohen throughout the text.