The Essential Leonard Cohen

Average Rating:	(See all reviews)
Quantity Available:	47
Label:	Legacy Recordings

Disc 1 1  Suzanne 2  The Stranger Song 3  Sisters of Mercy 4  That's No Way to Say Goodbye Hey 5  Marianne So Long 6  Bird on a Wire 7  The Partisan 8  Famous Blue Raincoat 9  Chelsea Hotel # 2 10  Take This Longing 11  Who by Fire 12  The Guests 13  Hallelujah 14  If It Be Your Will 15  Night Comes On 16  I'm Your Man 17  Everybody Knows 18  Tower of Song Disc 2 1  Ain't No Cure For Love 2  Take This Waltz 3  First We Take Manhattan 4  Dance Me to the End of Love - (live) 5  The Future 6  Democracy 7  Waiting For the Miricle 8  Closing Time 9  Anthem 10  In My Secret Life 11  Alexandra Leaving 12  A Thousand Kisses Deep 13  Love Itself

• Personnel includes: Leonard Cohen (vocals).
  
• Producers include: John Simon, Bob Johnston, John Lissauer, Leonard Cohen, Henry Lewy.
  
• Compilation producers: Leanne Ungar, Bruce Dickinson.
  
• Recorded between 1967 & 2001. Includes liner notes by Pico Iyer.
  
• THE ESSENTIAL LEONARD COHEN manages the considerable task of documenting the career of a man many consider one of the finest songwriters in the English language. Easily on par with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in terms of sheer poetic power, Canadian troubadour Cohen started out, appropriately enough, as a prose poet before beginning a recording career in the late 1960s. His early albums, amply represented here, found him accompanied chiefly by his own nylon-string guitar, delivering dark, but often romantic, reveries atop folk-based song structures.
  
• By the late '70s, Cohen's lyrics and musical settings had both grown more expansive, as is made plain here by judiciously chosen tracks from that period. In the late '80s, at an age when many of his contemporaries had long since retired, Cohen experienced a rebirth via the sardonic songs and spare, electronics-laced backing of I'M YOUR MAN, which gets the most space on this collection. By remaining a man apart from every era he moved through, whether the flower-power hippie days or the earnest '70s singer/songwriter boom, Cohen maintained both his vision and his credibility, making THE ESSENTIAL LEONARD COHEN indispensable to anyone interested in serious 20th-century songwriting.
  

Uncut (12/02, p.155) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...This is the kind of collection that converts non-believers..."

Format:	CD (2 Disc); Stereo
Country:	USA
Quantity Available:	47
UPC:	696998688421
Studio/Live:	Studio
Release Date:	22 October 2002