01/06/2009

LITTLE TRIGGERS 1

Little Triggers is a series of posts about influences, stories and friends that have helped shape our forthcoming debut album...


Leonard Cohen

Tom McKean and I first met in 2001, playing on the same bill in a hotel basement somewhere in West London. It would be years before we decided to work together and form the Emperors, but I was drawn to his songs and voice as soon as I heard him soundcheck. My immediate thought was - "Wow, he's the Scottish Leonard Cohen". I'd grown up with Cohen's music, my Dad being a huge fan who sang 'Suzanne' and 'Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye' to me as a child and often had his records on our old Garrard record deck.  'The Songs of Leonard Cohen' (sleeve above) is one of the most perfect records I've ever heard, and certainly the best debut album I can think of (unless Astral Weeks counts as a debut, in which case please don't ask me to choose.)

Now, I've heard Tom's voice compared to Cohen's plenty of times since, but back then, playing solo with just a guitar, songs like 'She Dreams' and 'The Ringing Bell' sounded particularly Cohen-esque.  Any Cohen-fans who've seen us play 'She Dreams' at acoustic Emperors shows will know what I mean.  To me, their voices are only really similar in that they're both pretty low, but the feel of the songs, the finger-picking patterns on Tom's guitar and the melancholic dark humour of the lyrics were unmistakable - this had to be a fellow Leonard Cohen fan.  I was stunned when I mentioned his name to Tom after the show and he replied that he'd never heard him...

Fast-forward seven years to Glastonbury 2008.  Tom McKean and the Emperors are making their first appearance at the festival, and amazingly, so is the 74-year old Leonard Cohen, albeit slightly higher on the bill.  Tom and I are close to the front of  the main stage, watching an extraordinarily moving performance.  He really is in fine voice - and anyone who doubted that Laughing Len's chirpy little ditties could unite the masses under the Glastonbury sun (me, for one, and I suspect the man himself) were in for a surprise.  There was one moment I'll never forget, where, during a chorus of 'Hallelujah', Cohen stopped singing, looked up at surely the largest crowd he'd ever played for, and was visibly knocked backwards by the spectacle of tens of thousands of people singing along to a song which, until recently was a long-forgotten curio, hidden away on one of his least successful albums.  The vision of this humbled old man, clearly having a fairly memorable moment of his own was poignant enough to bring a tear to the eye of both me and Mr McKean, although being a proud man from somewhere north of the border, he'll probably deny it.

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