Mar. 24, 2010 - Issue #753: Zion I
Old Sounds
Leonard Cohen
Death of a Ladies' Man
(Columbia)
Originally released: 1977
The role of the producer is often improperly defined. Neither a mystic shaman coaxing magic out of machines nor an audio scientist preoccupied with knobs and microphone placement, a producer's primary role is to deliver a finished product. When you think of a movie producer, you consider someone who finds the right cast for the film and raises money for the completion of the project.
A music producer is more akin to a director of films: he has the responsibility of shaping a product through the source material of a band and developing it to its utmost potential. By that token, Phil Spector did a terrible job of producing Death of a Ladies' Man, Leonard Cohen's polarizing fifth album.
Firstly, this album was a huge departure for Cohen, known mostly for poetry in the home country, but equally acclaimed for his confessional, spare folk songwriting worldwide. Ladies' Man drew from a wide array of influences, from country to electronic music to funk to the kind of expansive '50s pop that Spector was famous for, but the recording process was fraught with difficulty.
Spector's history of eccentric violence was just gearing up around this time. He had yet to hold the Ramones at gunpoint during the recording of End of the Century, but was just following up his disappearance with the session tapes from John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll. In line with his burgeoning megalomania, Spector banned Cohen from the studio control room by way of gun in order to mix the album alone. At some point, Cohen was also threatened with a crossbow.
This unique situation denied Cohen the opportunity to perfect his vocals. Weirdly enough, the studio tension resulted in pleasantly unhinged takes from Cohen, several of which were originally only intended as "guiding vocals" to be dubbed over later. "Memories" both recalls the setting and methodology of erstwhile high school horniness with sonic and verbal references to Frankie Laine and incredulous yet charming come-ons: "I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl / I said, 'Look, you don't know me now / But very soon you will!'"
Why one would put up with a guy who once got dressed up as a surgeon and shot through the studio ceiling is obvious if you've heard his work, which also includes The Beatles' Let it Be, Lennon's Imagine, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Ike and Tina Turner's River Deep – Mountain High. Spector's application of impenetrably dense layers of instrumental overdubs to the typical emotional nudity of Cohen's vocals was a masterstroke that was actually just too ambitious for the period it came out in. The product may have been unsaleable at the time and delivered in an extremely bizarre manner, but the music was certainly worthwhile and shaped creatively as well. So perhaps Spector deserves a reappraisal on this whole producer thing. V
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