Read the two sets of lyrics below and decide whether you are with me or not.
EXHIBIT ONE
Red Cadillac and a black mustache
Rings on my fingers that sparkle and flash
Tell me, what’s next? What shall we do?
Half my soul, baby, belongs to you
Oh, while I cannot frolic with all the young dudes
I contain multitudes
I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything’s flowing all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes
EXHIBIT TWO
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
Perhaps I am guilty of comparing chalk and cheese, apples and pears. But for the life of me I cannot see much beyond some clever, witty word play in the first set of sprawling lyrics taken from I Contain Multitudes, the signature song from Bob Dylan’s much-lauded latest release which has shot to the top of the album charts. Nor indeed from the other ten songs on the album which are in a similar vein of scattered, disconnected images linked by rhyming that often gets close to doggerel in its lack of meaning.
I search the world over
For the Holy Grail
I sing songs of love
I sing songs of betrayal
Don’t care what I drink
I don’t care what I eat
I climbed the mountains of swords on my bare feet
Compare that with Cohen’s tight, spare evocation in the second extract above of an old Jewish man’s lament for a God whom he will revere and chastise in equal measure till his dying day. Go on to the link below to a moving and impressive, almost impromptu interpretation of that song by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
That was Cohen’s farewell and final legacy. Dylan may yet make many more (and finer) albums. But there is an age parallel between these two albums in that both men were in their late 70s and enjoying as great critical and popular appreciation (greater even) as at the outset of their careers a half-century earlier. Dylan has clearly been the more famous name globally and may have sustained a more consistent and prolific output over the decades but, for me, there is no contest between late Cohen and late Dylan. Perhaps late Dylan is a wittier, quirkier observer of the zeitgeist but Cohen’s last album is closer to true art, the expression of fundamental and deep truths about the human condition. Even when dealing, in the less acclaimed song Treaty from the album, with a simpler, more straightforward theme Cohen manages in one inspired image from the battlefield to say everything about the sadness and tears of lost love. Dylan’s lyrics seem so banal in comparison.
And I wish there was a treaty we could sign
I do not care who takes this bloody hill
I’m angry and I’m tired all the time
I wish there was a treaty
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine
View from the Clapham Omnibus 