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Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:03 pm
by naf nehoC dranoeL
http://officialjanis.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... f=4&t=4037

Not sure which direction to follow.
LC apologised for connecting Janisses name to Chelsea Hotel and the unmade bed.
No possible way to get the answer from JJ no more.

Would be nice if Leonard himself would end the discussion about this thread now.

Get down from your thrown for this matter Leonard.

We will all lift you up afterwards :idea:

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:05 pm
by mr.midnight
I always got the feeling that they (Leonard/Janis) never really got to know each other as well as they would have liked to or never hit it off or clicked as well as they would have liked.
On paper, it seemed like they should work together and would have some things in common musically and in other ways but when it comes down to collaborating with other musicians it's probably disappointing when they either don't bother to get to know each other as well as they thought they would or when it's rushed. So I guess he finished off the rest of the collaboration at a Polynesian restaurant?
Those were the days and that was New York... probably fast times and they just got to work with each other briefly and not as much as he would have liked. What could have been but never fully blossomed and I don't mean to suggest that I loved her the best...sort of goes hand in hand.
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, I didn't take the chance to read the articles posted, I've heard a few stories in the past and I'm basically speaking from a feeling I get.

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:41 pm
by burningviolin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cp_4r2kUPM

Interview from 1979 about Chelsea Hotel and Janis etc...

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 11:30 pm
by naf nehoC dranoeL
I have seen that link before burningviolin.

It just does not matter at all.

Leonard openly apolagised for ever connecting Pearl's name to this song.
He should simply never ever have mentioned it in the past.

Rest the case?

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 7:21 pm
by Evie B
naf nehoC dranoeL wrote: Leonard openly apolagised for ever connecting Pearl's name to this song.
Pearl, where did Pearl come from? I don't remember her every being mentioned in a song? Have I missed something?

I used to wonder if Leonard and Janis made a kind of deal during their apparently brief frolic(s) that one of them would write a song about the other, a kind of naughty conspiracy. Leonard would appear to have discounted that by apologising for naming her, but I am not totally convinced.

The expression "I can't keep track of each fallen robin" always brings tears to my eyes.

Evie B

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:02 pm
by jazz4111
Pearl was Janis Joplin's well known nickname and the title of her last posthumous album.

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:19 pm
by naf nehoC dranoeL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQTnsT0d5SA

1. There is Leonard the master of words
2. There is Janis crying her heart out of her body by intuition

They would have been a great couple I guess.

These two people I do admire the most, when it comes down to singing from the heart.

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:55 am
by MaryB
Shades of Pearl's voice in this video! Thank you naf.....(too long to copy :roll: ) for posting it. I really enjoyed it!

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 9:59 am
by friscogrl
There is a well known story about Janis sleeping with Jim Morrison and the next day driving around the Haight in her porsche yelling to everyone about it. Given this I don't think Janis would mind Leonard's reference to her in Chelsea Hotel one bit.

Marsha

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 2:34 pm
by Arnold the Frog
I seem fated to try (unsuccessfully) to re-open old threads...
Everybody seems to be taking a view on the "giving head" line.
Cohen clearly feels that he has betrayed a trust, but I'm not sure
that oral sex is the main sticking-point. I hope I'm not trivialising
the point of privacy in saying that as intimate revelations go, this
is fairly small beer, and Janis Joplin surely wouldn't have given
it much thought. Surely there's a much bigger problem.

clenching your fist ...
you fixed yourself.

"Clenching your fist" could just be a sign of defiance (it goes with
the words she speaks), and "you fixed yourself" could mean several
things, but the combination is surely unambiguous. She's injecting,
and it's so casual that she makes a mock-defiant joke about her
posture as she does it.

The more I think about this, the more complicated it gets.
Just what was Cohen thinking about when he said that Janis
"wouldn't mind"? Is this proof that I'm wrong, that Cohen
was more casual over drugs than sex (really? at what time
in his life?), that he was contriving to forget what his own
song was about, or what?

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 12:10 pm
by Arnold the Frog
This point was made previously by Jim Devlin, in In Every Style of Passion.
I wish my great mind had been thinking like his, but I believe he gave me the idea
first. I simply forgot where it came from. Mea culpa!

In any case, thanks are due to Jim Devlin, as they so often are.

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 7:21 am
by dalsh327
"Chelsea Hotel #1" mentions winter of '67. Janis didn't play NY until Feb '68.

It sounds like a song he'd write after hearing how she died and thought back to when they got together and his memory of her.

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 9:17 am
by beatingthelilies
interesting thread! however, I tend to find myself more captivated by Mr. Cohen's tenure in the Chelsea Hotel as I do his brief "thing" with Ms. Joplin. my gut feeling tells me that it was merely that, a simple evening they shared for lack of anything better to do. when two people, who connect on some level, find themselves with a free evening, stuff like this happens 8) that's cool that Mr. Cohen could have, possibly, resided in the ground floor of the Chelsea. he does mention at the Isle of Wight that he lived in "peeling rooms" there before becoming famous at which point they moved him to "well painted rooms." without attempting to veer too far off topic, I stayed on the ground floor at the Chelsea for a while and encountered some other worldly phenomena there. if any of you happen to find yourself on 23rd St. one evening, book a first floor room at the Chelsea. you'll leave a different person.

also, still trying not to go off topic but this question has been gnawing at me for a while, does anyone know if Mr. Cohen ever met Jim Morrison? I've been an avid Doors fan since I was 13 and know that The Doors played the Isle of Wight shortly before Mr. Cohen, but I also know that Jim hadn't slept for over a day before going on stage, so I have a feeling he crashed shortly after their set. I would find it a great tragedy if the two never crossed paths. both were/ are into poetry and had published collections of their written word before playing the IOW and both seem to have been connected to Nico. from what I gather in this thread, Mr. Cohen had a thing for her and around early '67, she was smitten with Jim. upon finding out that he liked red heads, she proceeded to dye her hair for him :lol:

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 12:17 pm
by DrHGuy
beatingthelilies wrote:also, still trying not to go off topic but this question has been gnawing at me for a while, does anyone know if Mr. Cohen ever met Jim Morrison? I've been an avid Doors fan since I was 13 and know that The Doors played the Isle of Wight shortly before Mr. Cohen, but I also know that Jim hadn't slept for over a day before going on stage, so I have a feeling he crashed shortly after their set. I would find it a great tragedy if the two never crossed paths. both were/ are into poetry and had published collections of their written word before playing the IOW and both seem to have been connected to Nico. from what I gather in this thread, Mr. Cohen had a thing for her and around early '67, she was smitten with Jim. upon finding out that he liked red heads, she proceeded to dye her hair for him :lol:
It's not really a meeting - but LC apparently accompanied Nico to a Morrison concert.

From 'I never discuss my mistresses or my tailors' by Nick Paton Walsh (The Observer, 14 October 2001) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2 ... magazine37 (emphasis mine)

The 32-year-old Cohen liked variety. He befriended Lou Reed, who introduced him to the decade's most enigmatic blonde, Nico. And his frustrated attempts to snare her would also prove inspiration for a song called 'Take This Longing'. 'She was great,' he recalls. 'The first time I saw her she was singing in a little club in the East Village, called the Dom. It had been decorated by Warhol with aluminium foil all over the walls. She had this beautiful deep monotone and I just drew closer and closer to her. And, erm, she was not remotely interested in me. But we became great friends over the years, although there were many more attractive men that she had her eye on. I remember going to one of Jim Morrison's first concerts in America. It was very early on in their career, and I went with her. She asked me to leave without her because she wanted to stay behind. But I was a tough old bird by then. I was used to it.'

Re: The Leonard/Janis thread

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:20 am
by beatingthelilies
thank you for that, DrHGuy! I totally sympathize with Mr. Cohen in this situation and reading that quote almost brought a tear to my eye. now the obsessive Doors fan in me wants to figure out which Doors' gig this was.