leonardcohenforum.com

hi,
does anybody know if leonard has anyplans to release a cd of outtake material, similar to dylans genuine bootleg series. i have read about allot of great sounding material unreleased, alternates etc. any insiders here know if any thing like this on the cards...
cheers,
woody

No idea if it's in any planning stages, but I'd be all for it. I'm sure in the 30+ years he's been recording that there's bound to be a lot of extras or alternate versions. But then again, he's such a perfectionist that maybe everything was used. Who knows.

I believe that, if they weren't used, they were destroyed. Most of his out-takes did make into albums, but as 5th or 6th version. All out-takes from 1980 are the early and alternate versions of I'm Your Man, Hallelujah, First We Take Manhattan, In My Secret Life, Closing Time, The Future, Anthem, I Can't Fogert, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Democracy, or Undertow.
StoreRoom

Wow, I had no idea those some of those songs had their beginnings so long ago.

Regarding the outtakes posts: I wonder if Leonard has ever recorded his own versions of some of the songs that have only been covered by other people, ie "Priests" by Judy Collins, "Come Spend The Morning" by Lee Hazlewood, "Song of Bernedette" by Jennifer Warnes, etc. It would be great to hear his original demos for these songs, if they exist.

thanks for the posts. after doing a bit of reading about all the alternate takes, missing songs and songs covered by other people it seems a great shame there isn't more available. i'm a big dylan fan and he has a massive selection of outtake material that is well critiqued and a vital part of the dylan world, songs like abandoned love, angelina, foot of pride, caribbean wind, blind willie mctell, farewell angelina... are all outtakes to name but a few.
by the way is the early copy of thousand kisses deep in circulation, i would love to hear that.

Most outtakes are interesting the first few times you here them and then that's it. There are exceptions. Dyaln's Bootleg Series.Springsteen's Tracks. Most of the outtakes they tack on to cds these days are easily forgotten.

Only "Priests" presumably were recorded for the second album, but wasn't released. We presumed that because the lyrics and chords are printed in the songbook which accompanied the first two albums (Songs of Leonard Cohen Herewith: Music, words and photographs, AMSCO Music Publishing Company, USA, 1969)

You can see and hear LC singing "A Thousand Kisses Deep" on keyboards in his monastery room in Spring 96 documentary. But all info about sources for the out-takes are posted in StoreRoom section of I'm Your Live Mansite. That section will be updated soon with more than twenty out-takes and realy version, which are based on wild guesses (namely, we find many copyrighted songs in US Patent Office on Leonard's name:)

Speaking about the out-takes, mostly interesting are those until 1970, because they weren't the early versions, but the really unissued songs, like "Billy Sunday" (available on excellent soundboards and radio recordings from 1979 tour), "Misty Blue" (circulating in poor taped copy of the original out-take), and "Do I Have To Dance All Night" (available in live versions from 1976 and 1980 tours). From the same period is the out-taked album Songs For Rebecca, recorded with John Lissauer as producer in 1975. Also, there's the complete out-taked project of Leonard reciting the Book of Mercy, recorded with Henry Lewy as producer in mid 1980s. The case of that recording tells us everything about LC's out-takes: namely, in 1999 LC told to our webmaster, Jarkko, that the tape has so deteriorated that it cannot be used anymore Also, in 1993 interviews LC said he lost the Songs For Rebecca tape Then we go further: the alternate out-taked arrangements for "Un Canadien Errant" (1979) were used last year for "The Faith". Anjani said "the emulsion had started to disintegrate after years in storage." (But "Fortunately it was salvaged by a special overnight baking process." ) And something similar was experienced with the 1979 tapes for Field Commander Cohen.

So if Columbia never minded the archiving of Cohen's unissued live shows, who knows what's with early out-takes. One album is already lost (is it found later?), one is deteriorated (but only for modern releasing - we do not expect that the old out-takes have digital quality, does we?), and God only knows what's with the old out-tales, are they existing at all, and can they be used.

If you don't know this page, again: http://www.twoshakesofalambstail.com/st ... index.html

Contains mp3 of Songs For Rebecca (recorded live in November 1975 in Bryn Mawr, US), Misty Blue, Billy Sunday, Do I Have To Dance All Night, and many more rare songs from 1970s shows.

Thanks for the link to the website, Tom. I listened to quite a few of the songs listed. The sound quality is fairly abysmal on quite a few of them, but there's a few gems (ie Storeroom, Do I have To Dance).