Various Positions

Product Information

Various Positions was produced by John Lissauer, who had been at the helm of Cohen's 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

It was the first time I could really see and intuitively feel what it was I was doing, making or creating in that enterprise. Asked in 2001 by Mojo 's Sylvie Simmons about this period of inactivity, the singer replied, "My children were living in the South of France and I spent a lot of time visiting them. An hermetic, contemplative, wonderfully sung and played tour-de-force that will disarm and captivate the listener at first hearing.Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for the tune, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor. Various Positions was Leonard Cohen's first album of the 1980s, yet was in keeping with the rest of his albums in two important respects: one, it sounded absolutely nothing like anything else anyone else was doing; two, it was a compelling reason for anyone else dealing in songs of love and its loss to wonder why they were bothering.

It also contains the bizarre country epic "The Captain", in which Cohen plays the part of a young officer being handed command of his unit by his dying superior. I've listened to it during a million (full)moonlit nights and sung some of its songs aloud again and again (and then some)!As a lyricist, Cohen has few, if any, peers--he has never been the relentless doom-monger of popular myth, but a wise, warm and frequently very funny chronicler of heartbreak.