Eratosphere - Leonard Cohen's 'Treaty'

Eratosphere (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/index.php)

- Musing on Mastery (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/forumdisplay.php?f=15)

- - Leonard Cohen's 'Treaty' (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=35342)

Leonard Cohen's 'Treaty'

I've been a long time Cohen fan and have been listening to his final album, You Want it Darker, since it was released in 2016.

It took a long, long while but this year his final statement, Treaty, opened up for me. The song is subtle, and can almost be dismissed, but if you know Cohen and look at it more closely, there's a lot there.

I've read a few biographies of him, and I can't recall where I picked up on it, but I believe this specific poem had been in his mind for decades, and he intended it to be his final statement.

My belief is that it follows the line of thinking found in Hallelujah, but actually resolves the issue. Anyway, I wanted to invite others with an interest in Cohen to have another listen:

Treaty

String Reprise/ Treaty

Thanks, Nick. I'd never heard it before, and am now the richer for having heard it.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. If you get some time I'd recommend checking out the full album, really the whole thing is his final statement, but Treaty specifically is the centerpiece. For me the album's aged really well so far.

For anyone wanting to know more about Cohen I'd recommend checking out this song - Going Home - which gives you an idea of Cohen as man, versus Cohen as persona. For most of his life music was his bread and butter, feeding his children, so his recordings always had a very particular style. Poetry was the original passion, but eventually he *was* leaning hard into songwriting. But to get a better idea of Cohen as man you need to look at his poetry. Book of Mercy and Book of Longing are the most rewarding, IMO. I also enjoy Death of a Lady's Man but middle-aged and old-aged Cohen were very different people.

As for his actual music I'd recommend his later albums. I don't listen to much of his music before Recent Songs, and even Recent Songs only makes the cut because it's pretty. The Future and I'm Your Man were his attempts to make inroads into the American market, but the ones that come after I spend the most time with.

Anyway, to tie this back to Musing on Mastery and what Cohen was doing in his latter albums, you'd have to recognize that he was a very learned man, but deeply humble. He knew religion, history, politics, human nature, and beneath his published work was even writing in meter, but he wasn't showy about it. So in his latter albums, if you really listen, and really look at the lyrics he's often saying a lot in very few words. But the wordplay is so subtle and unassuming that you can almost pass it over like nothing happened, and that he's not saying anything at all.

In Treaty the lyrics are so straightforward that the song seems almost too obvious, but every word and it's placement has meaning. He doesn't give it away, but in this one he's wanting to take the listener as far as he can.

So that's enough for now. If we have any other Cohen fans, or other comments I'd be interested to hear them. I'm guessing he's more of a Canadian icon, but I know some have read him.

Leonard Cohen Forums

It looks like he was sitting on the lyrics for at least thirty years before recording them. The album Various Positions, with Hallelujah, was recorded in 1984, around the same time the below lines appeared. Cohen would have been 51.

Quote:

(Wiesbaden 2nd, Birmingham 28th Feb & Dublin (1) 2nd March 1985)
I see you changed the water into wine
That was a very pretty trick to do
I sit at your table every night
Baby, I just can't get drunk with you
And there are no letters in the mailbox....

Quote:

(Basel 5th, Vienna 6th & 7th, Munich 9th, Boblington 10th March 1985)
I haven’t said a word since you’ve been gone
That any liar couldn’t say as well
I can’t believe the static coming on
You were my ground, you were my aerial
And there are no letters in the mail box....

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/leonard-cohen/treaty

Quote:

In the last months of Leonard Cohen's life, compositions that he and Patrick Leonard have been working on for years finally got completed. This poetic confession about the selfishness of love, for instance, took him five years to finish. Patrick Leonard recalled to Uncut.

"He says, 'All these things you were doing version after version, the music was all fine I just had problems with some of the lines.'

With Treaty for example, the version on You Want It Darker is five years old. But the lyrics aren't. There was a lyric update but since then I'd done no fewer than 10 or 15 versions, trying to figure out why it wasn't working. Everything from country hoedown to changing the chords. We refer to Treaty as the box set. There could be a three season HBO series on."
It was actually one of Pat Leonard's first versions of "Treaty" that Cohen ended up using, but only after the singer-songwriter originally rejected it. Co-producer Anjani Thomas recalled to Uncut magazine: "I remember Pat Leonard playing me this amazing track for Treaty. It was so beautiful. I cried when I heard it. Pat loved it. I loved it. I looked at Len and he said, 'You know what, it's too beautiful.' He said the music was too obviously moving, almost manipulative. Too emotional, too poignant. Too much! It was distracting him. He wanted to control it, he wanted some edge."

Pat Leonard added. "Ironically, that early version is the one that's on the record. We used to talk about 'Treaty: the Movie', as I did no less than 25 versions of Treaty. There were some really interesting ones - the last one was so interesting. I think it pushed him back to the first one. In fact, his request for me to do a little string arrangement of it was an homage to how much effort went into the damn song. He said to me that ultimately it was about the line that he didn't have. There were many variations of the chorus, and until he found what he wanted it to say, we just kept trying it."