{"id":6133,"date":"2026-06-20T09:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=6133"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:36:14","slug":"sisters-of-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sisters-of-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m187y4IWyME?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I wrote some initial thoughts about Leonard Cohen in my post for &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/suzanne\/\">Suzanne<\/a>,&#8221; and don&#8217;t really need to expand on them, but what the hell&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The short version is, I&#8217;m at best agnostic about most of the hallowed singer-songwriters of the 1960s and &#8217;70s. I have nothing against them; I just didn&#8217;t listen to much of that music, so have no opinions about them. Cohen is a bit different because my friend and mentor, Dave Van Ronk, liked him and thought he was a good poet, and recorded a nice version of &#8220;Bird on a Wire&#8230;&#8221; which<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-6135\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Leonard-Cohen.jpg?resize=189%2C221&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"189\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Leonard-Cohen.jpg?w=338&amp;ssl=1 338w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Leonard-Cohen.jpg?resize=257%2C300&amp;ssl=1 257w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 189px) 100vw, 189px\" \/> I learned and actually made into one of my showpieces back when I was 17 and full of <em>nostalgie de la boue <\/em>(a term I learned from Dave).<\/p>\n<p>And, as I wrote before, I often was called upon to sing &#8220;Suzanne&#8221; when I was around French people (especially female French people). So I was somewhat interested in him, and read <em>Beautiful Losers\u00a0<\/em>(about which I remember nothing) and some of his poetry (about which I remember less). And I read a few interviews, and sometimes found them interesting, and sometimes annoying&#8230;. bit too much the sensitive, tortured, handsome poet-man for my taste.<\/p>\n<p>But I always thought &#8220;Sisters of Mercy&#8221; was a terrific song. Beautiful, evocative lyrics perfectly matched with a lovely melody. I&#8217;ve known it for over fifty years and still find new resonances in it. And that&#8217;s before mentioning the scene in <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-6134 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/McCabe-and-Mrs-Miller-clip.jpg?resize=255%2C182&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"255\" height=\"182\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/McCabe-and-Mrs-Miller-clip.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/McCabe-and-Mrs-Miller-clip.jpg?resize=300%2C215&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 255px) 100vw, 255px\" \/><em>McCabe and Mrs. Miller<\/em>, with the prostitutes trekking through the Alaskan wilderness as this song plays in the background. Ever since I saw that for the first time &#8211;and I&#8217;ve seen it multiple times since &#8212; a picture of that scene goes through my head when I sing this. All in all, it&#8217;s a deep and lovely piece of work. For me, it&#8217;s his masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p>All of which said&#8230; Van Ronk always said that Cohen and Mitchell were more careful writers than Dylan &#8212; not more brilliant, but more willing to go back and work on their songs, and fix the lines that needed fixing. He thought Dylan was a genius, but, for example, &#8220;All Along the Watchtower&#8221; &#8212; he would point out that a watchtower isn&#8217;t a wall, it&#8217;s a tower, and you can&#8217;t go &#8220;along&#8221; it. In which spirit&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They are not departed or gone&#8230;&#8221;? It scans nicely, but if they are departed they are gone, and if they are gone they are departed. There&#8217;s no &#8220;or&#8221; about it; it&#8217;s just repetitive. Albeit lovely. Poetic license, and all that. Best not to think too much.<\/p>\n<p>(Oh, yes, and&#8230; I just went back to get a photo from that scene in\u00a0<em>McCabe and Mrs. Miller<\/em>, and find that it doesn&#8217;t look the way I remember it, and &#8220;Sisters of Mercy&#8221; is in a different part of the film. And it&#8217;s not set in Alaska, it&#8217;s in Washington state, though filmed in British Columbia. But I still see that scene in my head when I sing.)<\/p>\n<p>(And&#8230; my rule for this project is that I do all the songs from memory &#8212; that&#8217;s the point; they are the songs in my head &#8212; and don&#8217;t check them before filming, and when I checked afterwards, I found that the lyric should be &#8220;they touched both my eyes&#8230;&#8221; not &#8220;both my hands.&#8221; It&#8217;s definitely better that way. He&#8217;s a poet; I&#8217;m not. Sorry.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote some initial thoughts about Leonard Cohen in my post for &#8220;Suzanne,&#8221; and don&#8217;t really need to expand on them, but what the hell&#8230; The short version is, I&#8217;m at best agnostic about most of the hallowed singer-songwriters of the 1960s and &#8217;70s. I have nothing against them; I just didn&#8217;t listen to much &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sisters-of-mercy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen) - 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That used to be a pretty common thing; I knew a bunch of musicians who went to Alaska to work the fishing and save some money to tide them\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Monte-photo-by-Maryse-Zeidler.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/","url_meta":{"origin":6133,"position":3},"title":"Candyman (Rev. Gary Davis\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic from Rev. 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