Diamonds in the Lines : Leonard Cohen in his own live words

"Blues By The Jews" or "Billy Sunday"
(1979-1980)

Birmingham 08/12/1979

We had a concert the night before last - it was about our 45th concert in this tour - and, ah, it was under a lot of tension - it was in London, and you know London is a discerning people : you got to be careful there you know. We can try this, this song I hope you do not consider as blasphemy because it really isn¹t, but it's a very nasty song. I think it's in G. We never did this before. How do you want to do ? should I come over there and we split these lyrics between the three of us ? Okay I'll come over there. John Wood is our engineer, he's over there. He doesn¹t know about this at all.

Brighton 15/12/1979

This is a curious song that I wrote three or four years...no it must be about a thousand years ago, but I haven't learned the words yet. I wrote it on the road, it's kind of irreverent, but you're not very religious in this part of the country anyway, so I doubt if it would offend anybody. Anyway, this is the "Blues by the Jews", here it is...

Melbourne March 1980

I don't know if any of you recall that there was a preacher in America about thirty years ago, called Billy Sunday who went around frightening everybody. "You're in a promised land" (says a man in the crowd). These days everyone seems to be infected by the Holy Spirit. Along with my other infections, it's one I've had for a long time. This is a blues.

Billy Sunday's graveyard in Chicago