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

Memories (1979-1985)

München 31/10/79

This is a song i wrote a couple of years ago with the great genius of darkest Hollywood:Phil Spector.And it's a song based on my extremely boring and pathetic life at Westmont High School in Montreal.It's called Memories

Bonn 03/12/79

The next song is one of my least significant songs. In it I have placed as though it were data in a tiny time capsule which is fired at a distant star and actually dissolves in the colder reaches of Space, far before its ultimate destination......In this tiny song I have placed all the irrelevant material concerning my extremely dismal adolescence. It is a song called "Memories".

London 06/12/79

It brings me from the exulted and sublime considerations of these musicians and technicians to an extremely banal experience which I have put into a song frozen like a fly in amber and somewhat less important. But this is a song into which I've placed my most banal adolescent recollections and I think this song will probably live forever. It's called "Memories."

Amsterdam 30/10/80

Long time ago, in my distant middle age, I sat down with Phil Spector on a mahogany piano bench and collaborated with him, one of the most dismal periods of my entire creative life. I wrote a song into which I have placed my most banal adolescent recollections. A song of profound and abiding irrelevance, which will probably last forever. Oh, how I long for the day when upon these shabby balustrades of the "Concertgebouw", you will erase one of the lesser names of Wagner, of Stravinsky and in its place, in bright and shiny gold letters, inscribe the name...(laughs). Forgive me great gods of music. I am but a tiny worm groveling in the bright illumination of your memories. That reminds me the name of the tune, it's called "Memories."

Tel Aviv 24/11/80

Oh, put away your hands for a moment. It is for us the honour to play for a nation of such beautiful women and such brave men. It is our honour. Unfortunately, for my last song, I must offend your deepest sensibilities with an entirely irrelevant and vulgar ditty that I wrote some time ago with another Jew in Hollywood, where there are many. This is a song in which I have placed my most irrelevant and banal adolescent recollections.I humbly ask you for your indulgence. As I look back to the red acne of my adolescence, to the unmanageable desire of my early teens, to that time when every woman shone like the eternal light above the altar place and I myself, was always on my knees before some altar, unimaginably more quiescent, potent, powerful and relevant than anything I could ever command. I speak of nothing less than womanhood, that elusive butterfly....

San francisco 1985

A song that I wrote with the great R'n'R master by the name of Phil Spector. A delightful chap. You really get to know him, you really did get to know him. And I had a Walther PPK. He had a just an ordinary 45. He flatted out on Sunset Boulevard. He got the tapes. He mixed them all alone. I think he was right. In this song we placed all our most irrelevant and banal adolescent recollections. It was everything that I learned in High School. One foot note : there is a singer mentioned in the first line of the first verse, the singer Frankie Laine. He's to be remembered for his stellar rendition of "Jezebel". Also for his sense of interpretation of "Swamp Girl". That song has the memorable refrain, "That's where my swamp girl lies". Many's the time these words come rushing to my mind. There's another song of his :"Black Lace" : "Lady beware, every time that you wear lace, black lace". Very good song. There is a better known : "Mule Train", with the authentic cracking of bull hide whips. Mule train. So the Frankie Laine referred to in the very first two words of this song is the very Frankie Laine, the very Frankie Laine whose liver I have to describe.

Dutch single of "Memories"

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