The Guns Of Leonard Cohen
WALTHER PPK
Leonard Cohen’s Walther PPK1 was mentioned in a recent post, Quiet And Devastating, Like Leonard Cohen In Cowboy Boot:
He also bought a Walther PPK, which, I suspect, was then the handgun of choice among your Tennessee transplants who were Canadian singer-songwriters-poets-novelist-soon to be icons
Ira Nadel, writing in Various Positions (Random House of Canada, 1996), notes that Cohen’s Walther was “the largest weapon he [Leonard Cohen] had at the time [when Cohen lived in Franklin, Tennessee, where he moved in 1968],” implying that Cohen owned other, albeit smaller caliber, guns.
WINCHESTER CENTENNIAL ’66 RIFLE
The Winchester rifle is discussed in this excerpt from Leonard Cohen, The Lord Byron of Rock-and-Roll by Karen Schoemer (New York Times, November 29, 1992) found at Speaking Cohen:
After New York, Mr. Cohen lived for a year on a 1,500-acre homestead in Franklin, Tenn., rented for $75 a month. “Ah, that was a very pleasant period of my life,” he says wistfully. “There was a shack — a well-equipped shack, but not much more than that — beside a stream. There were peacocks and peahen. They used to come to my cabin every morning. I’d feed them. I had one of those centennial rifles that Remington put out, I think, in ’67.” He pauses. “When was this country founded? ’76?” He seems somewhat dismayed that mathematics could interfere with a colorful detail of his story. “Anyway, I had some kind of centennial rifle. I would amuse myself by shooting icicles on the far side of the creek.” [emphasis mine]
While the Bicentennial of the United States, the date of which Mr Cohen was attempting to plug into his formula to calculate when he purchased the rifle, was, one supposes, a nice enough event, it was not the occasion the Winchester Repeating Arms Company chose to celebrate with the manufacture of their Centennial Rifle. Chuck Hawks explains:
1966 was the Winchester Repeating Arms Company’s 100th year of operation. To commemorate this occasion, Winchester produced a run of fancy Model 94 rifles. These were based on post 1964 Model 94′s actions with a gold plated receiver and forend cap, brass “rifle” (curved) buttplate, saddle ring, and a heavy octagon barrel with a full length magazine that was nicely polished and deeply blued. The straight hand stock was select walnut. All were in caliber .30-30 Winchester. There were rifle (26″) and carbine (20″) barrel lengths, and sets of rifle and carbine with consecutive serial numbers were also offered. The point to all of the gold and brass was to make the 1966 Centennial reminiscent of the brass framed Winchester 1866 “Yellow Boy” rifle that was Winchester’s first product.2
.45 CALIBER PISTOL
In 1973, Cohen flew to Jerusalem to sign up on the Israeli side in the Yom Kippur Warbut was instead assigned to a USO-style entertainer tour of front-line tank emplacements in the Sinai Desert, coming under fire. Cohen, according to Nadel (Various Positions), armed himself by stealing a .45 pistol from a deserted shed at a desert airport.3
It was also a .45 pistol that, according to anecdote often told by Cohen, Phil Spector held to Cohen’s head.
His album Death of a Ladies’ Man was produced by Phil Spector, the reclusive genius of girl-group pop. “I was flipped out at the time,” Cohen said later, “and he certainly was flipped out. For me, the expression was withdrawal and melancholy, and for him, megalomania and insanity and a devotion to armaments that was really intolerable. In the state that he found himself, which was post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian, the atmosphere was one of guns – the music was a subsidiary enterprise … At a certain point Phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, ‘Leonard, I love you.’ I said, ‘I hope you do, Phil.’”4
.38 CALIBER PISTOL
Leonard Cohen’s father, Nathan Cohen, served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I and consequently possessed what Nadel (Various Positions) called “a military souvenir,” which Leonard Cohen describes in “The Favourite Game” as “a huge .38.” The problem is that the only handguns Canadian forces were issued or allowed to purchase during World War I were .45 caliber pistols.5 Of course, “a military souvenir” could include any handgun Nathan Cohen came to own as a result of the war. The .38 pistol in the image is the Smith & Wesson Military & Police Model initially developed in 1899 and subsequently used by the military and police forces in many countries.
Update: See also Bang Bang – A 2nd Shot At Leonard Cohen & Guns
http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/11/12/the-guns-of-leonard-cohen/
PHIL SPECTOR - GUN STORY:
See Cohen and Streeter’s email re. another version of this story. Streeter concealed that from the jurors.
FOUR VERSIONS OF COHEN’S EMBELLISHED PHIL SPECTOR AND A GUN STORY.
AN AUTOMATIC TO THE HEAD:
Page 308:
Q: Okay. Now I want to talk to you a little bit about -- you said that you felt threatened some of these times. Do you remember saying that?
A: I certainly did.
Q: Now I want to talk to you about what you mean by threatened. You actually -- you were telling us about Phil Spector. You were testifying abou talk,ing to the LAPD.
NOTE: It was actually LASD.
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And you talked to the LAPD with your attorney, correct?
A: With an attorney present, yes, sir.
Q: And that’s when you asked that -- or your attorney -- someone asked that Ms. Lynch leave?
A: The attorney asked that Ms. Lynch leave.
NOTE: I explained to Steve Cron, who had previously represented me so he could NOT represent Cohen, that I knew Phil Spector and did not want to be dragged into his insane matter, Steve suggested that I leave before the detectives arrived. I left.
Q: So when Ms. Lynch left, you started talking about an interview or a story about Phil Spector, correct?
A: Correct.
Q: And how he would oftentimes have guns when you were producing an album, correct? He would have guns in the studio when he was producing an album with you?
A: That’s correct.
Q: And, in fact, one time you told the detective that, quote -- Well, before I go there, was Mr. Spector -- was he drunk at the time when he had these guns?
A: I don’t remember, sir.
Q: Was he hostile at the time?
A: Not to me.
Q: Okay. But he actually put a gun to your head; is that correct?
A: That’s correct.
Q: It was a revolver?
A: No, it wasn’t a revolver. It was an automatic.
Q: But you weren’t actually -- you didn’t feel threatened when he put a gun to your head?
A: No, sir.
A .45 REVOLVER POINTED AT COHEN’S NECK. THIS VERSION, UNLIKE THE PROSECUTOR’S IN THE PHIL SPECTOR MATTER, HAS A BOTTLE OF MANISHEWITZ IN ONE OF PHILLIP’S HANDS.
BBC Interview.
[Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On]
Leonard Cohen
That happened at a very curious time in my life because I was at a very low point, my family was breaking up, I was living in Los Angeles which was a foreign city to me, and I'd lost control, as I say, of my family, of my work, and my life, and it was a very very dark period. And when he got into the studio it was clear that he was an eccentric, but I didn't know that he was mad. He's not mad any longer, I've spoken to him on the phone recently, he's really quite reasonable and calm, but we were, you know, I was flipped out at the time and he certainly was flipped out, my flipped out was, you know, the expression was withdrawal and melancholy, and his was megalomania and insanity, and the kind of devotion to armaments, to weapons, that was really intolerable. With Phil, especially in the state that he found himself, which was post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian, the atmosphere was one of guns, I mean that's really what was going on, was guns. The music was subsidiary an enterprise, you know people were armed to the teeth, all his friends, his bodyguards, and everybody was drunk, or intoxicated on other items, so you were slipping over bullets, and you were biting into revolvers in your hamburger. There were guns everywhere... And at a certain point Phil approached me with a bottle of Manishewitz kosher red wine in one hand and a 45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved a revolver into my neck and said, "Leonard, I love you". I said, "I hope you do, Phil".
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2008
SPROCKET’S CONFUSION - THE PROSECUTION HAS SAID THE GUN WAS POINTED AT COHEN’S CHEST BUT SPROCKET THINKS IT WAS POINTED AT COHEN’S HEAD.
Phil Spector: Prosecution's Motion to Admit Evidence of Other Crimes
Here it is folks. This motion to admit evidence of other crimes was filed on Monday by the prosecution. It looks like AJ will be arguing to get in not only the latest sixth PBA 1101(b) witness Norma Kemper, but also the incident when he put a gun to Leonard Cohen's head as well as Debra Strand and a few others.
Page 3
STEVE COOLEY
District Attorney of Los Angeles County
ALAN JACKSON
Deputy District Attorney
TRUC DO
Deputy District Attorney
Major Crimes Division
Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office
210 W. Temple Street, 17th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90012
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA
Plaintiff,
vs.
PHILLIP SPECTOR,
Defendant.
Case No. BA255233
MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF MOTION TO ADMIT EVIDENCE OF OTHER CRIMES
Date: August 14, 2008
Time: 1:30 PM
Court: Department 106
Defendant Phillip Spector has built a history, spanning some 40 odd years,of using gun-related violence when confronted with a situation when he feels a loss of control, or a threat to his control. Pursuant to CAl. Evid. Code § 1101(b), the People seek to admit evidence of the following uncharged crimes.
I. BACKGROUND
On February 3, 2003, Defendant Phillip Spector shot Lana Clarkson to death in the foyer of his Alhambra home. After the shooting, Spector opened the back door to his house, stood in the doorway and told Adriano DeSouza, his driver, "I think I killed somebody." Only Spector and Clarkson were in the house at the time. Within minutes, the police were on the scene, and Spector was eventually taken into custody ...
II. OTHER ACTS OF GUN-RELATED VIOLENCE SUBMITTED FOR RECONSIDERATION
On February 17, 2005, the People filed a motion in limine to admit evidence of other acts committed by Spector. Under that separate cover, the facts of the following incidents were set forth in detail and in their entirety. Thus, in an effort towards brevity, only a short recitation of such incidents will be discussed below.
Spector has a long history of resorting to gun-related violence to exert his will when he does not get his way. Int begins in 1972 and continues to the present ...
A SEMI-AUTOMATIC POINTED AT THE CHEST - NO BOTTLE OF WINE:
C. The 1977 Brandishing on Leonard Cohen
1977, Spector produced musician Leonard Cohen's record album, "Death of a Ladies man." during production of the record, Cohen and Spector, who were friends, were taking a break in the lobby of the music studio. Spector walked up to Cohen, placed on arm around Cohen's shoulders, and pointed a semi-automatic pistol at Cohen's chest with his other hand. Spector told Cohen, "I love you Leonard." Cohen looked at Spector and said, "I hope so, Phil." Spector then walked away from Cohen.
The Rock’s Backpages Flashback: What Happened When Phil Spector Met Leonard Cohen?
By Harvey Kubernik (1978) – Fri, Apr 17, 2009 3:09 PM EDT
It was over 30 years ago that two of rock's legends joined forces in the studio to produce an album called Death Of A Ladies' Man. Harvey Kubernik was there to witness the combustive meeting of minds.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages
Leonard Cohen--singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet, novelist, and sometime straight-faced spokesman of the hilarious ironies of the human condition--walks into the dimly-lit recording studio control booth. The place is called Gold Star, and it is a shining capital of musical energy in the midst of a dying neighborhood in a particularly faded part of Hollywood...
Cohen lets a hint of a smile cross his face, but nothing more. He is not one to demonstrate elaborate emotional feeling in a personal situation. He sports a finely tailored dark blue blazer and well-cut grey slacks, and he radiates a poise uncommon to the environment at hand. His charm is substantial, and it isn't hard to fathom why at least some people find themselves so wholly taken with his art. It's not so much what he is about that is important, but what he seems to be about--not so much what he says, but what he implies.
As Cohen sits down in the booth, a voice screams out of the dark silence: "This isn't punk rock! This is ROCK PUNK!" Then the first notes of a rhythm track drive through the monitors.
The voice belongs to Phil Spector. Imposing, like a king dethroned, he sits behind the mixing board, incessantly fondling an empty bottle which once contained 32 ounces of pure Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine. He wears a sharp, severe black suit, a green shirt, and a very expensive pair of shiny black leather boots--boots which are presumably made for rockin'.
In a year of unlikely artist/producer combinations--Reddy/Fowler, Flack/Ezrin, Grand Funk/Zappa, etc.--this is perhaps the most unlikely: Phil Spector, demon genius of the rock-and-roll production number, producing Leonard Cohen, ascetic prophet of acoustic disaffectedness, with the final product to be known as Death Of A Ladies' Man.
"We've made some great f***in' music on this album," Spector says, his voice assuming a high-pitched urgency, a blend of Arnold Stang and Jerry Mathers . With that, he leaps from his chair and hugs everyone in the room. He is very happy with his work , and he wants everyone to know it.
The '70s have been a strange decade for Spector. At the beginning of the period, he made two splendid albums with John Lennon. Then came interesting but generally disappointing projects with Harry Nilsson and Cher. When Spector produced a Dion LP for Warners at great cost last year, the company decided not even to release it in the U.S.
The worst blow came, in a sense, though, when Warners agreed to release a definitive Phil Spector anthology, an attractive, well-researched package (with notes by Ken Barnes), made with Spector's full co-operation. It was an incredible collection of music, and a beautifully presented one--but Phil Spector 's Greatest Hits didn't even make Billboard's Top 200 album list.
Insiders could probably explain away the LP's low sales: Warners probably didn't ship more than 30,000 units at release, thereby marking the album as a sort of "labor-of-love" LP intended only for hard-core Spector fans or Spector supporters within the music industry. The record company didn't even allocate a complete disc-jockey service nationally. It certainly wasn't intended to be a major commercial release effort.
Nevertheless, there have been three albums since it was released--Then I Kissed Her, Da Doo Ron Ron, and Be My Baby. Michael Lloyd and Jimmy Ienner will no doubt continue to find it an insatiable source of future cover tunes for their boppers well into the '80s. Thus, while the album was hardly a moneymaker in terms of actual units sold, it has proven and will continue to prove to be a veritable gold mine of publishing royalties.
But that is hardly enough for Phil Spector--whose brilliance only starts with the songs he writes, but really gets to shining when he gets those songs into a studio. And so it is obvious that the Leonard Cohen sessions have been important to him--almost therapeutic. He certainly seems to be taking his work extremely seriously: He has been decidedly less theatrical in the studio of late; the usual Spector circus atmosphere seems to have been replaced at least in part by a rediscovered, or new interest in the music itself. And that seems to be very good medicine, both for Spector and for Cohen.
Spector and Cohen, despite their obvious surface differences both in personal style and in musical direction, share one, all-powerful element of musical taste--a love for rock-and-roll. It is deeply rooted in them, and it pervades the work they do together. It is their shared medium, their common ground. A mutual affection for rock's basic greatness has bound the two men together, and made their collaboration work.
"Working with Phil," says Cohen nonetheless, "I've found that some of his musical treatments are very...er...foreign to me. I mean, I've rarely worked in a live room that contains 25 musicians--including two drummers, three bassists, and six guitars."
The track Cohen and Spector are particularly interested in listening to right now is "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On," the album's all-out stomper, with hosts of loud horns and pulsating beat that's hammered all the way home by dual drummers playing in perfect synch. Above it all, comes Cohen's menacing, gritty vocal work, which holds center stage in a most unexpected but effective way. "I can really belt 'em out, you know," says the singer, as he takes a swig of Jose Cuervo from the bottle.
Cohen and Spector first met late in 1974, when Cohen was in Los Angeles for a rare club appearance--a two-night gig at the Troubadour. After the last show on the second night, Spector hosted an informal reception for Cohen at his home--a Spanish-style mansion in the grand, excessive Southern California tradition.
Cohen was brought to Spector's attention, and vice versa, by Martin Machat--who had independently become lawyer and business manager for both men. Machat took Spector to see Cohen perform. Throughout Cohen's 90-minute show, Spector sat quietly, very still, immediately impressed (he later said) by Cohen's mystery and his technique (or maybe the mystery of his technique...or the technique of his mystery...)
The two men got on well at the post-Troubadour reception, and kept in some sort of loose touch thereafter. Late in 1976, when Cohen visited Los Angeles again, Spector invited him to be his houseguest. The first night, the two worked out a new version of Patti Page's "I Went To Your Wedding"; by breakfast, they'd co-written two new songs--Cohen the lyrics, Spector the music (picked out on the piano). The seed was sown for what ultimately became Death Of A Ladies' Man.
Cohen is said to have remarked of Spector that "Phil is not a great songwriter, but he's a bold one. He's bold enough to employ the most pedestrian melodies, and yet somehow make them absolutely successful. That is why his compositions are brilliant." Cohen is especially impressed by Spector's early work--"To Know Him Is To Love Him," "Lovin' Feeling," etc. "In those songs, the story line was as clear as clear could ever be. The images were very expressive--they spoke to us all. Spector's real greatness is his ability to induce those incredible little moments of poignant longing in us."
Cohen's own images are expressive, too, of course. On Death Of A Ladies' Man, they seem particularly direct. "This is the most autobiographical album of my career," he says. "The words are in a tender, rather than a harsh setting, but there's still a lot of bitterness, negativity, and disappointment in them. I wish at times there was a little more space for the personality of the storyteller to emerge, but, in general, the tone of the album is very overt, totally open."
He goes on to say, "I was a little off-balance this year." Songs like "Iodine," "True Love Leaves No Traces," and the album's title track mirror his situation. All the usual Cohen concerns--lost love, personal chaos, doubt, romantic dilemma, alienation, lust, etc.--are present in strong force. "And don't forget humor," Cohen adds. He also says, "I worship women," and suspects that, with the release of this album, "Everybody will now know that within this serene Buddhist interior there beats an adolescent heart."
By 6 A.M., Spector and Cohen are still listening to one rough mix after another. Bob Dylan appears somewhere in the midst of Spector's huge, complicated sounds. So do Hal Blaine, Jim Keltner, Nino Tempo, Jesse Ed Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Art Munson, Ray Pholman, and Dan and David Kessel--sons of jazz guitarist Barney Kessel. The music is hard and solid and soulful. There is, above all, nothing "El-lay" about it.
To this day, Spector meets people who can't believe that all his great hits were cut in Southern California. "They thought Gold Star was in New York," he says. "Of course, what I do is hardly typical California stuff. There are no four-part harmonies on my records... Maybe 32-part harmonies..." He looks around the room. "Anyone here who plays Asylum records, please leave. Anybody laid-back in this room, get the f**k out of here!"
Cohen likes Los Angeles. A native of Montreal, who has spent much of his time in recent years in the South of France and in other European hideaways, he has now moved to Southern California himself. "I like it," he says. "It's so desperate here that it's really not bad at all. And, besides, this is the only city in the world where I've ever written a song while sitting in a driveway in a parked car."
Later in the morning, back at Spector's mansion, as the jukebox plays the psalms of Elvis, Dylan, Waylon, Otis, and the Drifters, Spector muses about his own life. "It didn't take extraordinary strength for me to change the way I was," he claims. "What I was doing just had to stop. It isn't hard to see that, especially after you've gone through a couple of windshields at high speeds.
"I have to admit that I did enjoy it to a certain extent--being rich, a millionaire in his mansion, and dressing up like Batman...But now I can see beyond that, and see just how unhealthy and unproductive it became.
"I'm ready for anything now. Nothing frightens me. I feel I can do more now than I could ever do before. I feel extremely ready musically. I'm more comfortable, more relaxed, more together. I understand what I want to do, and I'm going to do it. It's time to get serious again."
Then he says, "Come into the other room. I want to play you some more of the Leonard Cohen tracks."
And as he punches up "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" once again, the tight strung, perfectly conceived production fills the air, he says "Ain't none of us ready for the glue factory yet. I'll go one-on-one with any producer in the world, anytime ." He smiles. "We can still kick ass!"
NOTE: Hal Blaine never saw Phil Spector, in 37 years, in the studio with a gun. Janice Zavala Spector has never seen Phil Spector with a gun.
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