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I'm Your Man | 
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| Artist: Leonard Cohen
Label: Columbia
Category: Music
List Price: £6.99
Buy Used: £2.49
You Save: £4.50 (64%)
New (32) Used (5) from £2.49
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 381
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.4
EAN: 5099746064228
ASIN: B00002695C
Release Date: July 2, 1990
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | First We Take Manhattan | | • | Ain't No Cure For Love | | • | Everybody Knows | | • | I'm Your Man | | • | Take This Waltz | | • | Jazz Police | | • | I Can't Forget | | • | Tower Of Song |
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| Similar Items:
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Even the production, laden with synthesized strings and cooing female choruses, is wry on I'm Your Man, a definitive Leonard Cohen album. Though still touched with the tragic ("Take This Waltz," based on a Garcia Lorca poem), the album often achieves its high points by combining Cohen's world-weariness with black-humoured evocations of social and romantic ills and artistic quandaries. "I was born like this, I had no choice," the gravelly Cohen intimates at disc's end. "I was born with the gift of a golden voice." ---Rickey Wright
Amazon.co.uk Review
I'm Your Man appeared at a fortuitous moment for Cohen. The previous year, Jennifer Warnes had scored a major hit with Famous Blue Raincoat--an album of Cohen's songs. Possibly enthused by the idea of a large, primed and expectant audience, the 54-year-old Cohen delivered--in I'm Your Man--arguably the finest album of his illustrious career. The music here is never the baleful acoustic strumming Cohen is still popularly associated with: rather, he opted for a peculiarly sparse electronic style that often sounded as if it was being played on a variety of toys. This tack might have been disastrous--and indeed is, on "Jazz Police", the album's only clunker--but is redeemed by Cohen's gloomy, portentous voice, mixed well to the fore, and what might well be the finest collection of lyrics ever bestowed upon a rock & roll album. From the terrific opening line ("They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom/For trying to change the system from within", from "First We Take Manhattan") the words on I'm Your Man are relentlessly wise, rueful and hilarious, and capped splendidly by the climactic "Tower Of Song". This track, which has since been covered by James, the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Fatima Mansions and Nick Cave, among others, is the definitive statement of the magnificent absurdity of the rock & roll singer: "I said to Hank Williams... how lonely does it get?". Genius. --Andrew Mueller
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Cohen: Man For All Seasons August 11, 2007
pikeyboy (carmarthen, uk)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
There really are not words enough to describe the sweep and grandeur of Leonard's 1988 masterpiece. Age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety. There are many common misperceptions of Mr.Cohen, but none more frustrating to a lifelong fan than that of suicidal, morbid folk-singer. My own personal vision is of the ultimate caberet crooner, the last-dance, last-chance, end-of-the-night performer, dispensing gems of wisdom sometimes with an urbane humour, but always with love and a song in his heart: a mixture of Aznavour, Brel, and Noel Coward, with a little Brecht thrown in for good measure. This album answers perfectly that call, most seductively and gorgeously in LC's reading of Lorca's 'Little Viennese Waltz' (here recast as TAKE THIS WALTZ): "There's a concert hall in Vienna/ Where your mouth had a thousand reviews/ There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking/ They've been sentenced to death by the blues/ Ah! but who is it climbs to your picture/ With a garland of freshly-cut tears?/ Ay! Ay ay ay!/ Take this waltz/ Take this waltz/ Take this waltz, it's been dying for years." Monumental and crumbling, like Vienna itself, evoking grand balls of old, laughter, dancing, now fading with time like the Venice Byron and Shelley discovered. Make no mistake, this is writing of a grand scale, and anyone with a knowledge of Lorca's poetry will know how much fresh material Cohen has rendered from the original. Likewise, on First We Take Manhattan, Everybody Knows, I'm Your Man, Tower Of Song, Cohen is very much relishing his role as bandleader and showman, never once taking himself too seriously, always underpinning every commentary with his much under-appreciated and very jewish wit: "If you want to sleep a moment on the road/ I will steer for you/ If you want to work the street alone/ I'll disappear for you..." Most songs that even try to be funny usually pull up short somewhere. Here, in the title track, Leonard could give Noel coward a run for his money, in that it's hard to know if he's being achingly self-deprecating or deadly serious, such is the play of his word-craft. Similarly, on the oft-quoted "born with the gift of a golden voice" line from TOWER OF SONG, I recall how it raised a mass titter from a packed Albert Hall in 1988, yet I've always been of the opinion that LC wrote that line in earnestness: he is not so much mocking the flat drone of his singing voice, but saying that what emanates from that organ is golden and beautiful and beyond his control. In other words: he couldn't help it if he tried. Just as the most simple of melodies and statements such as AIN'T NO CURE FOR LOVE sprung from a conversation about AIDS he'd had with Jennifer Warnes, he can't help but fill it with the loveliest of details: "I see you on the subway/ I see you on the bus/ I see you lying down with me/ And I see you waking up/ I see your hand/ I see your hair/ Your bracelets and your brush/ And I call to you/ I call to you/ But I don't call soft enough..." Or, in FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN: "Remember me, I used to live for music/ Remember me, I brought your groceries in/ Well, it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded..." Could I also be the first to defend the inclusion of JAZZ POLICE, here, replete with dry, jewish, masculine humour: "Let me be somebody I admire/ Let me be that muscle down the street/ Stick another turtle on the fire/ Guys like me are mad for turtle meat..." It's rare indeed, to find such a wealth of poetry anywhere, let alone an album of popular song. As for those who abhor the sub-eighties production going on here, I have to say I've never found it dating as it only enhances and underpins the naked, honest phrasing of Mr.Cohen. For my money, this ranks as highly as SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE and only loses out to THE SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN because that album is chock-full of bonafide classics like SUZANNE and SO LONG, MARIANNE and others just too lovely for words.....
Be careful October 20, 2006
B. ODonnell (London)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Be careful with this album, played too often and Cohen will steal your soul. And you'll want to be stolen.
Lorca and more November 30, 2002
Pieter (Johannesburg)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
The singalong melodies of "Manhattan", "Aint No Cure" and "Everybody Knows" contrast well with Cohen's trademark preoccupation with romantic despair and judeo-christian imagery as in: "It's written in the scriptures, it's written there in blood ..." or "everybody's got this broken feeling/Like their father or their dog just died." John Bilezikjian's oud adds a special dimension to "Everybody Knows." The elegant "Take This Waltz" is a lilting song that brings the Vienna of Federico G. Lorca to life in a series of vivid images underpinned by a fervent longing for the beloved. The brilliant arrangement is enhanced by Raffi Hakopian's violin and the voice of Jennifer Warnes. The wistful "I Can't Forget" has been covered by The Pixies, while "Tower of Song" has been interpreted by artists as diverse as Marianne Faithfull, Robert Forster and Nick Cave and lent its title to the 1995 tribute album. I'm not crazy about either the experimental "Jazz Police" or the title track, but I am evidently wrong since "I'm Your Man" has been covered by Elton John and Bill Pritchard.
GENIUS! (but that's no suprise) January 31, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This album is pretty darn wierd when you first listen to it : i'm not gonna lie. The opening song 'First we take Manhattan'is quite the mix of insane 80's sythesisors, high pitched choruses and Leonard's always compelling and sometimes terrifyingly prophetic chant. How can a person write such truly core-shaking poetry and get away with putting it over the top of a funk bass line?! This album is: truthful, funny, cynical, scary and utterly sassy. As i have already mentioned lyrically it is impeccible and musically it is advanced enough to satisfy even the most cruel critic. It might take you a couple of listens, but i'd be prepared to bet that once you get past the initial shock of Leonards unique sound you'll come to the conclusion that so many people have before: the man's a genius and thats all.
Listen More Than Once February 16, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm Your Man is an excellent album. Even though some of the music may seen dated, the lyrics still talk alot further. I first heard this album aged six in 1989, my parents dissaproved of my liking to it even though they were Leonard Cohen fans since the sixties. I rediscovered the album about ten years later and I realised why I was a bit too young for this album because of its lyrics I still like it. Its an album I listen to again and again. The songs on it have been covered many times including a brilliant version of "I cant forget" by The Pixies.Truly inspirational.
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