Leonard Cohen - Beloved Comrade - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1976)

I recently posted a few Leonard Cohen albums based on the totally obscure 1970 copyright extension release that was essentially publicly unavailable until I made my posts. I highly recommend you check those out if you missed them in my big number of new posts lately. In particular, I recommend the album "News from the Authorities," made up of stray tracks from that release. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/11/leonard-cohen-news-from-authorities-non.html

It just so happens that I already had a bunch of Cohen stray tracks albums that I'd made years ago. I'd only posted the first one though ("Out of the Land of Heaven") because there's just way too much good music to post and it takes me time to get to it all. But putting together that "News from the Authorities" album got me in the mood to post the rest of my Cohen stray tracks albums. Here's the next one. I have five more after this.

Everything here but the first song is officially unreleased. The first song is a studio track that appeared on the mostly live album "Live Songs." I've included it here because I feel it is basically a stray track, since it didn't really fit on a live album. 

All the other songs come from concert bootlegs, with the exception of the poem recitation "Two Went to Sleep," which is from a radio show. The sound quality is generally pretty good, though there are some exceptions, rare performances where only an audience bootleg was available. 

Some of the songs here are covers, like "As Time Goes By," "Kevin Barry," "The Banks Are Made of Marble," "We Shall Not Be Moved," and "Beloved Comrade." Although "The Banks Are Made of Marble" is mostly an original creation with just a part of it being the cover song. Cohen learned at least three of these songs ("Kevin Barry," "We Shall Not Be Moved," and "Beloved Comrade") from a socialist song book he had when he was a teenager.

"Chelsea Hotel No. 1" is an interesting case. I don't know if that's the official name or not, but it fits. One of Cohen's most famous songs is "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," which raises the question of what happened to No. 1? This is an early version of that song, and it's basically the same for the first couple of minutes. But then the lyrics diverged, and the song kept going, with lots of new verses. "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" is about three minutes long, but "Chelsea Hotel No. 1" is seven and a half minutes long. 

"The Broken Lip" is a particularly amusing thing. As you can hear in the recording, someone in the audience shouted out something about a "broken lip." Cohen immediately made up a song on the spot based on this phrase. It seemed to end, but then Cohen found a new burst of inspiration and kept going. Then that too seemed to end, only for him to come up with more. He ended up making a pretty interesting four minute long song based on a random shout out from the crowd.

That just leaves a few songs. "Song to the Machines" is an original that was never released and was only played in concert once, so it may or may not have been improvised. "Beauty Salon" is an early version of "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" and "Guerrero" is an early version of "Iodine." Both of these have lots of lyrical differences. They were meant to be part of a mid-1970s album called "Songs for Rebecca." But Cohen got involved with co-writing songs with famous producer Phil Spector, so "Songs for Rebecca" was scrapped and songs from it were redone for the 1977 album with Spector, "Death of a Ladies' Man," as well as the next album "Recent Songs."

"Je Veux Vivre Tout Seul" is mostly a French version of Cohen's famous song "Bird on a Wire." However, some of the English versions are sung as well. I don't speak French, but Cohen was a fluent French speaker, and I understand at least some of the French lyrics are different and not just translations of the English ones.

Finally, "Blessed Is the Memory" is a very early rarity. I have a version of the late 1960s stray track album "Out of the Land of Heaven." But it wasn't released at that time, and Cohen performed it some in mid-1970s concerts using a different arrangement. I figured that was worthy of inclusion too.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Queen Victoria (Leonard Cohen)
02 As Time Goes By (Leonard Cohen)
03 Kevin Barry (Leonard Cohen)
04 The Banks Are Made of Marble (Leonard Cohen)
05 The Broken Lip [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Chelsea Hotel No. 1 (Leonard Cohen)
07 Song to the Machines (Leonard Cohen)
08 We Shall Not Be Moved (Leonard Cohen)
09 Beloved Comrade (Leonard Cohen)
10 Two Went to Sleep [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
11 Beauty Salon [Early Version of Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On] (Leonard Cohen)
12 Guerrero [Early Version of Iodine] (Leonard Cohen)
13 Je Veux Vivre Tout Seul [French Version of Bird on a Wire] (Leonard Cohen)
14 Blessed Is the Memory (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16010574/LeonardC_1971-1976_BlovdComrde_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a publicity photo from the mid-1970s.