Why David Crosby's attempt to produce a Leonard Cohen album was a total disaster

24 October 2025, 13:34

David Crosby and Leonard Cohen. Picture: Alamy

By Mayer Nissim

A meeting of two geniuses didn't quite work out.

Loading audio...

Leonard Cohen came to pop music pretty late, releasing his first album when he was 33 year old.

Songs of Leonard Cohen didn't come from nowhere though, as Leonard was already an acclaimed poet by this point, with his first collection Let Us Compare Mythologies published in 1956.

But, packed with classics like 'Suzanne' 'So Long, Marianne' and 'Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye', that album snuck into the US top 100 and put Leonard on a whole new level of stardom.

Cohen had artistic clashes with Columbia Records producer John Simon and wasn't too happy with the layered sound, so was looking elsewhere when he started making the follow-up Songs From a Room in 1968.

Around the same time, David Crosby had been fired by The Byrds and was yet to join forces with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash to form CSN, when he hooked up with Joni Mitchell and decided that he would be the producer of her first album, Song to a Seagull.

He had the best of intentions... he didn't want her delicate sound to be hammered into a trad rock 'n' roll shape. But he didn't do a fantastic job, so he was surprised when Joni suggested that he should produce her contemporary and friend Leonard Cohen.

Night in the City

Mesmerised by the Judy Collins version of 'Suzanne', Crosby booked two days of sessions for May 17 and 18, 1968 at Columbia's studio in Los Angeles.

On paper it wasn't a terrible idea. Leonard wanted a stripped back sound, and that's exactly what Crosby had tried (and admittedly failed) to do for Joni.

Given that he didn't have a romantic relationship with Cohen to simultaneously negotiate, perhaps he could get it right at the second time of asking?

Unfortunately not.

Leonard Cohen in concert at the Royal Festival Hall in 1972. Picture: Alamy

"I don't remember him saying anything about what he really wanted to have happen," Crosby told Sylvie Simmons for her masterful bio I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen.

"He just put himself in my hands. Poor fellow.

"It really was not a happy experience. It's an embarrassing story for me and a bitter pill to swallow because I could produce him now in a minute, but then I had no idea how to record him.

"I listened to him sing, and I'm a melodic singer, so I didn't know what to do with a voice like Leonard's. The only other singer vaguely like Leonard was Bob Dylan, and I couldn't have recorded Dylan either."

Leonard Cohen - You Know Who I Am (Official Audio)

Crosby added: "It was quite obvious that Leonard was one of the best poets and lyricists alive, so I imagined that the way to go about it was to take him in the direction that Dylan had gone and speak the lyrics more than sing then. It did not make him happy.

"I've wondered over the years if Leonard forgave me. God knows he deserved somebody a bit smarter and more experienced than I was. But Bob Johnston knew exactly what he was doing."

Yes, while Cohen recorded three songs with Crosby – 'Lady Midnight' on day one and 'Bird on the Wire' and 'Nothing to One' (later renamed as 'You Know Who I Am') on day two – these recordings were shelved and, despite flirting with the idea of abandoning the project altogether, Leonard instead joined forces with Johnston.

Johnston certainly knew how to record Dylan, having produced all of Highway 61 Revisited bar Tom Wilson's 'Like a Rolling Stone', and all of Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding. He would later go on to helm Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait and A New Morning.

Leonard Cohen - Lady Midnight (Official Audio)

And everyone was happy with the resulting Songs From A Room. Johnston, Cohen and the fans who propelled it not just to a respectable 63 in the US, but all the way top number two in the UK listings.

Eventually, the Crosby-produced versions of 'Bird on the Wire' and 'Nothing to One', the latter of which even had Crosby on backing vocal harmonies, were released on the 2007 reissue off Songs From A Room. Their version of 'Lady Midnight' remains in the vault.

And while the two songs that have emerged aren't a complete disaster (those Cohen songs are almost bulletproof), they aren't a patch on the magic that Cohen and Johnston would weave together.

Johnston went on to produce Cohen's beautifully bleak Songs of Love and Hate and 1973's Live Songs, on which he also played, before Cohen moved on to working with John Lissauer for New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

Leonard Cohen - Bird on the Wire (Official Audio)

Cohen then recorded Death of a Ladies Man with Phil Spector, and whatever regrets Crosby has about producing Leonard, it was surely less messy than these infamous sessions.

Leonard called Spector's state "post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian" and spoke of guns and heavies around every corner.

"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'," he revealed. "I said, 'I hope you do, Phil'."

Cohen later added to Mojo: "It was one of those periods when my chops were impaired, and I wasn't in the right kind of condition to resist Phil's very strong influence on and eventual takeover of the record. There were lots of guns around in the studio and lots of liquor, a somewhat dangerous atmosphere."