Famous last words (in music)
David Bowie and Leonard Cohen’s final works: An appreciation
Jan. 8, 2017 marked the anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s last work, Blackstar, just four days before his death shocked the world. It took almost a full year too to summon the emotional will to buy this album; at the time of its release, especially seeing those haunting images of a bandaged Bowie with buttons for eyes as “Lazarus,” it seemed too dark a place to go.
With grieving, though, there comes a time when you have to come to terms with the loss and move on. And there’s no better way to do that than to listen to an artist’s final testament.
This is an extraordinary album, despite or perhaps because it was made as the clock wound down on Bowie’s life.
Like Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker — another coda to an illustrious career that was released shortly before his death (but in many ways a very different kind of work, in tone and tenor) — Blackstar represents a kind of transcendent marker that some musicians achieve at the end of their lives. Their final works remind us of what the author Margaret Atwood says in her book Hag-Seed, that “desperation” is at the core of the best art: “Wasn’t it always a challenge to Death?” she asks. “A defiant middle finger on the edge of the abyss?”
Both Bowie and Cohen thrust their middle fingers with abandon in their last works. Their defiance and art remind us of Tom Hulce, as the title character in the classic 1984 film Amadeus, furiously finishing his “Requiem in D minor.” Prompted by the ghost of his father Leopold, in the disguise of Antonio Salieri and played by F. Murray Abraham, Mozart completes his “next and blackest opera” before his descent into madness and death.
Bowie’s Blackstar is a strange, mesmerizing musical journey for the most part. It could be the soundtrack of a David Lynch film, starting with the haunting title track.
In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen
Stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah
At the centre of it all, at the centre of it all
Your eyes, your eyes
Ah-ah-ah
That song is followed by the quirkier “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” and then Bowie’s own epitaph, “Lazarus”:
Look up here, I’m in heaven
The jazzy, expert musicianship comes at you in full force in “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” and Blackstar closes out with three pop tracks: The Peter Gabriel-sounding “Girl Loves Me,” the melodic “Dollar Days” and the somewhat upbeat “I Can’t Give Everything Away.”
If that last song sounds like another last message that Bowie sent out about the final fate that would claim him two days later — circling back to that haunting line from “Lazarus” — he also reminds us of what a heady place he was in during those last days.
Remember these other lines from “Lazarus”:
Look up here, man, I’m in danger
I’ve got nothing left to lose
I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
And that hopeful finale in the song:
Oh, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Oh, I’ll be free
Ain’t that just like me?
“His death was no different from his life — a work of art,” Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti reportedly said. “He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift.”
Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker, also written as the artist was dying and preoccupied with death, was completed with the help of his son Adam Cohen. It was released on Oct. 21, 2016. On Nov. 7, Leonard Cohen died.
Although more in keeping with the Cohen cannon than Bowie’s experimental final work, You Want it Darker is indeed a bit darker, as well as mellower, moodier and melancholic in parts. You won’t find any bouncy sounding broken banjos bobbing among these songs.
Starting with a kind of Gregorian chant opening the title track, it too signifies that Cohen wants to waste no time telling us what he’s facing:
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
he says.
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
“Treaty,” the next track that Cohen will revisit as the closing track that’s preceded with a lovely “String Reprise,” is a slow, sad song that again hints at his mortality:
I’m angry and I’m tired all the time.
“On the Level,” picks up the pace and gives us that playful Cohen writing about relationships and, yes, spirituality too:
Let’s keep it on the level
When I walked away from you
I turned my back on the devil
Turned my back on the angel too
The next track is a country melody that tells us the artist is “leaving the table/ I’m out of the game.”
“If I Didn’t Have Your Love” slows it right back to a crawl and paints a perfect picture by the poet. “Traveling Light,” with that familiar Cohen chorus backing him up, reminds us of that lovely la-la-la melody that opens his classic “Dance Me to the End of Love.” It too is haunted by the death that awaits the artist, and of memories he is leaving behind:
Traveling light
It’s au revoir
My once so bright, my fallen star
I’m running late, they’ll close the bar
I used to play one mean guitar
I guess I’m just somebody who
Has given up on the me and you
I’m not alone, I’ve met a few
Traveling light like we used to do
“It Seemed the Better Way” and “Steer Your Way” are Cohen’s final thoughts before that sad, stringed finale that closes the album: “String Reprise/Treaty.”
The track can’t help but remind this listener of the band playing its last song on the sinking Titanic. That may be overly dramatic, perhaps, and something that would make Cohen cringe. But there’s no doubt that this is a kind of closing chapter in a beautiful book written for us by an artist who once gave us a “holy or a broken Hallelujah.”
His final words:
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
It’s over now, the water and the wine
We were broken then, but now we’re borderline
And I wish there was a treaty
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine
Claudio D’Andrea has been a journalist for 30 years, writing and editing for newspapers, magazine and online publications. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
