What is especially good about this movie is the fact that it's not just a collection of people fawning indiscriminately over his work. While some of the people - the musicians who worked on various projects for instance - are openly fans of his material, others have differing opinions. Each person called upon for an opinion gives reasons why they dislike a piece, or think it is a weaker attempt on his part ("Chelsea Hotel 2" is almost universally disliked by these critics because Cohen later revealed it was about Janis Joplin and in doing so he ruined the song's redeeming feature of mystery and turned it into a puerile piece of gossip).
Two of the more fascinating discussions centred around Songs Of Love And Hate and the Phil Spector-produced Death Of A Ladies Man. In the case of the former the discussion focuses on the fact that for the first time Cohen used a full band both in the studio and on the road. Ron Cornelius was band leader and lead guitar player for that album and he provides a fascinating look at what it was like to put the album together, and how the band and Leonard coalesced into a family.
At the complete opposite end of the scale, as far as comfort level goes, was his experience working with Phil Spector. After hearing about things like Spector stealing the master tape and mixing it down by himself, it comes as no surprise that Cohen almost immediately disassociated himself from the project. As the recording engineer for the album said, "Leonard deserved better than that."
Just as a personal aside, I've never really seen the appeal of Spector's work, and when I heard in this movie that Leonard Cohen had recorded with him, I was quite surprised. From what the critics had to say about the final result and Cohen's own eventual reaction, I bet there was probably a fair bit of second-guessing about that decision by a lot of people.
Article comments
1 - Graham Lester
I think Death of a Ladies Man must be one of the most underrated albums of all time. Two of the tracks ("I left a Woman Waiting" and "Paper Thin Hotel Walls") are pure gold, and several others are pretty close behind.