Song of the Day: Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat'

Leonard, at four in the morning, the end of December.

How could we ignore one of the greatest songs ever which also holds, given the date, the famous Leonard Cohen line, “It’s four in the morning / the end of December”? We cannot. A little background on “Famous Blue Raincoat,” from his own rather obscure notes:

I had a good raincoat then, a Burberry I got in London in 1959… It hung more heroically when I took out the lining, and achieved glory when the frayed sleeves were repaired with a little leather. Things were clear. I knew how to dress in those days. It was stolen from Marianne's loft in New York City sometime during the early seventies. I wasn't wearing it very much toward the end.

He also lived on Clinton Street in NYC around this time. How autobiographical the love triangle was, we don’t know. And debate continues over whether his question, “Did you ever go clear?” refers to Scientology or not.

Of course there have been fine and not so fine cover versions over the years—though not approaching the numbers of “Hallelujah.” Among them: Judy Collins, Demien Rice, Nathaniel Rateliff, Joan Baez. And see the three below. I post this here, as it happens, at almost exactly four in the morning—the end of December.

Leonard live with his greatest band

His one time backup singer, Jennifer Warnes, from her album of covers.

Glen Hansard.

Tori Amos, also live.

Leonard approaching age 80 (I saw him do this twice live in NYC about this time).

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, drew extraordinary acclaim, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.