First We Take Manhattan
"First We Take Manhattan" is a song written by Leonard Cohen. It was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes on her 1986 Cohen tribute album Famous Blue Raincoat, which consisted entirely of songs written or co-written by Cohen.
Ben Hewitt writing for The Guardian in 2015 drew attention to the lyric's apocalyptic nature, imagining Cohen "greedily eyeing world domination like a Bond villain".[1]
Joe Cocker covered "First We Take Manhattan" on his 1999 album No Ordinary World.
An explanation
Cohen explained himself in a backstage interview:[2] "I think it means exactly what it says. It is a terrorist song. I think it's a response to terrorism. There's something about terrorism that I've always admired. The fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always very attractive. I don't like it when it's manifested on the physical plane – I don't really enjoy the terrorist activities – but Psychic Terrorism. I remember there was a great poem by Irving Layton that I once read, I'll give you a paraphrase of it. It was 'well, you guys blow up an occasional airline and kill a few children here and there', he says. 'But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking.'"
References
- ↑ Leonard Cohen: 10 of his best songs. 6 May 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/may/06/leonard-cohen-10-of-the-best.
- ↑ "Diamonds In The Lines". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on 2010-02-27. Retrieved 2016-12-05.
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