Vandaag al weer het 200e lied op de Songcatcher blog sinds 25 januari 2010, toen ik er mee begon. Ik heb er nog steeds veel plezier in en ik hoop jij ook.

Adam Cohen & Lana Del Rey brengen een heel spannende & intense versie van het lied Chelsea Hotel No. 2, dat Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) schreef in 1972. Ze spelen het tijdens een eerbetoon aan hem in Montreal in november 2017. En ik hang aan hun lippen.

Het lied gaat over het nachtelijke avontuur van Leonard Cohen en Janis Joplin (1943-1970) in het Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1968. Hij ontmoette haar in de lift. “She wasn’t looking for me, she was looking for Kris Kristofferson; I wasn’t looking for her, I was looking for Brigitte Bardot. But we fell into each other’s arms through some process of elimination.” 

Later had Cohen spijt dat hij haar in het openbaar genoemd had en noemde hij het “an indiscretion for which I’m very sorry, and if there is some way of apologising to the ghost, I want to apologise now, for having committed that indiscretion.”

Janis Joplin was minder enthousiast over de nacht die ze samen doorbrachten. Ze zei er over: “I live pretty loose. You know, balling with strangers and stuff. Sometimes you’re with someone and you’re convinced that they have something to tell you. So maybe nothing’s happening, but you keep telling yourself something’s happening—innate communication. “He’s just not saying anything. He’s moody or something.” So you keep being there, pulling, giving, rapping. And then, all of a sudden about four o’clock in the morning you realize that, flat ass, this motherfucker’s just lying there. He’s not balling me. I mean, that really happened to me. Really heavy, like slam-in-the-face it happened. Twice. Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen. And it’s strange ‘cause they were the only two that I can think of, like prominent people, that I tried to … without really liking them up front, just because I knew who they were and wanted to know them. And then they both gave me nothing. I don’t know what that means. Maybe it just means they were on a bummer.”

Chelsea Hotel No. 2
I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.
You were talkin’ so brave and so sweet.
Givin’ me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.

And those were the reasons and that was New York.
We were livin’ for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song.
Probably still is for those of them left.

But you got away, didn’t you babe.
You just turned your back on the crowd.
You got away, I never once heard you say.
I need you, I don’t need you.
I need you, I don’t need you.
And all of that jiving around.

I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.
You were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again, you preferred handsome men.
But for me you would make an exception.

And clenching your fist, for the ones like us,
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty.
You fixed yourself, you said, “Well, never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music”

But you got away, didn’t you babe.
You just turned your back on the crowd.
You got away, I never once heard you say.
I need you, I don’t need you.
I need you, I don’t need you.
I need you, I don’t need you.
And all of that jiving around.

I don’t mean to confess that I loved you the best.
I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.
That’s all babe, I don’t even think of you that often.