Famous Blue Raincoat

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For the Jennifer Warnes album, see Famous Blue Raincoat (album).

"Famous Blue Raincoat" is a song by Leonard Cohen. It appears on his third album, Songs of Love and Hate, released 1971. Judy Collins also recorded it during her 1970 concert tour, and Joan Baez sang it for a crowd in a bullring in Bilbao, Spain on her 1987 European tour.

Although one of Cohen's best-known songs, it is also one with which he remained dissatisfied. In an interview with Details magazine in 1993 he said:

"I never felt I really sealed that song; I never felt the carpentry was finished. That song and 'Bird on the Wire' were two songs I never successfully finished, but they were good enough to be used. Also, with the poverty of songs I have for each record, I can't afford to discard one as good as that. It's one of the better tunes I've written, but lyrically it's too mysterious, too unclear."

The song describes a love triangle and shares a common plot with his novel, Beautiful Losers. Like many of Cohen's songs it is based on a true story, but on BBC Radio in 1994 he claimed to have forgotten who was involved and how:

"The trouble with that song is that I've forgotten the actual triangle. Whether it was my own … of course. I always felt that there was an invisible male seducing the woman I was with, now whether this one was incarnate or merely imaginary I don't remember, I've always had the sense that either I've been that figure in relation to another couple or there'd been a figure like that in relation to my marriage. I don't quite remember but I did have this feeling that there was always a third party, sometimes me, sometimes another man, sometimes another woman."

However, in the liner notes to 1975's The Best Of Leonard Cohen, which includes the song, he alludes that the famous blue raincoat to which he refers actually belonged to him, and not someone else, suggesting a possible duality of roles:

"I had a good raincoat then, a Burberry I got in London in 1959. Elizabeth thought I looked like a spider in it. That was probably why she wouldn't go to Greece with me. 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 sometime during the early seventies. I wasn't wearing it very much toward the end."

[edit] Cover versions

"Famous Blue Raincoat" has also been recorded by several other artists, including:

Tori Amos on tribute album Tower of Song (1995)
Joan Baez on live album Diamonds & Rust in the Bullring (1989)
John Bergeron on tribute album In the House of Mystery (2002)
Kari Bremnes on tribute album Hadde månen en søster: Cohen på norsk (1993), as "Gikk du noen gang fri?"
Lloyd Cole on compilation album Rare on Air, Vol. 2 (1995)
Judy Collins on live album Living (1971) and on tribute album Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy (2004)
Luce Dufault on album Soir de première (2000)
Karen Jo Fields on album In Your Pages (2005)
Andrew John on album The Machine Stops (1972)
Swan Lee on tribute album På danske læber, as Din gamle blå frakke
The Like (live on Indie 103.1 FM, B-side of "June Gloom" single)
Laurie MacAllister on album The Things I Choose to Do (2005)
Tom Mega on album Songs & Prayers (1995)
Damien Saez on live album God Blesse (2002)
Jennifer Warnes on tribute album Famous Blue Raincoat (1987)

Jonathan Coulton (2006)
Hayden (Paul Hayden Desser) (live)
Steve Hogarth (live)
Dax Riggs (live)

[edit] "When I Need You"

The chorus melody to Albert Hammond's 1976 hit "When I Need You" is strikingly similar to that of "Famous Blue Raincoat". In a 2006 interview with the Globe & Mail [1] Cohen said:

"I once had that [nicking] happen with Leo Sayer. Do you remember that song 'When I Need You'?" Cohen sings the chorus of Sayer's number one hit from 1977, then segues into 'And Jane came by with a lock of your hair,' a lyric from 'Famous Blue Raincoat'. 'Somebody sued them on my behalf … and they did settle,' even though, he laughs, 'they hired a musicologist who said that particular motif was in the public domain and, in fact, could be traced back as far as Schubert."