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.

Contents

[edit] Summary

The song is written in the form of a letter, and tells the story of a three-sided affair between the speaker, a woman named Jane, and the addressed person, who is identified only briefly as, "my brother, my killer." Implied in the song is that Jane was either engaged to or married to the speaker, but after the events, "And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody's wife."

Later in the song, the speaker admits that he is partially grateful for the affair, because Jane had been troubled, and the affair alleviated it when he hadn't been able to.

[edit] Metrical form

Many of the song's lyrics are written in amphibrachs.

[edit] History

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 (alphabetically)

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

[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."

[edit] External links

Authorised analysis of "Famous Blue Raincoat" definitive analysis of the song.

Analysis of "Famous Blue Raincoat" full analysis of the song.

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Leonard Cohen
Studio albums
Live albums
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Selected
tribute albums
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"Ain't No Cure for Love" • "Avalanche" • "Bird on the Wire" • "Dance Me to the End of Love" • "Everybody Knows" • "Famous Blue Raincoat" • "First We Take Manhattan" • "Hallelujah" • "Suzanne"
Books
Let Us Compare Mythologies • The Spice-Box of Earth • The Favourite Game • Flowers for Hitler • Beautiful Losers • Parasites of Heaven • Selected Poems 1956–1968 • The Energy of Slaves • Death of a Lady's Man • Book of Mercy • Stranger Music • Book of Longing
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