Bob Dylan’s opinion on Leonard Cohen

Very few artists are in the same league as Bob Dylan when it comes to songwriting. He is one of the most influential and prolific musicians of the past six decades and the evolution of modern music would not have been the same without him. One of the musicians often compared to him is the late Leonard Cohen, about whom Dylan already shared his opinion.

What is Bob Dylan’s opinion on Leonard Cohen

Bob Dylan is a fan of Leonard Cohen and once told him that he considered him his nearest rival. “When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius. Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential. Anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.”

“His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres. In the song ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ for instance, the verses are four elemental lines which change and move at predictable intervals but the tune is anything but predictable. The song just comes in and states a fact. And after that anything can happen and it does, and Leonard allows it to happen. His tone is far from condescending or mocking. He is a tough-minded lover who doesn’t recognize the brush-off. Leonard’s always above it all.”

Bob Dylan continued:

“‘Sisters of Mercy’ is verse after verse of four distinctive lines, in perfect meter, with no chorus, quivering with drama. The first line begins in a minor key. The second line goes from minor to major and steps up, and changes melody and variation. The third line steps up even higher than that to a different degree. Then the fourth line comes back to the beginning. This is a deceptively unusual musical theme, with or without lyrics. But it’s so subtle a listener doesn’t realize he’s been taken on a musical journey and dropped off somewhere, with or without lyrics,” Bob Dylan said in an interview with New Yorker in 2016.

Bob was asked which Cohen songs he liked and he said he enjoyed them all, “early or late”. Some of the tracks mentioned by him were “Going Home”, “Show Me the Place” and “The Darkness”. Dylan had performed Cohen’s classic song “Hallelujah” live in concert in 1988. More recently, in 2023 he played “Dance Me to the End of Love”.  “That song ‘Hallelujah’ has resonance for me. There again, it’s a beautifully constructed melody that steps up, evolves, and slips back, all in quick time.

He continued:

“But this song has a connective chorus, which when it comes in has a power all of its own. The ‘secret chord’ and the point-blank I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself aspect of the song has plenty of resonance for me,” Bob Dylan told New Yorker.

To Bob Dylan, one of the most interesting aspects of Cohen was that in his songs he was always telling something, like holding a conversation with the listener. He said that like very few musicians, Cohen used to “hear melodies that most of us can only strive for. (…) Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is much more savvy musician than you’d think”. In 2017, when asked by Bill Flanagan how the passing of Cohen, Muhammad Ali, Merle Haggar and Leon Russell hit him, Bob said they were all brothers to him and it’s lonesome without them.

Leonard Cohen was a huge fan of Bob Dylan

It was also in 2016, before Leonard Cohen’s death, that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature and Cohen had the chance to comment on it. His reaction was memorable, saying that giving a prize like that to someone like Bob was like announcing that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. “Yes I did (read what he said about me). (He was) very generous, very kind. I won’t comment on what he said. But I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which is to me like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain (laughs).”

“I think that any songwriter and Bob Dylan, knows this more than all of us. You don’t write the songs anyhow. So if you’re lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years, if you’re lucky. Your own intentions have very little to do with this. You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible but whether you’re actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice,” Leonard Cohen said in an interview at the Canadian consulate in Los Angeles in 2016 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

He was a fan of Dylan’s work and they first met each other in a festival in the early 70s. They remained friends over the decades and Leonard always praised the musician. During a press conference after Bob received the ASCAP Founders Award in 1986, he said the American artist was a kind of person who only appears every 300 or 400 years. “Bob Dylan is a figure that arises every three or four hundred years who represents and embodies all the finest aspirations of the human heart.”

He continued

“He is unparalleled in the world of music and will remain a torch for all singers and all hearts for many generations to come. Well I don’t think there is a beautiful a spirit (like him) that has arisen in America for many generations. I doubt if a beautiful spirit (like him that) will arise for many generations. We are privileged to be in the company of one of the greatest hearts, that have spoken of the heart, in America for a long, long time,” Leonard Cohen said. Curiously, John Hammond who first discovered Bob Dylan in 1961, also was the one who gave Leonard Cohen his first record deal in 1966.

Bob Dylan said he was number zero and Cohen number one

Leonard Cohen had the chance to hang out with Bob Dylan a couple of times. Once the American musician called him up and said he wanted to show him a piece of property he had bought and it was Dylan who did the driving. When they were talking in the car, he told Cohen that a famous songwriter had told him: “Ok, Bob. You’re number 1, but I’m number 2”.

Then Dylan said: As far as I’m concerned, Leonard, you’re Number 1 and I’m number Zero. Meaning, as I understood it at the time, and I was not ready to dispute it, that his work was beyond measure and my work was pretty good,” Leonard Cohen told New Yorker. One of his favorite Dylan songs was “I and I”, from the 1983 album “Infidels”.

Once when asked by a journalist about recording process and if his voice was a bit different to capture like Lou Reed‘s and Leonard Cohen’s, he said: “I don’t know about Lou’s and Leonard’s. But I think Leonard’s would be a little bit more understandable to somebody. Because his vocal range is like, slow down, so that you can only do so much with it anyway. Lou sort of talks and sings at the same time. I don’t think that would present a problem for anybody who’s recording.”

When asked if he considered himself a crooner or a good singer alongside Lou and Leonard, he said:

“Well, I really don’t know. But I’ve said before that the best way to record me or even deal with what I do is (to use) a more antiquated system. I was better served by that system rather than stereo mono, whether is analog or stereophonic. (The) simpler way (is) better,” Bob Dylan said during a press conference in Rome in 2001.