Famous Blue Raincoat
We’ll start with a cover of one of Leonard Cohen’s most beautiful and most popular songs, from a music night at the Roxy Art House in Edinburgh way back in 2005. I remember it being a spontaneous decision on stage to finish my set with this and not one of my own songs. The Roxy Art House was a huge former church, with a lovely reverb which you can hear on this recording. I think it was hearing the reverb with my fingerpicked electric guitar that inspired me to start the song.
Judging by the photo taken by someone on the night I appear to have had a moustache. That’s a surprise.
Queen Bitch
This is the most recent cover I’ve done, for a still-to-be-released (as of July 2019) charity album of Bowie covers put together by my friend John Morrison in Glasgow. I’ve heard several of the others and they’re all pretty hot. I know Queen Bitch from Hunky Dory was inspired by the Velvet Underground. Here I just wondered out loud what it would have sounded like if it had been their song.
The Monk from the Mountain of Sorrow
Okay this isn’t a cover, I admit but if you’re a Cohen fan you might like the sentiment. I wrote it inspired by different periods in Cohen’s life, in Hydra and on Mount Baldy. It’s from my album All The Time In Heaven. I didn’t want it to sound like Cohen at all, in fact someone described it as Robert Fripp meets Leonard Cohen in Nick Cave’s closet!
Tomorrow, the last few tracks of Breath.