Death of a Ladies' Man (album)
| Death of a Ladies' Man | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Leonard Cohen | ||||
| Released | November 13, 1977 | |||
| Recorded | June and July 1977 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 42:34 | |||
| Label |
Warner Bros. (original release) Columbia (reissue) |
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| Producer | Phil Spector | |||
| Leonard Cohen chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | B− |
| Sounds | favorable |
Death of a Ladies' Man is the fifth studio album by Leonard Cohen. Produced and co-written by Phil Spector, the voice of typically minimalist Cohen was surrounded by Spector's Wall of Sound, which included multiple tracks of instrument overdubs. The album was originally released by Warner Bros., but was later picked up by Cohen's longtime label, Columbia Records.
By the mid-1970s, both Cohen and Spector were on a downward-slide commercially. Although he remained quite popular in Europe, Cohen had never managed to achieve the success in the United States that Columbia had hoped for. Spector, who had created scores of hits like "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" with his Wall of Sound production technique in the 1960s, had experienced a rebirth of sorts in the early seventies by producing albums by John Lennon and George Harrison but, as the decade wore on, the always eccentric producer's behaviour became increasingly unhinged. The craziness would escalate when Spector reunited with Lennon to record a rock and roll oldies project called Roots, which would eventually come out in 1975 under the title Rock 'n' Roll. The sessions took place in a chaotic fog of drugs, booze, and hangers-on as the equally troubled Lennon drank his way through his infamous "lost weekend." In the 2003 book Phil Spector: Wall of Pain, biographer Dave Thompson recounts one famous incident when Spector, a notorious gun nut, fired off a pistol in the studio. "Listen Phil, if you're goin' to kill me, kill me, " Lennon remarked dryly, "but don't fuck with me ears. I need 'em." Such behaviour did Spector's reputation no favors, and as the hits dried up he was viewed more and more by the rock press as an oldies act.
As Ira Nadel notes in the 1996 Cohen memoir Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen, stories differ as to how Cohen and Spector became collaborators:
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