I’m Your Fan

I’M YOUR FAN

September 1991

1. The House of Love: Who by fire
2. Ian McCulloch: Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
3. Pixies: I can’t forget
4. That Petrol Emotions: Stories of the street
5. The Lilac Time: Bird on the wire
6. Geoffrey Oryema: Suzanne
7. James: So long Marianne
8. Jean-Louis Murat: Avalanche IV
9. David McComb & Adam Peters: Don’t go home with your hard-on
10. R.E.M.: First we take Manhattan
11. Lloyd Cole: Chelsea hotel
12. Robert Foster: Tower of song
13. Peter Astor: Take this longing
14. Dead Famous People: True love leaves no traces
15. Bill Pritchard: I’m your man
16. Fatima Mansions: A singer must die
17. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Tower of song
18. John Cale: Hallelujah

Total time: 75:54. Issued in 1991 by Oscar - Menhir, a trademark of Sony Music Entertainment Inc., COL 469032 2

A promotional CD of this album is presented in the Collectors’ Corner.

We again turn to Ira Nadel and quote from his book "Life In Art", page 136:

"In September 1991, Cohen’s popularity reached international proportions with a new generation when the tribute album ‘I’m Your Fan’ appeared. Initiated by Christian Fevret, editor of the largest-selling rock magazine in France, Les Inrockuptibles... Public-relations material for the album describes Cohen’s songs as combining ‘simple melodic arrangements with deeply confessional lyrics.’ More importantly, the groups on the album have all been influenced by Cohen’s sound and words, and the recording was meant to introduce his work to a younger generation of fans ‘who might think he was too old for them’."

Leonard’s comments taken from an interview in the Austrian magazine "Basta". Translated for Intensity by Johannes Knapp-Menzl:

"Question:... Many artists don’t like the word ‘Fan’, because it includes a certain degree of undiscrimination.

Cohen: ‘Fan’ is better than enemy. I have been criticised throughout my whole career enough, and therefore I find this development to be okay.

Q: When did you come to know of this project?

C: When it was nearly finished. In other words: I had nothing to do with it and was never asked. It was a very pleasant surprise.

Q: Some songs keep very close to your original arrangements, some of them sounds totally different. Do you discover here new qualities in your own compositions?

C: I was interested, with what technical means these songs would be worked up today. That gives me new ideas for arrangements and production. One song on that new album I like more than my own original version, ‘Don’t go home with your hard on’, done by David McComb & Adam Peters.

Q: If you yourself wouldn’t be Leonard Cohen and someone would have invited you to contribute with a song to the ‘I’m Your Fan’-album, which one would you have chosen?

C: ‘Tower of Song’ because it is easy to sing. I don’t like things which are too complicated..

Q: The ‘Dead Famous People’, who also did a song for the album, said about you: ‘We are glad, not to be as unhappy as Leonard Cohen’.

C: I’m glad that I could serve my colleagues as an awful warning. Sometimes I’m glad, sometimes I’m sad. But my black image is well established, although I still fight against it. Maybe you too could write what kind of difficult type I am."