Hating Leonard Cohen less. Tom Waits lesser.

Cohen? Never got into him. Waits? Maybe a little more, just barely. (I can only take three songs from him.) Still, both are the dudes you listen to if you want late-night bar angst with a pack of Kools and a whiskey chaser. Never mind the chaser. Leave the bottle. Least that’s what critics say. An acquired taste I guess.

Still, hard to hate a guy like Waits when asked once if he regretted not selling out like Springsteen had in order to sell trucks. His answer was simply “I would have done it, but nobody asked me.”

But Cohen always threw me. Too gruff. Too tone deaf. Whatever. I was supposed to ‘get’ him, but I just didn’t. Then I heard him on NPR over the weekend talking about his new book called Book of Longing and hearing him read some of it. I actually hate him less now.

Whatever I couldn’t stand in his singing sounds better when he just reads. And, the interviewer also asks a similar question: had he ever wanted to write the typical ballads made famous by Irving Berlin, etc. His answer was interesting and hits on what it is creatives do, or, at least try to:

While he would’ve very much liked to have written those kind of standards, when he sits down to write a song, his own ‘self’ takes over and he goes with the moment, almost as if he can’t help himself but be who he is. Same for us in trying to find that ‘voice’ in whatever it is we’re working on.

You can check out the interview here.

Tags: advertising, Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing, Tom Waits