This article is about the song. For similar titles, see Bird on a Wire. For the documentary, see Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire.
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1969 song by Leonard Cohen
"Bird on the Wire"
Song by Leonard Cohen
from the album Songs from a Room
Released
April 1969
Recorded
26 September 1968, Nashville
Genre
Contemporary folk
Length
3:28
Songwriter(s)
Leonard Cohen
Producer(s)
Bob Johnston
"Bird on the Wire" is a song written by Canadian musician Leonard Cohen, which became one of his signature songs. It was recorded 26 September 1968 in Nashville and included on his 1969 album Songs from a Room. A May 1968 recording produced by David Crosby, titled "Like a Bird", was added to the 2007 remastered CD. Judy Collins was the first to release the song on her 1968 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes. Joe Cocker also covered the song on his second studio album the following year and his version reached #78 in Canada.[1]
In the 1960s, Cohen lived on the Greek island Hydra with his girlfriend Marianne Ihlen, the woman depicted on the back cover of Songs from a Room. She has related how she helped him out of a depression by handing him his guitar, whereupon he began composing "Bird on the Wire", inspired by a bird sitting on one of Hydra's recently installed phone wires, followed by memories of wet island nights. He finished it in a Hollywood motel.
Cohen has described "Bird on the Wire" as a simple country song, and the first recording, by Judy Collins, was indeed done in a country setting. He later made various minor changes, such as the modifications present on Cohen Live. Different renditions are included on all of his live albums. On occasion he also performed Serge Lama's French version, "Vivre tout seul", in concert.
In the sleevenotes to a 2007 rerelease of Songs From A Room, the song was described as "simultaneously a prayer and an anthem, a kind of Bohemian 'My Way'."[2]
Bird in theWire is a 2001 Australian comedy short film directed by Phillip Donnellon and starring Christine Wilson, Kate Jane Norris, and Valerie Bean...
whereupon he began composing "BirdontheWire" – inspired by a bird sitting on one of Hydra's recently installed phone wires, followed by memories of wet...
known for writing the screenplays for The Omen (1976) and Birdon a Wire (1990). As writer-director, Seltzer's credits include the 1986 teen tragi-comedy...
1999, 2000, 2006; Streaming 2017) 1974 Birdon a Wire (Film/TV; DVD 2010, 2016; Streaming/Theatrical 2017) 1980 The Song of Leonard Cohen (TV; Theatrical...
was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role. She later starred in Overboard (1987), Birdon a Wire (1990), Death Becomes...
to her parents' record shop of the same name. In 2005, Batalla recorded a tribute album to Cohen, titled BirdontheWire, and featured in Hal Willner's...
Leonard Cohen's song "BirdontheWire", with which the program ends. Fassbinder considered this project "an attempt to do a show about the Adenauer era. For...
Car Wash, American Gigolo, No Man's Land, Birdon a Wire, Menace II Society, Exit Wounds, Payback, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Mandy. In television, he...
mogul, lawyer, and the producer of Birdon a Wire, the documentary film of the Leonard Cohen 1972 European tour. In addition, he is the co-founder of SSK...
RogerEbert.com. Archived from the original on February 4, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2017. Travers, Peter (May 18, 1990). "Birdon a Wire". Rolling Stone. Wenner...
a Room taken from the 1972 European tour. At the beginning of a Paris, France performance of "BirdontheWire", Cohen recites the first verse of a French...
directing the films Saturday Night Fever (1977), Dracula (1979), Blue Thunder (1983), WarGames (1983), Short Circuit (1986), Stakeout (1987), Birdon a Wire (1990)...
and now serves as kerfing on a guitar located there. In the 1990 movie Birdon a Wire, Mel Gibson rides a motorcycle down the alley. L'Androuno: A narrow...
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