The Quiet Storm Before the Revolution: First We Take Manhattan
Ah, to recall those heady days of the mid-1980s, when the musical landscape seemed to be shifting on its axis, yet still deeply rooted in the craftsmanship of the past. Into that environment arrived Jennifer Warnes’ exquisite tribute album, Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, and with it, the defining, definitive version of “First We Take Manhattan.” This wasn’t merely a cover; it was a revelation, a sleek, darkly propulsive transformation of a song that, in its author’s hands, would later take on a very different, more electronic sheen. Warnes, already known for her stunning vocal clarity and emotional depth—think of her Oscar-winning duets—took Leonard Cohen’s cryptic, apocalyptic vision and fused it with a crisp, contemporary rock sensibility that perfectly captured the era’s underlying tension.
The track’s commercial performance at the time offers a fascinating glimpse into its initial reception. While the album itself became a critical and commercial success, particularly in Europe and for audiophiles, the single’s chart impact was modest in the major English-speaking markets. In the UK, “First We Take Manhattan” only managed to peak at number 74 on the Official Singles Chart in July 1987. Across the Atlantic, on the US Adult Contemporary chart, it fared a little better, climbing to number 29, a respectable showing for a song of such ambiguous content. Its highest chart entry seems to have been in Canada, where it reached number 43 and an impressive number 6 on the Adult Contemporary chart, a testament to Cohen’s enduring popularity in his home country and Warnes’ established presence. These numbers, however, belie the track’s monumental long-term influence and its crucial role in Cohen’s own mid-career revival.
The story behind Warnes’ recording is one of serendipity and sheer musical genius. The album’s co-producer, Roscoe Beck, connected with the legendary blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan who happened to be in Los Angeles for the 1986 Grammy Awards. Without his own gear, Vaughan borrowed an old Stratocaster and, in a matter of a few takes, laid down the searing, instantly recognizable lead guitar riff that gives the Warnes version its unique, almost threatening edge. It’s a performance of such raw energy that it becomes a character in the song itself, a sonic signature that contrasts perfectly with Warnes’ cool, measured delivery.
But it is the meaning of the song that truly stirs the waters of memory and analysis. Cohen’s oblique, challenging lyrics—”They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom / For trying to change the system from within”—speak to a deep-seated frustration with political and artistic inertia. The chilling line, “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin,” has often been interpreted through the lens of political terrorism, an idea Cohen himself flirted with, describing it as a “terrorist song” but one representing “Psychic Terrorism”—a radical, uncompromising transformation of the mind and culture. For many listeners, particularly those of us who lived through the anxieties of the Cold War and the cynicism of the 80s, the lyrics spoke to a universal longing for genuine, profound change, an impatience with “the system.” The “signal in the heavens” and the “birthmark on my skin” suggest a calling, a prophetic or artistic destiny that must be fulfilled with urgency. Warnes’ version, with its clean arrangement and powerful instrumentation, captures the excitement and danger of this coming revolution, whether it’s political, spiritual, or a purely artistic coup d’état. It is a song that doesn’t age; it simply acquires new resonance with every passing decade and every fresh global crisis, forever remaining an intoxicating promise of radical overhaul.