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On his 39th birthday, Leonard Cohen was experiencing a kind of midlife crisis. He was living with his partner and her young son on the Greek island of Hydra. Earlier in the year he had alluded to retiring, telling Melody Maker, “I don’t feel I want to have the same involvement with [music]. It’s over.”
The following month, on October 6 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise, co-ordinated attack on Israel. It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and the ensuing war lasted for 19 days.
On hearing the news, Cohen felt a sudden calling, describing in his diary the appeal of the “excitement of war against this ordeal of [domestic] warmth and monotony”. He travelled to Israel and performed a series of intimate concerts for troops who had come from, or were preparing to head to, the battlefield.
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The experience sparked a creative resurgence. Cohen wrote a new album, including “Who by Fire”, which opens: “And who by fire, who by water/Who in the sunshine, who in the night time.” The question, ambiguous at first, gradually becomes clearer as a stream of different potential causes of death play out (by barbiturate or by his own hand).
“Who by Fire” is a loose reworking of the Yom Kippur prayer “Unetanneh Tokef”, which is thought to be at least 1,000 years old. It features the lines “Who will die at his time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire.” While the original refers to biblical causes of death (beast, thirst, plague, stoning), Cohen’s list is more eclectic, spanning the banal (slow decay) and the cryptic (“in your merry merry month of May”). Each verse concludes with the slow refrain, “And who shall I say is calling?”, apparently wondering who is out there or what has given them the authority to dictate life and death.
The studio recording is just two and a half minutes long, but Cohen often stretched it out during live shows with extended instrumentals. Most notably, in a 1989 Cohen performance, saxophonist Sonny Rollins breathed new life into this song of death, harmonising with Cohen’s vocals and delivering emphatic solos. Back on tour in the 2010s Cohen performed with Spanish guitarist Javier Mas, whose lengthy, trembling intros heightened the song’s connection with the deep past.
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“Who by Fire” has been widely covered. In a 2010 version, rapper Buck 65 appears to be delivering a faithful version, with male and female vocals harmonising over an acoustic guitar. But halfway through, he introduces percussion followed by a heavier electronic sound including wobble bass. The lyrics drop out and the listener is left to reflect on what’s gone before in a brooding, sinister atmosphere. Skinny Pelembe and Beth Orton reworked it in 2023, cranking up the tempo on drums and guitar, and skipping the first refrain.
While making her 2022 TV hit Bad Sisters, series co-creator and writer Sharon Horgan was looking for a title track. The macabre comedy thriller explores the extent of family loyalty, climaxing with the villain being strangled to death by his wife. So it was an inspired choice to ask PJ Harvey to record it as the show’s theme tune. Harvey’s version opens with ethereal keyboard before the power subtly but decisively increases with gradual addition of a deeper piano and percussion, and the introduction of male backing vocals.
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First Aid Kit performed the song twice for a tribute album to Cohen, recorded live and released in 2021. In the first version, they sing at a regular pace over jangly drums and glockenspiels. The song is spliced with a spoken Cohen poem, including the lines “So will we endure/When one is gone and far.”
Their second version is almost a cappella, reducing the vocals to a pace slower than Cohen’s original. They use a spoken-word interlude again, drawing on a letter Cohen wrote to his former lover Marianne Ihlen as she lay on her deathbed in the summer of 2016 which read: “We’re really so old and our bodies are falling apart . . . I will follow you very soon . . . if you stretch out your hand I think you can reach mine.” The effect is heartbreaking.
Cohen died in the night time and after a slow decay in November 2016. Two weeks earlier, he had released his final studio album, You Want It Darker. The title track’s chorus is simply “Hineni, hineni, I’m ready, my Lord.” Hineni is Hebrew for “here I am”. So as with “Who by Fire”, Cohen used a simple refrain, but by this point he appears more certain of who is on the other end of the line.
Let us know your memories of ‘Who by Fire’ in the comments section below
The paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Chambers
Music credits: Sony; Buck 65/Warner; Partisan; ABC Signature
