Sylvie Simmons

Put it this way.

In the Sylvia Simmons book, the literati, particularly in Canada, did not take warmly to Leonard's move into the popular field.

It made him a, quote, personality, which brought with it danger.

As Michael Ondaatje wrote, our interest in Cohen makes the final judgment, not the quality of the writing.

Although you may have forgotten in our, uh, journey through the wilderness of the written word with him.

And we've got, we've got a little bit of story to, uh, to put under the microscope on this one, because I don't know about you, but when I was reading through, like, the Sylvie Simmons biography here, it's basically, like, just, it's a parade of Jokerman fan favorites, new and old.

Just a whole cast of not all of our homies, but many of them that are walking through Leonard Cohen's life circa 1966, 1967, in the lead-up to this album, and just put a smile on my face.

There's one name, "Oh, I know him.

But I, I know you've been-

It's just so much, like, just, just straight- Dirt, just straight goss on, on everybody and everything going on.

There's a lot of the same stuff in the Sylvie Simmons one, but then there's, like, everything else.

It's like the DVD special features.

We've, we've jabbered on a-about enough.

Let-- I, I will try to-- I think Sylvie Simmons actually does a pretty good job here in the book of summarizing the plot and the goings-on such as it is.

Well, we need all the help we can get, so.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, isn't it wonderful?

And not just Elvis Costello, but a, a true match of, uh, of, of talents w- is his, uh, in, in a, in the in- the interview room with Sylvie Simmons-

Oh

... none other than.

It just came out right after Beautiful Losers.

Um, you know, there's not, like, a special section in the Sylvie Simmons book, um, a- as far as I could see, at least.

And, like, it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page, Parasites of Heaven.

So that's typically a si- a, a signal that it's i- not something that is overly, um, you know, uh, significant, at least to the, the culture at large.

It seems-- It's genuinely, like, kind of crazy how e- even before, uh, you told me that this is, like, the one that nobody knows, I was like, "This seems like one that maybe no one knows."

Yeah, I think it is, it is one that nobody knows.

I mean, even in the biography, like I said, I was, uh, like, like Sylvie Simmons dispatches with it in, like, two sentences or something.

She, you know, there's a big long thing about Beautiful Losers, which we'll, you know, we'll talk a little bit about that story when we get to the Beautiful Losers episode.