Leonard Cohen 30-Day Tribute ... Day 19: Album #3 - "Joan of Arc"

Click here for "Joan of Arc with Jennifer Warnes and Cohen

Day 19: Album #3 - Songs of Love and Hate - "Joan of Arc"

The third studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Produced by Bob Johnston, Columbia Records.
the album was released on March 19, 1971, through Columbia Records.

Wikipedia: "Joan of Arc" is constructed mainly as a dialogue between Joan of Arc and the fire which is consuming her as she burns at the stake, after having been found guilty of heresy (in 1431). In the song, Joan says that she is "tired of the war" and tells how she would rather be wearing a white wedding dress (one of the charges against her was that she dressed as a man). Joan's surrender to the fire, as its bride, may also be seen as a symbol of her religious fervor and commitment. In a 1988 interview with John McKenna of RTE Ireland, Cohen said of "Joan of Arc," "I was thinking more of this sense of a destiny that human beings have and how they meet and marry their destiny...I don't want to suggest in that song that what she really wanted to be was a housewife. What I mean to say is that as lonely and as solitudinous as she was she had to meet and be embraced by her destiny...seen from the point of view of the woman's movement she really does stand for something stunningly original and courageous."
  
Side one

View full tribute playlist here.

1. "Avalanche" – 5:07
2. "Last Year's Man" – 6:02
3. "Dress Rehearsal Rag" – 6:12
4. "Diamonds in the Mine" – 3:52

Side two

1. "Love Calls You by Your Name" – 5:44
2. "Famous Blue Raincoat" – 5:15
3. "Sing Another Song, Boys" (Live at the Isle of Wight Festival, August 31, 1970) – 6:17
4. "Joan of Arc" – 6:29 -- (I like the combination of Jennifer Warnes and Cohen better than the original.)

Bonus track on 2007 remastered edition

1. "Dress Rehearsal Rag" (Bonus track, early version, an outtake recorded during the Songs From a Room sessions, 1968) – 5:37