Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Leonard Cohen

Songs of Love and Hate

c. 1977-1981 · CBS S 69004 · Stereo · UK · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	CBS
Catalogue number	S 69004
Year	c. 1977-1981
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	UK
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Folk/Singer-Songwriter
Producer	Bob Johnston
Composer	Leonard Cohen
Musicians	Leonard Cohen (vocals, guitar), Charlie Daniels (bass, violin, guitar), Bubba Fowler (guitar, banjo, bass), Ron Cornelius (guitar), Elkin ‘Bubba’ Fowler (guitar), Corlynn Hanney, Susan Mussmano (backing vocals); uncredited on the jacket: Paul Buckmaster (string arrangements on select tracks)

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  CBS.S.69004.A1 0 C
Side B:  S69004 B4 C1

Condition

Cover: VG+
Vinyl: NM-

Variant chronology

1971 - UK CBS plain orange label, boxed CBS/concentric-circle logo, no label code
c. 1977-early 1980s - UK CBS orange-to-yellow gradient “sunburst” label, LC 0149 code  <- this copy

This Pressing

Later UK pressing (c. 1977-81) - CBS orange/yellow “sunburst” label with LC 0149 code places it after the plain-orange first-issue label.

The Album

Songs of Love and Hate was Leonard Cohen's third album, recorded in Nashville in 1970 and 1971 with producer Bob Johnston and a band of session players who had also backed Cohen on tour. It arrived after the commercial breakthrough of Songs from a Room and pushed his songwriting into starker, more harrowing territory, trading the hushed intimacy of his earlier work for longer, more anguished meditations on love, failure and self-reckoning. Famous Blue Raincoat, written as an epistolary confession, and Joan of Arc, a fever-dream duet between the saint and the flames that consume her, became two of the most covered and analysed songs in his catalogue. Avalanche, with its stark, circular guitar figure, later found new audiences when Nick Cave and others recorded it. The album was received coolly by some critics on release, who found its mood oppressive, but it has since been reassessed as one of the most emotionally naked records of Cohen's career and a touchstone for the confessional singer-songwriter tradition that followed. It cemented Cohen's reputation as a poet-songwriter working at the furthest edge of vulnerability, and remains a key statement in the arc between his debut and the more produced records of his later 1970s period.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. Avalanche
2. Last Year's Man
3. Dress Rehearsal Rag
4. Diamonds in the Mine

Side 2

1. Love Calls You by Your Name
2. Famous Blue Raincoat
3. Sing Another Song, Boys
4. Joan of Arc

The Label

This copy carries the orange-pink-to-pale-yellow gradient CBS label with the boxed CBS eye logo and large CBS wordmark - the “sunburst” design CBS UK introduced for albums around 1974 and kept in use into the early 1980s, replacing the earlier plain orange label with the boxed concentric-circle eye used from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. The label also carries an LC 0149 box, a code that did not exist on any UK record before 1977, so this pressing was struck in 1977 or later even though it reproduces the same catalogue number, title and credits as the 1971 original. It therefore sits below the plain-orange-label pressing on the release's hierarchy, which carries no such code and represents the earlier issue.

Fidelity

This UK CBS pressing was cut from the original Nashville session masters produced by Bob Johnston; the cutting engineer and specific lacquer generation are not identified on the label. Collectors generally rate the early-1970s UK CBS pressings of this title as solid but unremarkable commercial cuts rather than audiophile benchmarks, with no widely recognised specialist audiophile reissue of this album in print. This later-label copy, pressed from a subsequent stamper generation, sits below the earliest UK lacquers in the fidelity pecking order, though the difference is generally described as modest rather than dramatic.

Notes

This is a UK CBS stereo pressing of Songs of Love and Hate, S 69004, on the orange-to-yellow gradient “sunburst” label CBS UK used for albums from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s. The label carries an LC 0149 code, a mark that did not exist before 1977, which rules out an early-1970s date regardless of the catalogue number or jacket matching the original design. The runouts (A1/B4 suffixes) are consistent with a repressed stamper generation rather than the earliest lacquer cut. This copy therefore ranks as a later pressing of the title, below the plain-orange-label issue from the early-to-mid 1970s.

Documenting collections

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