Discover more great stories\u2014get a free\u00a0Mix\u00a0SmartBrief subscription!<\/a><\/p>\nThe album was mostly mixed at Amigo Studios in North Hollywood by Frank Wolf (along with Beck) on Studio B\u2019s SSL, with additional mixing work by Massenburg, Larry Brown and Henry Lewy on certain tracks. The slightly unsettling passages of spoken German at the beginning and end of \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan\u201d was an idea of Lewy\u2019s\u2014\u201cWe wanted to snag people\u2019s attention, and that was Henry\u2019s call,\u201d Warnes comments.<\/p>\n
When the album was released in late 1986, \u201cBird on a Wire,\u201d \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t No Cure for Love\u201d garnered considerable radio play on different formats, and the album as a whole was embraced by Cohen\u2019s followers, Warnes\u2019 fans and also, more generally, audiophiles who were impressed by its deep and pristine sonics. The record breathed new life into Cohen\u2019s career in the U.S., and also helped establish Warnes as a serious artist in ways that her previous chart triumphs had not. Coincidentally, in 1987 she also scored a Number One hit with her duet with Bill Medley from the mega-popular soundtrack for Dirty Dancing, \u201c(I\u2019ve Had) The Time of My Life\u201d (another Oscar winner!).<\/p>\n
Famous Blue Raincoat continues to earn respect and new fans with each passing year. A 20th anniversary edition, remastered by Bernie Grundman and featuring several bonus tracks, came out in 2007, and a new a vinyl version (also mastered by Grundman) will be released this year. It remains perhaps Warnes\u2019 crowning achievement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have the proper alchemy and all the secret good wishes of everyone, fireworks can happen,\u201d Warnes says, \u201cand you know you\u2019re on to something. About midway through the record, we knew it was great. Nobody was shouting about it at that point, but Roscoe and I knew we were sitting on something fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article first appeared in the February 2014 issue of Mix.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Online Extras: More from Jennifer Warnes, Roscoe Beck and Bill Youdelman about the making of Famous Blue Raincoat.<\/p>\n
Beck on meeting Cohen and Warnes: \u201cI met Leonard in early \u201979 when he was making the Recent Songs album, a record that Jennifer would later overdub vocals on. He was maybe halfway through the album when his producer, Henry Lewy, who was also Joni Mitchell\u2019s producer, brought me in to play on a couple of things. And that resulted in Henry bringing in my entire band at that time, which was called Passenger. After we finished up the Recent Songs album with Leonard, we went back to Austin, and while we were there, Jennifer put her vocals on the record [in L.A.]. We accepted Leonard\u2019s offer to tour that fall, so shortly before I met Jennifer, I heard that she was going to be on the tour [as a backup singer], which maybe seemed a little odd, because she had hit a song on the radio, \u2018I Know a Heartache When I See One\u2019 [from her album Shot Through the Heart].\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck on the genesis of the album: \u201cJennifer was bold enough to propose the idea to her label at the time, Arista, and it was not well-received. [Laughs] Sometime later, that relationship ended, and then, after a couple of movie [song] successes, around 1984, she signed a deal with MCA and\u2014she might not even remember this\u2014at the first meeting she proposed two ideas: to do a record with Ladysmith Black Mambazo [pre Paul Simon\u2019s Graceland!] and this other, a record of Leonard Cohen material. MCA then dropped her, and she found herself without a label. So we decided to go ahead and just start recording some of the [Cohen] material anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Youdelman on the tracking sessions: \u201cMost of it was done live with Jennifer in the room at the same time. That was particularly important to get a good feel. If you piece things together, the band usually doesn\u2019t lock up as much as they do when they play with each other. The whole record was done with the idea of high fidelity or maximum fidelity from my point of view, so dynamic mics wouldn\u2019t have been used very often; nothing very loud. We probably used a lot of C-12s and 67s, though I can\u2019t remember many specifics. I think on \u2018Bird on a Wire\u2019 I used Neumann KM-88s [as drum overheads] which are nickel-membrane microphones. The rest of it was more or less routine. I\u2019m kind of minimalist. I might even go for Schoeps stereo CMT 501s, and I think George had one\u2014he actually got his after he heard mine, and I could have used that over the drums and maybe a kick drum, but that literally could have been it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck on Youdelman: \u201cBilly was a great live engineer, and credit to all the other engineers who worked on the record, too\u2014Tim Boyle, Larry Brown and George Massenburg. Billy was there the longest doing the tracking. He got great sounds and didn\u2019t need an overabundance of tracks to get them. He really impressed me that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warnes on her first exposure to \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan\u201d: \u201cLeonard played a working track of the song over the phone from Montreal, to Roscoe, who recorded it. We were excited to have a brand new composition for the album. I think one possible inspiration for the \u2018we\u2019 in \u2018First We Take Manhattan\u2019 may have come from Leonard\u2019s familiarity with the Guardian Angels [a Manhattan citizens\u2019 non-violent militia who voluntarily patrolled New York streets for a period]. There was something interesting about these street-wise kids wearing berets and saying, \u2018We\u2019re going to stop crime.\u2019 So that may be what got the horse out of the stall [in terms of writing the song], but then he had all these other images, too, of course.\u201d Beck: \u201cLeonard had played me an earlier version of the song with the working title, \u2018In Old Berlin,\u2019 but his revised version, \u2018First We Take Manhattan,\u2019 absolutely stunned me when he played it over the phone. It was such a departure musically, from his previous work.<\/p>\n
Leonard Cohen on \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan,\u201d as quoted in the book Leonard Cohen in His Own Words (Omnibus Press, 1999) by Jim Devlin: \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of outsider speaking; it\u2019s somebody who never thought much of what he got. I can\u2019t identify with it completely. In the context of the song it\u2019s just the voice of enlightened bitterness. [It] is a demented, menacing, geopolitical manifesto in which I really do offer to take over the world with any like spirits who want to go on this adventure with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chorus [\u201cYou see that line there moving through the station\u201d] refers to all those newsreel pictures we\u2019ve seen of the dispossessed moving through the train station\u2014the bag people on the most obvious level, the homeless on the most obvious level, the refugees on the most obvious level\u2014but even those people in apparently more secure or profitable situations who feel that they have not yet arrived at any significant situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warnes on her A-list cast of players: \u201cGreat musicians often become your comrades in the trenches if they have faith that you\u2019re doing something good. If we had been faking it, they wouldn\u2019t have shown up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck: \u201cA lot of friends were involved in the album. We had a very serious intention for the record, having already worked with Leonard and having so much respect for the music. We wanted to get that across to the people we were working with, too. And they got into it. Everybody did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warnes on Beck: Roscoe\u2019s bass was the backbone of this process. Our first demos and sketches began with bass and voice. If a song \u2018flew\u2019 in that sparse setting, additions were easy. One of Roscoe\u2019s great gifts is to make sure that all parts and people are working together. He has an innate sense of rightness, completeness and balance. The crazier it gets, the stronger Roscoe becomes. Every big old ship, and believe me, Famous Blue Raincoat was a very big ship, needs a captain, hopefully one with a heart and some vision. Like George Martin, Roscoe ate, slept and breathed every note. As a result of his dedication, magic did visit us\u2014many times.<\/p>\n
Beck on the Stevie Ray Vaughan overdub session for \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan\u201d: \u201cI arranged for the studio, which was the Record Plant, on very short notice. Tim Boyle was the engineer. But by the time I\u2019d made all the arrangements and got back to Stevie, he\u2019d been asked to do another session with Teena Marie [for her 1986 album, Emerald City], so he asked if we could move ours back a little to allow him to do both. It was a long night. [Laughs] That Teena Marie session, which was at some other studio, went late. Jimmie Vaughan was there hanging out, and Jennifer was there, too. We\u2019d gone down to give Stevie the guitar. I kept calling the Record Plant and moving [our session] later and later. We got to the Record Plant at maybe two or three in the morning. Alexander Dumble [builder of some of Vaughan\u2019s amps] was kind enough to bring an amp to the studio\u2014in pieces, because he didn\u2019t have a whole one\u2014and set it up on the console. I gave Stevie my old Strat and a wah-wah pedal, and he did five takes.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was he playing to? \u201cHe was hearing Vinnie\u2019s drums and Jennifer\u2019s vocal and when we got to the studio, there was still just a sequenced bass playing eighths. Jennifer said, \u2018For God\u2019s sake, at least give him a real bass to play to,\u2019 so I threw a bass part on there\u2014it ended up not being the final part, but was close to it. When we walked out, the sun was up.\u201d Warnes: \u201cAt the end, Stevie said, \u2018OK, Roscoe, you put it together,\u201d and he left, and Roscoe edited it [later] from the takes we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck on the creative use of reverbs in the mix at Amigo Studios: \u201cYou\u2019d have to ask [principal mixer] Frank Wolf to be sure, but I think the Lexicon 224 was at the mix, and an EMT 250. I\u2019m certain we used an Eventide delay and I believe Amigo Studios also had a nice plate. Some of the delays on Gary Chang\u2019s keyboard parts might have been printed to digital tape when we recorded them, as the delays were essential to the construct of his keyboard parts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe album was mixed to half-inch analog tape, at the very end of the project to give it warmth. So despite the fact that the first CD\u2019s were issued with a \u2018DDD\u2019 marking, it was actually \u2018DAD.\u2019 In a blindfold test in Amigo Studio B, Frank Wolf, Jennifer, Henry Lewy, and myself, all chose half-inch analog tape over every digital mix format available that we could test\u2014the Sony 1610, Sony 1630, and a Mitsubishi X-80 2-track digital recorder that used \u00bc-inch tape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warnes: \u201cFor the new vinyl release on Impex Records due out this year, Bernie Grundman mastered directly from the original 1986 analog reels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did the song arrangements change much over time?<\/p>\n
Warnes: \u201cEvery track was pretty much as you hear it. We didn\u2019t have to come back and do a song twice in another style. We had played with Leonard for several tours, and I had been with him back when I was 22 and did other tours, so the music was very familiar. What was really important was the arrangements. [Beck and I] planned it all ahead of time. We sketched every song out at Roscoe\u2019s house. We got the keys and tempos and then we sent out cassettes to [the musicians] that gave them the general gist, and then [keyboardist and arranger] Bill Ginn showed up with paper and made sure all the notes were correct.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a real good baseball team, where everyone adds something special. Without George [Massenburg] we wouldn\u2019t have that record. Without Billy [Youdelman] we couldn\u2019t have done what we did. And Bernie Grundman\u2019s superb mastering made the final product take on a bright shine. If you remove any one element\u2014like Stevie\u2019s guitar, or any one of the songs\u2014it might not have flown. Every person on it was important, and everybody loved each other and everybody loved Leonard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 20\/20 hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Jennifer Warnes\u2019 exquisite 1986 album, Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[56833,56834,56835,56836,56837,56838,75,84,83,9,24,63,56839],"class_list":{"0":"post-132918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-billy-youdelman","9":"tag-classic-track","10":"tag-classic-tracks","11":"tag-first-we-take-manhattan","12":"tag-jennifer-warnes","13":"tag-leonard-cohen","14":"tag-manhattan","15":"tag-manhattan-headlines","16":"tag-manhattan-news","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-roscoe-beck"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"classic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Warnes-main.jpg\")
<\/p>\n