Death of a Ladies' Man

Death of a Ladies' Man is Cohen's fifth studio album, produced and co-written by Phil Spector. It was released in the United States by Warner Bros. and elsewhere by Columbia. Spector used three studios, his favorite being Gold Star in Hollywood, and hired Los Angeles players including the guitarists Dan and David Kessel, the drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Keltner and the pedal steel player Al Perkins. Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg sang backing vocals on Don't Go Home with Your Hard-on, and Ronee Blakley sings with Cohen on True Love Leaves No Traces.

Cohen found the sessions dangerous. He told Mojo in 2001 that it was hard to ignore a .45 lying on the console, and that when he worked with Spector alone it was agreeable. Spector kept the tapes and mixed the record without him. At release Cohen called the production a catastrophe, but he told Q in 1991 that he liked Phil, that the instinct was right and that he would do it again. Reviews were polarized: Paul Nelson of Rolling Stone called it either greatly flawed or great and flawed, and the Toronto Star declared that Cohen was for musical sadists. Memories is the only song from the album he regularly performed, on the tours of 1979, 1980 and 1985. The album was one of his biggest sellers in Sweden up to 1978. In 1978 he published a book of poems, Death of a Lady's Man, whose title poem has the same words as the album's title song.