Bird on the Wire

Cohen recorded it on 26 September 1968 in Nashville for Songs from a Room. A May 1968 take produced by David Crosby, titled Like a Bird, was added to the 2007 reissue. Judy Collins released it first, on Who Knows Where the Time Goes in 1968.

Marianne Ihlen said she helped Cohen out of a depression on Hydra by handing him his guitar, and that the song was inspired by a bird on one of the island's newly installed phone wires. Cohen told Paul Zollo that when the poles first went up he spent his time staring at the wires and thinking that civilization had caught up with him. He finished the song in a motel in Hollywood. In the liner notes to The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975) he wrote that he always began his concerts with it, and that Kris Kristofferson told him he had stolen part of the melody from another Nashville writer and said he would put the first lines on his tombstone. The sleeve notes to the 2007 reissue called it a kind of Bohemian My Way.

Covers

Joe Cocker's cover reached number 78 in Canada. The Neville Brothers' version on Brother's Keeper (1990) reached number 1 in Canada and appears in the film Bird on a Wire. Johnny Cash recorded it on 6 December 1993 for American Recordings. Jennifer Warnes, Willie Nelson, Fairport Convention and Richard Thompson have also covered it, and Elvis Costello sang it at the Tower of Song memorial concert in 2017. Cohen collapsed on stage in Valencia in September 2009 while performing it.