Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
When I was around 15 or 16 years old I rented the Christian Slater/Samantha Mathis movie Pump Up the Volume. A couple of years later I recorded it when it was shown on TV (anyone under the age of 35 will have no idea of the reason or significance of this!), in the five or six years that followed it was watched on hard rotation with first, school and then university friends along with some similarly themed movies: Fandango, the breakfast club, Dazed and Confused, Heathers, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Sure Thing. As time went on the film that once meant a lot to me became less significant, until, I don’t think I have seen it for over fifteen years. However, it did give me one lasting thing, a love of the music of Leonard Cohen. The film heavily features the song Everybody Knows. I went out with the intention of purchasing the soundtrack but found that for rights reasons (as I discovered many years later) a cover version that was used over the credits was used on the soundtrack instead of the original that was so important in the film. Instead I purchased the CD of I’m Your Man, the Leonard Cohen album that features the song. And thus begun a love of Leonard Cohen’s music.
A great artist who will be missed despite the amazing musical legacy he leaves us.
