Various Positions producer John Lissauer
Background
After recording Recent Songs, Cohen did not record again for five years and published no new writing until Book of Mercy in 1984.  Asked by Mojo's Sylvie Simmons about this period of inactivity in 2001, the singer replied, "My children were living in the South of France and I spent a lot of time visiting them.  The pieces in Book of Mercy were coming and I was, slowly, writing the album that ended up as Various Positions."  Cohen did write and star in the 1983 made-for-TV musical I Am a Hotel, which featured several of his songs in the narration.  Various Positions was produced by John Lissauer, who had been at the helm of Cohen's 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony. The pair had not worked together or even spoken since a project called Songs For Rebecca had been scuttled by Cohen's manager Marty Machat to clear the way for the singer to work with Phil Spector on 1977's Death of a Ladies' Man. In the interim, Lissauer had worked with Barbra Streisand, Manhattan Transfer, and had scored films. According to Anthony Reynolds 2010 memoir Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life, the pair met at the Royalton on 44th Street in New York City so Cohen could play Lissauer his songs, and the producer was surprised: ... instead of presenting me with the new songs exclusively on a Spanish guitar as usual, he had this dinky little Casio keyboard with him ... The Casio was a great discovery for Leonard because these machines allows you to put one finger down and have a whole band come back at you ... and this is how he came up with "Dance Me to the End of Love".  Another alteration that Lissauer noticed was the remarkable change in Cohen's singing, with his voice having dropped about a minor third. Cohen later remarked to author Paul Zollo in the book Songwriters on Songwriting: My voice has gotten very very deep over the years and seems even to be deepening. I thought it was because of 50,000 cigarettes and several swimming pools of whiskey that my voice has gotten low.  But I gave up smoking a couple of years ago and it’s still getting deeper ... My voice really started to change around 1982. It started to deepen and I started to cop to the fact that it was deepening.  The use of synthesisers and Cohen's "new voice" would mark the beginning of a new era in Cohen's composing style and sound.Personnel
Leonard Cohen – vocals, guitar, photography (polaroid shot)
Jennifer Warnes – vocals
John Lissauer – piano, keyboard orchestrations, backing vocals
Sid McGinnis – guitar
John Crowder – backing vocals, bass guitar
Richard Crooks – drumsErin Dickins – backing vocals
Chrissy Faith – backing vocals
Ron Getman – backing vocals
Lani Groves – backing vocals
Yvonne Lewis – backing vocals
Merle Miller – backing vocals
Anjani Thomas – backing vocalsJohn Lissauer - producer, arranger
Leanne Ungar – recording, mixing
Lee Friedman – assistant engineer
Jon Smith – additional recording
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