from the album
I'm Your Man"First We Take Manhattan" is a song written by Leonard Cohen. It was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes on her 1987 album Famous Blue Raincoat, which consisted entirely of songs written or co-written by Cohen.
The song is notable for the distinctive driving lead guitar played by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Producer Roscoe Beck was from Austin, Texas and friends with Vaughan. In late February 1986, at the annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Beck asked Vaughan to record the guitar for the song. In a 2007 interview, Beck recalls that Vaughan did not have his guitar or amp with him, and used one of Beck's old Strats instead. After working on a few technical issues, the finished recording was achieved after 2 or 3 takes.[1] According to Jennifer Warnes' official site, Vaughan finished recording his takes at 4 AM.[2]
The song refers to the "naivety and narcissism" of the West German Red Army Faction, "...designer terrorism by celebrity terrorists, as much about radical chic as about real politics."[3]
