According to Ira Nadel's 1996 Cohen memoir "Various Positions", the title track was originally called "If You Could See What's Coming Next", and underwent extensive rewrites, taking up almost sixty pages in Cohen's notebook, while "Closing Time" took two years with Cohen even starting over from scratch on the song as late as March 1992. Nadel also reveals that "Anthem" was borrowed from Kabbalistic sources, especially the sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria. In the Paul Zollo book "Songwriters on Songwriting", Cohen explains that it takes him so long to finish songs because "Nothing works. After a while, if you stick with the song long enough it will yield. But long enough is way beyond any reasonable estimation of what you think long enough may be...'Anthem' took a decade to write. And I've recorded it three times. More." In the same interview, Cohen spoke at length about "Democracy," admitting that he wrote 60 verses for it: