It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
looking at the Late Late show
through a semi-precious stone.
In the House of Honesty
her father was on trial,
in the House of Mystery
there was no one at all,
there was no one at all.
It seems so long ago,
none of us were strong;
Nancy wore green stockings
and she slept with everyone.
She never said she’d wait for us
although she was alone,
I think she fell in love for us
in nineteen sixty one,
in nineteen sixty one.
It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.
We told her she was beautiful,
we told her she was free
but none of us would meet her in
the House of Mystery,
the House of Mystery.
And now you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many use her body,
many comb her hair.
In the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she’s happy that you’ve come,
she’s happy that you’ve come.
The basis of this song is reportage – the story of a Montreal friend (the daughter of a Judge) whose free and promiscuous life ended in suicide. (Some have suggested that the song does not entirely reflect the facts of the case, but it is of course a work of art not journalism.) The text shown is taken from the version of the song included on Songs From A Room (1969). Note that the “forty five” referred to in the third stanza is clearly a (.45 calibre) gun, not a (45 rpm) record. The version included on Live Songs (1973), under the shortened title ‘Nancy’, Cohen achieves a subtle but significant change of focus. He replaces the opening phrase “It seems so long ago” with “The morning had not come”. This change economically adds descriptive colour to the portrayal of Nancy’s loneliness, but more importantly removes the singer from the action. The song is no longer a reminiscence and becomes more purely a portrait of dysfunctional misery.