Best Known As: The writer of the haunting song "Hallelujah"
For years a cult figure in poetry and folk music, Leonard Cohen reemerged in the 2000s as a moody and mystical troubadour. His singing style has been called "a sort of musical Method acting," and in his trademark fedora he looks something like a cross between Tony Bennett and William S. Burroughs. Cohen was born in Montreal and went to McGill University there, releasing his first book of poetry in 1956. His 1961 collection The Spice-Box of Earth was well received, and later in the 1960s he began blending his poetry with experimental forms of folk and country music. His first album was Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1967. He explored his eternal themes of romantic strife, spirituality, and weary, hard-earned wisdom in Songs From a Room (1969, with his classic single "Bird on a Wire") and Songs of Love and Hate (1971). He became friends with Andy Warhol and his songs influenced (and were covered by) Lou Reed, Judi Collins, and other more mainstream singers. Cohen kept writing but toured and recorded with fading frequency the 1980s, and then spent five years (1994-99) in seclusion at the Mount Baldy Zen Monastery near Los Angeles. His lugubrious 1984 single "Hallelujah" became a hit again in 2008 after it was featured on the TV talent shows The X Factor and American Idol, and the next year he embarked on a triumphant world tour -- his first live performances since 1994. Cohen's other albums include Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), Various Positions (1984, including the single "Hallelujah"), Ten New Songs (2001) and Blue Alert (2006, with the singer Anjani). He was made a Companion to the Order of Canada in 2003, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
Cohen has two children by the artist Suzanne Elrod: son Adam (b. 1972) and daughter Lorca (b. 1974)... Cohen filed suit in 2005 against his former manager, Kelley Lynch, saying she had taken or mismanaged more than $5 million. He was awarded $9.5 million in damages by a court the next year.
"The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape."
"In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress."
"What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere."
"Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true."
"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
"Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh."
Born: September 21, 1934, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Active: '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
Genres: Folk
Instrument: Vocals
Representative Albums: "Songs of Leonard Cohen", "The Best of Leonard Cohen", "I'm Your Man
Representative Songs: "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Biography
One of the most fascinating and enigmatic -- if not the most successful -- singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across four decades of music-making interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties.
Cohen was born in 1934, a year before Elvis Presley or Ronnie Hawkins, and his background -- personal, social, and intellectual -- couldn't have been more different from those of any rock stars of any generation; nor can he be easily compared even with any members of the generation of folksingers who came of age in the 1960s. Though he knew some country music and played it a bit as a boy, he didn't start performing on even a semi-regular basis, much less recording, until after he had already written several books -- and as an established novelist and poet, his literary accomplishments far exceed those of Bob Dylan or most anyone else who one cares to mention in music, at least this side of operatic librettists such as Hugo Von Hoffmanstahl or Stefan Zweig, figures from another musical and cultural world.
He was born Leonard Norman Cohen into a middle-class Jewish family in the Montreal suburb of Westmount. His father, a clothing merchant (who also held a degree in engineering), died in 1943, when Cohen was nine years old. It was his mother who encouraged Cohen as a writer, especially of poetry, during his childhood. This fit in with the progressive intellectual environment in which he was raised, which allowed him free inquiry into a vast range of pursuits. His relationship to music was more tentative -- he took up the guitar at age 13, initially as a way to impress a girl, but was good enough to play country & western songs at local cafes, and he subsequently formed a group called the Buckskin Boys. At 17, he enrolled in McGill University as an English major -- by this time, he was writing poetry in earnest and became part of the university's tiny underground "bohemian" community. Cohen only earned average grades, but was a good enough writer to earn the McNaughton Prize in creative writing by the time he graduated in 1955 -- a year later, the ink barely dry on his degree, he published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), which got great reviews but didn't sell especially well.
He was already beyond the age that rock & roll was aimed at -- Bob Dylan, by contrast, was still Robert Zimmerman, still in his teens, and young enough to become a devotee of Buddy Holly when the latter emerged. In 1961, Cohen published his second book of poetry, The Spice Box of Earth, which became an international success critically and commercially, and established Cohen as a major new literary figure. Meanwhile, he tried to join the family business and spent some time at Columbia University in New York, writing all the time. Between the modest royalties from sales of his second book, literary grants from the Canadian government, and a family legacy, he was able to live comfortably and travel around the world, partake of much of what it had to offer -- including some use of LSD when it was still legal -- and ultimately settling for an extended period in Greece, on the isle of Hydra in the Aegean Sea. He continued to publish, issuing a pair of novels, The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), with a pair of poetry collections, Flowers for Hitler (1964) and Parasites of Heaven (1966) around them. The Favorite Game was a very personal work about his early life in Montreal, but it was Beautiful Losers that proved another breakthrough, earning the kind of reviews that authors dare not even hope for -- Cohen found himself compared to James Joyce in the pages of The Boston Globe, and across four decades the book has enjoyed sales totaling well into six figures.
It was around this time that he also started writing music again, songs being a natural extension of his poetry. His relative isolation on Hydra, coupled with his highly mobile lifestyle when he left the island, his own natural iconoclastic nature, and the fact that he'd avoided being overwhelmed (or even touched too seriously) by the currents running through popular music since the 1940s, combined to give Cohen a unique voice as a composer. Though he did settle in Nashville for a short time in the mid-'60s, he didn't write quite like anyone else in music, in the country music mecca or anywhere else. This might have been an impediment but for the intervention of Judy Collins, a folksinger who had just moved to the front rank of that field, and who had a voice just special enough to move her beyond the relatively emaciated ranks of remaining popular folk performers after Dylan shifted to electric music -- she was still getting heard, and not just by the purists left behind in Dylan's wake. She added Cohen's "Suzanne" to her repertory and put it onto her album In My Life, a record that was controversial enough in folk circles -- because of her cover of the Beatles song that gave the LP its title -- that it pulled in a lot of listeners and got a wide airing. "Suzanne" received a considerable amount of radio airplay from the LP, and Cohen was also represented on the album by "Dress Rehearsal Rag."
It was Collins who persuaded Cohen to return to performing for the first time since his teens. He made his debut during the summer of 1967 at the Newport Folk Festival, followed by a pair of sold-out concerts in New York City and an appearance singing his songs and reciting his poems on the CBS network television show Camera Three, in a show entitled Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen. It was around the same time that actor/singer Noel Harrison brought "Suzanne" onto the pop charts with a recording of his own. One of those who saw Cohen perform at Newport was John Hammond, Sr., the legendary producer whose career went back to the 1930s and the likes of Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie, and extended up through Bob Dylan and, ultimately, to Bruce Springsteen. Hammond got Cohen signed to Columbia Records and he created The Songs of Leonard Cohen, which was released just before Christmas of 1967. Producer John Simon was able to find a restrained yet appealing approach to recording Cohen's voice, which might have been described as an appealingly sensitive near-monotone; yet that voice was perfectly suited to the material at hand, all of which, written in a very personal language, seemed drenched in downbeat images and a spirit of discovery as a path to unsettling revelation.
Despite its spare production and melancholy subject matter -- or, very possibly because of it -- the album was an immediate hit by the standards of the folk music world and the budding singer/songwriter community. In an era in which millions of listeners hung on the next albums of Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel -- whose own latest album had ended with a minor-key rendition of "Silent Night" set against a radio news account of the death of Lenny Bruce -- Cohen's music quickly found a small but dedicated following. College students by the thousands bought it; in its second year of release, the record sold over 100,000 copies. The Songs of Leonard Cohen was as close as Cohen ever got to mass audience success.
Amid all of this sudden musical activity, he hardly neglected his other writing -- in 1968, Cohen released a new volume, Selected Poems: 1956-1968, which included both old and newly published work, and earned him the Governor-General's Award, Canada's highest literary honor, which he proceeded to decline. By this time, he was actually almost more a part of the rock scene, residing for a time in New York's Chelsea Hotel, where his neighbors included Janis Joplin and other performing luminaries, some of whom influenced his songs very directly.
His next album, Songs from a Room (1969), was characterized by an even greater spirit of melancholy -- even the relatively spirited "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" was steeped in such depressing sensibilities, and the one song not written by Cohen, "The Partisan," was a grim narrative about the reasons for and consequences of resistance to tyranny that included lines like "She died without a whisper" and included images of wind blowing past graves. Joan Baez subsequently recorded the song, and in her hands it was a bit more upbeat and inspiring to the listener; Cohen's rendition made it much more difficult to get past the costs presented by the singer's persona. On the other hand, "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," although as downbeat as anything else here, did present Cohen in his most expressive and commercial voice, a nasal but affecting and finely nuanced performance.
Still, in all, Songs from a Room was less well received commercially and critically -- Bob Johnston's restrained, almost minimalist production made it less overtly appealing than the subtly commercial trappings of his debut, though the album did have a pair of tracks, "Bird on the Wire" and "The Story of Isaac," that became standards rivaling "Suzanne" -- "The Story of Isaac," a musical parable woven around biblical imagery about Vietnam (which is also relevant to the Iraq War), was one of the most savage and piercing songs to come out of the antiwar movement, and showed a level of sophistication in its music and lyrics that put it in a whole separate realm of composition; it received an even better airing on the Live Songs album, in a performance recorded in Berlin during 1972.
Cohen may not have been a widely popular performer or recording artist, but his unique voice and sound, and the power of his writing and its influence, helped give him entrée to rock's front-ranked performers, an odd status for the then 35-year-old author/composer. He appeared at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival in England, a post-Woodstock gathering of stars and superstars, including late appearances by such soon-to-die-or-disband legends as Jimi Hendrix and the Doors; looking nearly as awkward as his fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell, Cohen strummed his acoustic guitar backed by a pair of female singers in front of an audience of 600,000 ("It's a large nation, but still weak"), comprised in equal portions of fans, freaks, and belligerent gatecrashers, but the mere fact that he was there -- sandwiched somewhere between Miles Davis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer -- was a clear statement of the status (if not the popular success) he'd achieved. One portion of his set, "Tonight Will Be Fine," was released on a subsequent live album, while his performance of "Suzanne" was one of the highlights of Murray Lerner's long-delayed, 1996-issued documentary Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival.
Already, he had carved out a unique place for himself in music, as much author as performer and recording artist, letting his songs develop and evolve across years -- his distinctly noncommercial voice became part of his appeal to the audience he found, giving him a unique corner of the music audience, made of listeners descended from the same people who had embraced Bob Dylan's early work before he'd become a mass-media phenomenon in 1964. In a sense, Cohen embodied a phenomenon vaguely similar to what Dylan enjoyed before his early-'70s tour with the Band -- people bought his albums by the tens and, occasionally, hundreds of thousands, but seemed to hear him in uniquely personal terms. He earned his audience seemingly one listener at a time, by word of mouth more than by the radio which, in any case (especially on the AM dial), was mostly friendly to covers of Cohen's songs by other artists.
Cohen's third album, Songs of Love and Hate (1971), was his most powerful body of work to date, brimming with piercing lyrics and music as poignantly affecting as it was minimalist in its approach -- arranger Paul Buckmaster's work on strings was peculiarly muted, and the children's chorus that showed up on "Last Year's Man" was spare in its presence; balancing them was Cohen's most effective vocalizing to date, brilliantly expressive around such acclaimed songs as "Joan of Arc," "Dress Rehearsal Rag" (which had been recorded by Judy Collins five years before), and "Famous Blue Raincoat." The bleakness of the tone and subject matter ensured that he would never become a "pop" performer; even the beat-driven "Diamonds in the Mine," with its catchy children's chorus accompaniment and all, and with a twangy electric guitar accompaniment to boot, was as dark and venomous-toned a song as Columbia Records put out in 1971. And the most compelling moments -- among an embarrassment of riches -- came on lyrics like "Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc/As she came riding through the dark/No Moon to keep her armor bright/No man to get her through this night...."; indeed, hearing Cohen's lyrics 25 years on, one could almost find a burlesque of Cohen's music in the songs of Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe Buffay on Friends -- who, even money bet probably grew up on Songs of Love and Hate in her fictional bio -- and lyrics like "They found their bodies the third day...."
Teenagers of the late '60s (or any era that followed) listening devotedly to Leonard Cohen might have worried their parents, but also could well have been the smartest or most sensitive kids in their class and the most well-balanced emotionally -- if they weren't depressed -- but also effectively well on their way out of being teenagers, and probably too advanced for their peers and maybe most of their teachers (except maybe the ones listening to Cohen). Songs of Love and Hate, coupled with the earlier hit versions of "Suzanne," etc., earned Cohen a large international cult following. He also found himself in demand in the world of commercial filmmaking, as director Robert Altman used his music in his 1971 feature film McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, a revisionist period film set at the turn of the 19th century that was savaged by the critics (and, by some accounts, sabotaged by its own studio) but went on to become one of the director's best-loved movies. The following year, he also published a new poetry collection, The Energy of Slaves.
As was his won't, Cohen spent years between albums, and in 1973 he seemed to take stock of himself as a performer by issuing Leonard Cohen: Live Songs. Not a conventional live album, it was a compendium of performances from various venues across several years and focused on highlights of his output from 1969 onward. It showcased his writing as much as his performing, but also gave a good account of his appeal to his most serious fans -- those still uncertain of where they stood in relation to his music who could get past the epic-length "Please Don't Pass Me By" knew for certain they were ready to "join" the inner circle of his legion of devotees after that, while others who only appreciated "Bird on the Wire" or "The Story of Isaac" could stay comfortably on an outer ring.
Meanwhile, in 1973, his music became the basis for a theatrical production called Sisters of Mercy, conceived by Gene Lesser and loosely based on Cohen's life, or at least a fantasy version of his life. A three-year lag ensued between Songs of Love and Hate and Cohen's next album, and most critics and fans just assumed he'd hit a dry spell with the live album covering the gap. He was busy concertizing, however, in the United States and Europe during 1971 and 1972, and extending his appearances into Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was during this period that he also began working with pianist and arranger John Lissauer, whom he engaged as producer of his next album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). That album seemed to justify his fans' continued faith in his work, presenting Cohen in a more lavish musical environment. He proved capable of holding his own in a pop environment, even if the songs were mostly still depressing and bleak.
The following year, Columbia Records released The Best of Leonard Cohen, featuring a dozen of his best-known songs -- principally hits in the hands of other performers -- from his previous four LPs (though it left out "Dress Rehearsal Rag"). It was also during the mid-'70s that Cohen first crossed paths professionally with Jennifer Warnes, appearing on the same bill with the singer at numerous shows, which would lead to a series of key collaborations in the ensuing decade. By this time, he was a somewhat less mysterious persona, having toured extensively and gotten considerable exposure -- among many other attributes, Cohen became known for his uncanny attractiveness to women, which seemed to go hand in glove with the romantic subjects of most of his songs.
In 1977, Cohen reappeared with the ironically titled Death of a Ladies' Man, the most controversial album of his career, produced by Phil Spector. The notion of pairing Spector -- known variously as a Svengali-like presence to his female singers and artists and the most unrepentant (and often justified) over-producer in the field of pop music -- with Cohen must have seemed like a good one to someone at some point, but apparently Cohen himself had misgivings about many of the resulting tracks that Spector never addressed, having mixed the record completely on his own. The resulting LP suffered from the worst attributes of Cohen's and Spector's work, overly dense and self-consciously imposing in its sound, and virtually bathing the listener in Cohen's depressive persona, but showing his limited vocal abilities to disadvantage, owing to Spector's use of "scratch" (i.e., guide) vocals and his unwillingness to permit the artist to redo some of his weaker moments on those takes. For the first (and only) time in Cohen's career, his near-monotone delivery of this period wasn't a positive attribute. Cohen's unhappiness with the album was widely known among fans, who mostly bought it with that caveat in mind, so it didn't harm his reputation -- a year after its release, Cohen also published a new literary collection using the title Death of a Ladies' Man.
Cohen's next album, Recent Songs (1979), returned him to the spare settings of his early-'70s work and showed his singing to some of its best advantage. Working with veteran producer Henry Lewy (best known for his work with Joni Mitchell), the album showed Cohen's singing as attractive and expressive in its quiet way, and songs such as "The Guests" seeming downright pretty -- he still wrote about life and love, and especially relationships, in stark terms, but he almost seemed to be moving into a pop mode on numbers such as "Humbled in Love." Frank Sinatra never needed to look over his shoulder at Cohen (at least, as a singer), but he did seem to be trying for a slicker pop sound at moments on his record.
Then came 1984, and two key new works in Cohen's output -- the poetic/religious volume The Book of Mercy and the album Various Positions (1984). The latter, recorded with Jennifer Warnes, is arguably his most accessible album of his entire career up to that time -- Cohen's voice, now a peculiarly expressive baritone instrument, found a beautiful pairing with Warnes, and the songs were as fine as ever, steeped in spirituality and sexuality, with "Dance Me to the End of Love" a killer opener: a wry, doom-laden yet impassioned pop-style ballad that is impossible to forget. Those efforts overlapped with some ventures by the composer/singer into other creative realms, including an award-winning short film that he wrote, directed, and scored, entitled I Am a Hotel, and the score for the 1985 conceptual film Night Magic, which earned a Juno Award in Canada for Best Movie Score.
Sad to say, Various Positions went relatively unnoticed, and was followed by another extended sabbatical from recording, which ended with I'm Your Man (1988). But during his hiatus, Warnes had released her album of Cohen-authored material, entitled Famous Blue Raincoat, which had sold extremely well and introduced Cohen to a new generation of listeners. So when I'm Your Man did appear, with its electronic production (albeit still rather spare) and songs that added humor (albeit dark humor) to his mix of pessimistic and poetic conceits, the result was his best-selling record in more than a decade. The result, in 1991, was the release of I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, a CD of recordings of his songs by the likes of R.E.M., the Pixies, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and John Cale, which put Cohen as a songwriter pushing age 60 right back on center stage for the 1990s. He rose to the occasion, releasing The Future, an album that dwelt on the many threats facing mankind in the coming years and decades, a year later. Not the stuff of pop charts or MTV heavy rotation, it attracted Cohen's usual coterie of fans, and enough press interest as well as sufficient sales, to justify the release in 1994 of his second concert album, Cohen Live, derived from his two most recent tours. A year later came another tribute album, Tower of Song, featuring Cohen's songs as interpreted by Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, et al.
In the midst of all of this new activity surrounding his writing and compositions, Cohen embarked on a new phase of his life. Religious concerns were never too far from his thinking and work, even when he was making a name for himself writing songs about love, and he had focused ever more on this side of life since Various Positions. He came to spend time at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center, a Buddhist retreat in California, and eventually became a full-time resident, becoming a Buddhist monk during the late '90s. When he re-emerged in 1999, Cohen had many dozens of new compositions in hand, songs and poems alike. His new collaborations were with singer/songwriter/musician Sharon Robinson, who also ended up producing the resulting album, Ten New Songs (2001) -- there also emerged during this period a release called Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979, comprised of live recordings from his tour of 22 years before.
In 2004, the year he turned 70, Cohen released one of the most controversial albums of his career, Dear Heather. It revealed his voice anew, in this phase of his career, as a deep baritone more limited in range than on any previous recording, but it overcame this change in vocal timbre by facing it head-on, just as Cohen had done with his singing throughout his career -- it also contained a number of songs for which Cohen wrote music but not lyrics, a decided change of pace for a man who'd started out as a poet. And it was as personal a record as Cohen had ever issued. His return to recording was one of the more positive aspects of Cohen's resumption of his music activities. On another side, in 2005, he filed suit against his longtime business manager and his financial advisor over the alleged theft of more than five million dollars, at least some of which took place during his years at the Buddhist retreat.
Four decades after he emerged as a public literary figure and then a performer, Cohen remains one of the most compelling and enigmatic musical figures of his era, and one of the very few of that era who commands as much respect and attention, and probably as large an audience, in the 21st century as he did in the 1960s. As much as any survivor of that decade, Cohen has held onto his original audience and has seen it grow across generations, in keeping with a body of music that is truly timeless and ageless. In 2006, his enduring influence seemed to be acknowledged in Lions Gate Films' release of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, director Lian Lunson's concert/portrait of Cohen and his work and career. A performance set, Live in London, was released in 2009. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Love at Large, The Last Movie
First Major Screen Credit: The Ernie Game (1967)
Biography
Leonard Cohen's dark but compelling blend of heady eroticism and brooding despair has earned him a devoted following as a singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist, and if the dour nature of his writing and the deep, craggy qualities of his voice have defined him as an acquired taste, enough people have come to develop an appreciation for his work that he's gained a worldwide reputation as one of the leading musical and literary figures of his generation.
Leonard Cohen was born in 1934 to a well-to-do family in Montreal, Canada; his father, who ran a successful clothing company, died when Leonard was only nine years of age. Encouraged by his mother to express himself creatively, Cohen began writing poetry in his early teens, and developed an interest in music (initially, he's said, because singing seemed a good way to impress girls). Cohen began writing and performing his own songs by the age of 15, and while a student at Montreal's McGill University, he formed a country & western combo called the Buckskin Boys. Cohen also began publishing his poetry while studying at McGill, and in 1956, a year after he graduated, Cohen published his first collection of verse, Let Us Compare Mythologies. While his first book was well-received but sold poorly, his second effort, 1961's The Spice Box of Earth, became an international success, and Cohen soon moved on to writing fiction, publishing two acclaimed novels, The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). Cohen became something of a literary celebrity, and was the subject of a 1965 documentary, Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. Leonard Cohen, which examined Cohen as an artist, ladies' man, and free-thinker as he moved between homes in Montreal, New York, and the Greek island of Hydra.
By the mid-60's, Cohen had rekindled his interest in music, and after Judy Collins arranged for Cohen to perform at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival, he was signed by Columbia Records and released his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1968. The album was enthusiastically received in folk circles, and in time earned a gold record, while Noel Harrison's cover of "Suzanne," perhaps Cohen's best-known song, became a top-ten hit. While Cohen always attracted a zealously loyal following, their numbers seemed to ebb and flow with time, especially in the mid-'70's, as Cohen began experimenting with more polished arrangements and production techniques (most infamously on an ill-conceived collaboration with Phil Spector, Death of a Ladies' Man). However, Cohen's musical career enjoyed a resurgence in 1987, when Jennifer Warnes released Famous Blue Raincoat, an album in which she covered nine of Cohen's songs; it was a critical and commercial success, and reminded audiences of the strength of his work, just in time for Cohen's outstanding 1988 album I'm Your Man. In 1992, Cohen returned with another successful album The Future, but Cohen spent most of the decade in self-imposed semi-retirement, studying Zen practices with a group of Buddhist monks at a monastery in California. He returned to recording in 2001, releasing an album called Ten New Songs.
While Leonard Cohen has appeared in several concert films (such as Dynamite Chicken and Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival), participated in a handful of experimental films inspired by his music or verse (including Angel and Poen), and written lyrics for songs used in Lewis Furey's Night Magic, his most significant contribution to the cinema has been the use of his songs in a number of important films. Among the first examples of Cohen's music being used on screen (and certainly the most notable) came when several tracks from Songs of Leonard Cohen were used to superb effect by Robert Altman as the score for McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Since then, Cohen's songs have appeared in the soundtracks of several well-known films. Bird on a Wire borrowed its title from one of his best-known songs (with Aaron Neville singing it on the soundtrack), and the same tune was warbled in character by Margaret Ladd in A Wedding, while Natural Born Killers, Wonder Boys, Breaking the Waves and When Night Is Falling all featured performances by Cohen in their soundtracks. In addition to Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, there have been several other documentaries about Cohen, including The Song of Leonard Cohen, Songs From the Life of Leonard Cohen, and Leonard Cohen: Spring 1996. Cohen also made a rare appearance as an actor on a 1986 episode of the television series Miami Vice. ~ All Movie Guide
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC, GOQ (born September 21, 1934) is a Canadiansinger-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often deals with the exploration of religion, isolation, sexuality and complex interpersonal relationships. Famously reclusive, spending years in a Zen Buddhist monastery, and possessing a persona frequently associated with mystique,[1] he is extremely well-regarded by critics for his literary accomplishments and for producing an output of work of high artistic quality over a five-decade career.[2]
Musically, Cohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1967 album, Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music.[3] In the 1970s, his material encompassed pop, cabaret and world music. Since the 1980s his high baritone voice has evolved into lower registers (bass baritone and bass), with accompaniment from a wide variety of instruments and female backing singers.
Over 2,000 renditions of Cohen's songs have been recorded. Cohen has been inducted into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen's induction into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters".[4]
Cohen was born in 1934 in Westmount, Montreal, Quebec, into a middle-class Jewish family. His mother, of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, emigrated from Lithuania while his great-grandfather emigrated from Poland.[5] He grew up in Westmount on the Island of Montreal. His father, Nathan Cohen, owned a substantial Montreal clothing store, and died when Leonard was nine years old. Like many other Jewish families with names like Cohen, Kahn, and Kagan, Cohen's family claimed descent from the Kohanim: "I had a very Messianic childhood", he told Richard Goldstein in 1967. "I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest."[6] He attended Herzliah High School, where he studied with poet Irving Layton. As a teenager he learned to play the guitar, subsequently forming a country-folk group called the Buckskin Boys. His father's will provided Leonard with a modest trust income, sufficient to allow him to pursue his literary ambitions.
After completing an undergraduate degree, Cohen spent a term in McGill's law school and a year (1956-7) at Columbia University.
Cohen applied a strong work ethic to his early and keen literary ambitions. He wrote poetry and fiction through much of the 1960s, and preferred to live in quasi-reclusive circumstances. After moving to Hydra, a Greek island, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). The Favourite Game is an autobiographical bildungsroman about a young man who discovers his identity through writing.
Cohen's writing process, he told an interviewer in 1998, is "like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it." [8]
Recording career
1960s and 1970s
Leonard Cohen in 1969
In 1967, Cohen moved to the United States to pursue a career as a folk music singer-songwriter. During the 60s, he was a fringe figure in Andy Warhol's Factory crowd. Warhol speculated that Cohen had spent time listening to Nico in clubs and that this had influenced his musical style.[9] His song "Suzanne" became a hit for Judy Collins and was for many years his most covered song. After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records representative John H. Hammond.
In 1971, Cohen's music was used in the soundtrack to Robert Altman's film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Cohen had been in Nashville when Altman phoned to ask permission to use some tracks off Songs of Leonard Cohen. Coincidentally, earlier that same day, Cohen had viewed Altman's film, Brewster McCloud, in a Nashville theater. He hadn't paid attention to the credits, though; when Altman asked permission to use Cohen's songs in his new film, Cohen asked him who, exactly, he was. Altman mentioned MASH, but Cohen had never heard of it. Altman then told him of the lesser-known Brewster McCloud. Cohen, likely astonished, replied, "Listen, I just came out of the theater. I saw it twice; you can have anything of mine you want!"[10]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cohen toured the United States, Canada and Europe. Beginning around 1974, his collaboration with pianist and arranger John Lissauer created a live sound praised by the critics. During this time, Cohen toured twice with Jennifer Warnes as a back-up singer (in 1972 and 1979). Warnes would become a fixture on Cohen's future albums and she recorded an album of Cohen songs in 1987, Famous Blue Raincoat.[11]
In 1977, Cohen released Death of a Ladies' Man (note the plural possessive case; one year later in 1978, Cohen released a volume of poetry with the coyly revised title, Death of a Lady's Man). The album was produced by Phil Spector, well known as the inventor of the "wall of sound" technique, in which pop music is backed with thick layers of instrumentation, an approach very different from Cohen's usually minimalist instrumentation. The recording of the album was fraught with difficulty; Spector reportedly mixed the album in secret studio sessions, and Cohen said Spector once threatened him with a crossbow. Cohen thought the end result to be "grotesque",[12] but also "semi-virtuous".[13]
In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs. Produced by Cohen himself and Henry Lewy (Joni Mitchell's sound engineer) the album included performances by a jazz-fusion band introduced to Cohen by Mitchell and oriental instruments (oud, Gypsy violin and mandolin). In 2001 Cohen released an album of live recordings of songs from his 1979 tour, entitled Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979.
1980s
Leonard Cohen (1988).
In 1984, Cohen released Various Positions, including "Dance Me to the End of Love" and the often recorded "Hallelujah". Columbia declined to release the album in the United States, where Cohen's popularity had declined in previous years. Throughout his career, Cohen's music has sold better in Europe and Canada than in the U.S.; he once satirically expressed how touched he is at the modesty the American company showed in promoting his records.
In 1986 he appeared in the episode French Twist of the TV series Miami Vice. In 1987, Jennifer Warnes's tribute album Famous Blue Raincoat helped restore Cohen's career in the U.S., and the following year he released I'm Your Man, which marked a drastic change in his music. Synthesizers ruled the album and Cohen's lyrics included more social commentary and dark humour. It was Cohen's most acclaimed and popular since Songs of Leonard Cohen."First We Take Manhattan" and the title song became two of his most popular songs.[citation needed]
1990s
The use of the album track "Everybody Knows" (co-written by Sharon Robinson) in the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume helped to expose Cohen's music to a younger audience. The song was also featured prominently in fellow countryman Atom Egoyan's 1994 film, Exotica. In 1992, Cohen released The Future, which urges (often in terms of biblical prophecy) perseverance, reformation, and hope in the face of grim prospects. Three tracks from the album - "Waiting for the Miracle", "The Future" and "Anthem" - were featured in the movie Natural Born Killers.
In the title track, Cohen prophesies impending political and social collapse, reportedly as his response to the L.A. unrest of 1992: "I've seen the future, brother: It is murder." In "Democracy", Cohen criticizes America but says he loves it: "I love the country but I can't stand the scene." Further, he criticizes the American public's lack of interest in politics and addiction to television: "I'm neither left or right/I'm just staying home tonight/getting lost in that hopeless little screen".
Nanni Moretti's film Caro diario (1993) features "I'm Your Man", as Moretti himself rides his Vespa along the streets of Rome.
In 1994, following a tour to promote The Future, Cohen retreated to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles, beginning what would become five years of seclusion at the center.[11] In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name Jikan, meaning 'silence'. He served as personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi. He left Mount Baldy in 1999. Japanese songwriter and poet Masato Tomobe stated he admires Cohen and made him more recognized in Japan around this time.
2000s
Ten New Songs
In 2001, following the five years' seclusion as a Zen Buddhist monk at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center, Cohen returned to music with Ten New Songs, featuring a heavy influence from producer and co-composer Sharon Robinson. With this album, Cohen shed the relatively extroverted, engaged, and even optimistic outlook of The Future (the sole political track, “The Land of Plenty,” abandoning stern commandment for yearning but helpless prayer) to lament and seek acceptance of varieties of personal loss: the approach of death and the departure of love, romantic and even divine. Ten New Songs' cohesive musical style (perhaps absent from Cohen's albums since Recent Songs) owes much to Robinson’s involvement. The album includes the song "Alexandra Leaving", which is a striking transformation of the poem "The God Abandons Antony", by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. Although not Cohen’s bitterest album, it may rank as his most melancholic.
Dear Heather
In October 2004, Cohen released Dear Heather, largely a musical collaboration with jazz chanteuse (and current romantic partner) Anjani Thomas, although Sharon Robinson returns to collaborate on three tracks (including a duet). As light as the previous album was dark, Dear Heather reflects Cohen's own change of mood - he has said in a number of interviews that his depression has lifted in recent years, which he attributes to the aid of Zen Buddhism. Dear Heather is perhaps his least cohesive, and most experimental and playful album to date, and the stylings of some of the songs (especially the title track) frustrated many fans. In an interview following his induction into the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame, Cohen explained that the album was intended to be a kind of notebook or scrapbook of themes, and that a more formal record had been planned for release shortly afterwards, but that this was put on ice by his legal battles with his ex-manager.
Blue Alert
Blue Alert, an album of songs co-written by Anjani and Cohen, was released on May 23, 2006 to positive reviews. The album is sung by Anjani, who according to one reviewer "sounds like Cohen reincarnated as woman. . . . though Cohen doesn't sing a note on the album, his voice permeates it like smoke."[14] The album includes a recent musical setting of Cohen's "As the mist leaves no scar", a poem originally published in The Spice-Box of Earth in 1961 and adapted by Spector into "True Love Leaves No Traces" on Death of a Ladies' Man.
Book of Longing
Cohen's book of poetry and drawings, Book of Longing, was published in May 2006; in March a Toronto-based retailer offered signed copies to the first 1500 orders placed online, which saw the entire amount sold within hours. The book quickly topped bestseller lists in Canada. On May 13, 2006, Cohen made his first public appearance for thirteen years, at an in-store event at a bookstore in Toronto. Approximately 3000 people turned up for the event, causing the streets surrounding the bookstore to be closed. He sang two of his earliest and best-known songs: "So Long, Marianne" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", accompanied by the Barenaked Ladies and Ron Sexsmith. Also appearing with him was Anjani, the two promoting her new CD, along with his book.[15]
2008 concert tour
2008 concert tour
January 13, 2008, Cohen quietly announced a long-anticipated concert tour [16]. The tour, Cohen's first in 15 years, began May 11 in Fredericton, NB to wide critical acclaim, and was prolonged until spring of 2010.[17] The schedule encompassed Canada and Europe, including performances at The Big Chill (music festival),[18] the Montreal Jazz Festival, and on the Pyramid Stage at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival on 29 June 2008.[19] His performance at Glastonbury was hailed by many as the highlight of the festival[20], and his performance of 'Hallelujah' as the sun went down received a rapturous reception and a lengthy ovation from a packed Pyramid Stage field.[21] He also played in Dublin in what has come to be regarded as a "milestone concert". The London performance was later released on CD and DVD under the title Live in London.
The Sydney Entertainment Centre show on January 28 sold out rapidly, which motivated promoters to later announce a second show at the venue. The first performance was well-received, and the audience of 12,000 responded with five standing ovations. Cohen gave generous credit to his touring band, his long-time collaborator and vocalist Sharon Robinson, and the "sublime" Webb Sisters.[citation needed] In January 2009, the tour arrived in New Zealand. Simon Sweetman in The Dominion Post (Wellington) of 21 January wrote "It is hard work having to put this concert in to words so I'll just say something I have never said in a review before and will never say again: this was the best show I have ever seen." The first concert of the Australian tour took place at Rochford Winery in Victoria's Yarra Valley on January 24 in perfect weather in front of an audience of about 7,000.
Hallelujah
On March 7, 2008, Jeff Buckley’s version of Cohen's “Hallelujah”, went to number 1 on the iTunes chart after being performed by Jason Castro on the seventh season of the television series American Idol.[22] Another major boost for Cohen's song exposure came when singer-songwriter Kate Voegele released her version of "Hallelujah" from her 2007 Don't Look Away album and appeared as a regular character, named Mia, on season five of the teenage television show One Tree Hill.
A few days later, Cohen was inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in recognition of his status among the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters".[4]. He was introduced by fellow musician Lou Reed.
In December 2008 Cohen's "Hallelujah" was placed no. 1 and 2 in the U.K. Christmas singles chart, with 'X Factor' winner Alexandra Burke at No. 1 and Jeff Buckley at No. 2. And mp3 downloads of Cohen's original version placed at No. 36, 24 years after its initial release. Not since the early days of the UK Singles Chart had three versions of the same song charted simultaneously.
Live in London
On March 21, 2009, Cohen released "Live in London", which was recorded on July 17, 2008 at London's O2 Arena, and was released in both DVD and as a two-CD set. The album contains 27 songs and is over two and a half hours long.
2009 concerts
On February 19, 2009, Cohen played his first American concert in fifteen years at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.[23] He also performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 17, 2009, in front of one of the largest Outdoor Theatre crowds in the history of the festival. His performance of "Hallelujah" was widely regarded as one of the highlights of the festival.
In February 2009, in response to hearing about the devastation to the Yarra Valley region of Victoria in Australia, he donated $200,000 to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal in support of those affected by the extensive Black Saturday bushfires that razed the area just weeks after his performance at the Rochford Winery in the A Day on the Green concert.[24] Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper reported: "Tour promoter Frontier Touring said $200,000 would be donated on behalf of Cohen, [fellow performer Paul] Kelly and Frontier to aid victims of the Victorian bushfires."[25]
A scheduled concert in Ramallah was cancelled after Palestinian human-rights activists objected to the fact that Cohen had also scheduled a concert in Tel Aviv, Israel, contrary to a proposed cultural boycott of Israel.[26] Tickets for the Tel Aviv concert, Cohen's first performance in Israel since 1975, went on sale on August 1, 2009, and were sold out in less than 24 hours. It was announced that proceeds from the sale of the 47,000 tickets would go into a charitable fund in partnership with Amnesty International and would be used by Israeli and Palestinian peace groups for projects providing health services to children and bringing together Israeli veterans and former Palestinian fighters and the families of those killed in the conflict.[27] However on August 17, 2009, Amnesty International released a statement saying they were withdrawing from any involvement with the concert or its proceeds.[28] Amnesty International later stated that its withdrawal was not due to the boycott but "the lack of support from Israeli and Palestinian NGOs."[29] The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) led the call for the boycott, claiming that Cohen "is intent on whitewashing Israel's colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel."[30]
On September 18, at a concert in Valencia, Spain, Cohen collapsed halfway through performing his song Bird on the Wire.[31] It was reported that Cohen had stomach problems, and possibly food poisoning.[32]
On September 24 at the Ramat Gan Stadium, Israel, Cohen was highly emotional about the Israeli-PalestinianNGO Bereaved Families for Peace. He mentioned the organization twice, saying "It was a while ago that I first heard of the work of the 'Bereaved Parents for Peace'. That there was this coalition of Palestinian and Israeli families who had lost so much in the conflict and whose depth of suffering had compelled them to reach across the border into the houses of the enemy. Into the houses of those, to locate them who had suffered as much as they had, and then to stand with them in aching confraternity, a witness to an understanding that is beyond peace and that is beyond confrontation. So, this is not about forgiving and forgetting, this is not about laying down one's arms in a time of war, this is not even about peace, although, god willing, it could be a beginning. This is about a response to human grief. A radical, unique and holy, holy, holy response to human suffering. Baruch Hashem, thank God, I bow my head in respect to the nobility of this enterprise."[33] At the end of the show he blessed the crowd by the Priestly Blessing, a Jewish blessing offered by Kohanim.[34]
Recurring themes in Cohen's work include love and sex, religion, psychological depression, and music itself. He has also engaged with certain political themes, though sometimes ambiguously so. "Suzanne" mixes a wistful type of love song with a religious meditation, themes that are also mixed in "Joan of Arc". "Famous Blue Raincoat" is from the point of view of a man whose marriage has been broken (in exactly what degree is ambiguous in the song) by his wife's infidelity with his close friend, and is written in the form of a letter to that friend, to whom he writes, "I guess that I miss you/ I guess I forgive you … Know your enemy is sleeping/ And his woman is free", while "Everybody Knows" deals in part with social inequality ("...the poor stay poor/ And the rich get rich"), and the harsh reality of AIDS: "… the naked man and woman/ Are just a shining artifact of the past".
"Sisters of Mercy", according to the sleeve notes of his Greatest Hits evokes his encounter with two women named Barbara and Lorraine in a hotel room in Edmonton, Canada. Claims that "Chelsea Hotel #2" treats his affair with Janis Joplin without sentimentality are countered by claims that the song reveals a much more complicated and mixed set of feelings than straightforward love. Cohen discusses the song in an interview filmed for the tribute-concert movie Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. He confirms that the subject is indeed Janis with some evident embarrassment. "She wouldn't mind", he declares, "but my mother would be appalled". The title of "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" speaks for itself.
Cohen comes from a Jewish background, most obviously reflected in his song "Story of Isaac", and also in "Who by Fire", whose words and melody echo the Unetaneh Tokef, an 11th century liturgical poem recited on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Broader Judeo-Christian themes are sounded throughout the album Various Positions: "Hallelujah", which has music as a secondary theme, begins by evoking the biblical king David composing a song that "pleased the Lord", and continues with references to Bathsheba and Samson. The lyrics of "Whither Thou Goest", performed by him and released in his album "Live in London", are adapted from the Bible (Ruth 1:16-17, King James Version). If it be Your Will also has a strong air of religious resignation.
In his early career as a novelist, Beautiful Losers grappled with the mysticism of the Catholic/IroquoisCatherine Tekakwitha. Cohen has also been involved with Buddhism at least since the 1970s and in 1996 he was ordained a Buddhist monk. However, he still considers himself also a Jew: "I'm not looking for a new religion. I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism."[36]
He is described as an observant Jew in an article in The New York Times:
Mr. Cohen is an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath even while on tour and performed for Israeli troops during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. So how does he square that faith with his continued practice of Zen?
"Allen Ginsberg asked me the same question many years ago," he said. "Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. So theologically there is no challenge to any Jewish belief."[37]
Having suffered from depression during much of his life (although less so with the onset of old age), Cohen has written much (especially in his early work) about depression and suicide. The wife of the protagonist of Beautiful Losers commits a gory suicide; "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" is about a suicide; suicide is mentioned in the darkly comic "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong"; "Dress Rehearsal Rag" is about a last-minute decision not to kill oneself; a general atmosphere of depression pervades such songs as "Please Don't Pass Me By" and "Tonight Will Be Fine". As in the aforementioned "Hallelujah", music itself is the subject of many songs, including "Tower of Song", "A Singer Must Die", and "Jazz Police".
Social justice often shows up as a theme in his work, where he seems, especially in later albums, to expound a leftist politics, albeit with culturally conservative elements. In "Democracy", lamenting, "the wars against disorder/ … the sirens night and day/ … the fires of the homeless/ … the ashes of the gay", he concludes that the United States is actually not a democracy. He has made the observation (in "Tower of Song") that, "the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor/ And there's a mighty judgment coming". In the title track of The Future he recasts this prophecy on a pacifist note: "I've seen the nations rise and fall/ …/ But love's the only engine of survival". In "Anthem", he promises that "the killers in high places [who] say their prayers out loud/ … [are] gonna hear from me".
Several Cohen songs speak of abortion, always either as something distasteful or even atrocious. In "The Future", he sings sarcastically "Destroy another fetus now/ We don't like children anyhow". In "Stories of the Street" Cohen speaks of "The age of lust is giving birth/ And both the parents ask/ The nurse to tell them fairy tales/ from both sides of the glass".
"Diamonds in the Mine" is often quoted as being a song about abortion with the lyric: "The only man of energy/ Yes the revolution's pride/ He trained a hundred women/ Just to kill an unborn child", always being used to substantiate this. However, extensive research suggests this song is actually about the demise of the hedonism of the 1960s. The "man of energy" referred to is Charles Manson and the "unborn child" is Sharon Tate's unborn baby when the Manson "Family" committed the atrocities in 1969.
In "The Land of Plenty", he characterizes the United States (if not the opulent West in general) of benightedness: "May the lights in The Land of Plenty/ Shine on the truth some day".
War is an enduring theme of Cohen's work which in his earlier songs, as indeed in his early life, he approached ambivalently. Challenged in 1974 over his serious demeanor in concerts and the military salutes with which he ended them, Cohen remarked: "I sing serious songs, and I'm serious onstage because I couldn't do it any other way. ... I don't consider myself a civilian. I consider myself a soldier, and that's the way soldiers salute".[38] In "Field Commander Cohen" he imagines himself (perhaps metaphorically) as a soldier/spy socializing with Fidel Castro in Cuba—where he had actually lived at the height of US-Cuba tensions in 1961, allegedly sporting a Che Guevara-style beard and military fatigues. This song was actually written immediately following Cohen's front-line stint with the Israeli air force, the "fighting in Egypt" documented in an (again perhaps metaphorical) passage of "Night Comes On". In 1973, Cohen, who had traveled to Jerusalem to sign up on the Israeli side in the Yom Kippur War, had instead been assigned to a USO-style entertainer tour of front-line tank emplacements in the Sinai Desert, coming under fire. A poetic mention of then-General Ariel Sharon delivered in the same mode as his Fidel Castro allusions, has given birth to the legend that Cohen and Sharon shared cognac together during Cohen's term in the Sinai.
Deeply moved by encounters with both Israeli and Arab soldiers, he left the country to write "Lover Lover Lover", which has often been interpreted as a personal renunciation of any part in such conflict, nonetheless ending with the hope his song will serve an unspecified listener as "a shield against the enemy". He would later remark, "'Lover, Lover, Lover' was born over there; The whole world has its eyes riveted on this tragic and complex conflict. Then again, I am faithful to certain ideas, inevitably. I hope that those of which I am in favour will gain."[39] Asked which side he supported in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Cohen has responded: " I don't want to speak of wars or sides ... Personal process is one thing, it's blood, it's the identification one feels with their roots and their origins. The militarism I practice as a person and a writer is another thing. ... I don't wish to speak about war."[40]
His recent politics continue a lifelong predilection for the underdog, the "beautiful loser". Whether recording "The Partisan", a French Resistance song by Anna Marly and Emmanuel d'Astier, or singing his own "The Old Revolution", written from the point of view of a defeated royalist, he has throughout his career through his music expressed his sympathy and support for the oppressed. Although Cohen's fascination with war is often as metaphor for more explicitly cultural and personal issues, as in New Skin for the Old Ceremony, by this measure his most "militant" album.
Cohen blends a good deal of pessimism about political/cultural issues with a great deal of humour and (especially in his later work) gentle acceptance. His wit contends with his stark analyses, as his songs are often verbally playful and even cheerful: In "Tower of Song", the famously raw-voiced Cohen sings ironically that he was "… born with the gift/ Of a golden voice"; the generally dark "Is This What You Wanted?" nonetheless contains playful lines "You were the whore and the beast of Babylon/ I was Rin Tin Tin"; in concert, he often plays around with his lyrics (for example, "If you want a doctor/ I'll examine every inch of you" from "I'm Your Man" will become "If you want a Jewish doctor …"); and he will introduce one song by using a phrase from another song or poem (for example, introducing "Leaving Green Sleeves" by paraphrasing his own "Queen Victoria": "This is a song for those who are not nourished by modern love").
Cohen has also recorded such love songs as Irving Berlin's "Always" or the more obscure soul number "Be for Real" (originally sung by Marlena Shaw), chosen in part for their unlikely juxtaposition to his own work.
Lawsuits
On October 8, 2005, Cohen alleged that his longtime former manager, Kelley Lynch, misappropriated over US $5 million from Cohen's retirement fund leaving only $150,000.[41] Cohen was sued in turn by other former business associates.[41] These events placed him in the public spotlight, including a cover feature on him with the headline "Devastated!" in Canada's Maclean's magazine. In March 2006, Cohen won the civil suit and was awarded US $9 million by a Los Angeles County superior court. Lynch, however, ignored the suit and did not respond to a subpoena issued for her financial records.[42] As a result it has been widely reported that Cohen may never be able to collect the cash.[43] In 2007, U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock dismissed a claim by Cohen for more than US $4.5 million against Colorado investment firm Agile Group, and in 2008 he dismissed a defamation suit that Agile Group had filed against Cohen.[44] Cohen has been under new management since April 2005.
Family life
In the 1960s, during his stay at Hydra, Cohen befriended the Scandinavian novelists Axel Jensen and Göran Tunström. He lived there with Axel's wife Marianne Jensen (now: Ihlen Stang) and their son Axel after they broke up. The song "So Long, Marianne" is about her.
According to biographer and filmmaker Harry Rasky, Cohen has been married once, to Los Angeles artist Suzanne Elrod. Although the two did have an important relationship in the 1970s, Cohen himself has said that 'cowardice' and 'fear' have prevented him from ever actually marrying[45][46]. He had two children with Elrod: a son, Adam, was born in 1972 and a daughter, Lorca, named after poet Federico García Lorca, was born in 1974. Adam Cohen began his own career as a singer-songwriter in the mid-1990s and currently fronts a band called Low Millions. Elrod took the cover photograph on Cohen's Live Songs album and is pictured on the cover of the Death of a Ladies' Man album.
Cohen and Elrod had split by 1979. Contrary to popular belief, "Suzanne", one of his best-known songs, refers to Suzanne Verdal, the former wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, rather than Elrod.[47] In 1990, Cohen was romantically linked to actress Rebecca De Mornay. He is now romantically involved with (and working with) Anjani Thomas.
Titles and honours
In 1968, Cohen refused a Governor General's Award (in category for English language poetry or drama) for Selected Poems 1956–1968.
In 2002, Cohen was awarded a SNEP Award for more than 100,000 copies sold of Ten New Songs in France.
In 2003, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honour.
In 2004, Beautiful Losers was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2005. It was selected and originally to be championed by singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright; however, tour commitments meant that Wainwright had to be replaced by singerMolly Johnson.
Cohen's music also appeared the following year in the 1966 NFB animated short Angel.
In 1968 Cohen performed on the BBC, both on the Julie Felix Show and in his own special, split into two thirty minute shows. The first clip still exists, while the second is only available as a bootleg CD [54].
His song The Partisan was in 1971 the theme from the RAI- TV (Italy) broadcast Habitat: l'uomo e l'ambiente (Habitat: Man and the Environment).
The Favourite Game (Le Jeu de l'ange), based on his novel of the same title, was released in Canada in 2003.
In 1985, Cohen co-wrote and co-composed Night Magic (starring Carole Laure) with fellow Quebecer, Lewis Furey.
Cohen narrated a documentary called The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Way of Life.
Cohen makes a cameo appearance performing "The Stranger Song" in the Canadian film The Ernie Game (1968), which is based on the stories of Bernard Cole Spencer.
Cohen is referenced in the Canadian film Looking for Leonard.
Cohen is the subject of a two-part documentary, Leonard Cohen: Under Review 1934-1977 (2007) and Leonard Cohen: Under Review 1978-2006 (2008), available separately on DVD.
Cohen appeared in the role of villain Francois Zolan in the "French Twist" episode of the American television series Miami Vice (season 2, episode 17), originally broadcast on February 21, 1986.
The Songs Of Leonard Cohen, a 1980 documentary by Harry Rasky, featuring Irving Layton, includes highlights from Cohen's 1979 tour and tracks from the LP Recent Songs.
I Am A Hotel, a Canadian-produced 25-minute song cycle/video starring Cohen and dancer Robert Desrosiers
^ Richard Rees Jones, "Leonard Cohen, Minnewaterpark, Bruges, Belgium", 10 July 2008, "Cohen’s music is a highly appealing form of central European folk, with clouds of acoustic and percussive invention augmented by achingly perfect vocal harmonies and touches of countryish electric and pedal steel guitar" Link
^ See Larry Rohter. On the Road, for Reasons Practical and Spiritual. The New York Times, February 25, 2009.For an extended discussion of the Jewish mystical and Buddhist motifs in Cohen's songs and poems, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “New Jerusalem Glowing: Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen in a Kabbalistic Key,” Kabbalah: A Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 15 (2006): 103-152.
