About Me
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC (born September 21, 1934 in Westmount, Quebec) is a Canadian poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963.Cohen's early songs are based in folk music melodies and instrumentation. In the 1970s, he was more influenced by popular music and cabaret music. Since the 1980s he typically has sung in a bass register, with accompaniments from electronic synthesizers and female backing vocals.His work often explores the themes of religion, isolation, sexuality, and complex interpersonal relationships.Cohen's songs and poetry have influenced many other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand renditions of his work have been recorded. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and he is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour.
Cohen was born to a middle-class Jewish family of Polish ancestry in 1934 in Montreal, Quebec. He grew up in Westmount on the Island of Montreal. His father, Nathan Cohen, was the owner of a substantial Montreal clothing store, and died when Leonard was nine years old. Like many other Jews named Cohen, Katz, Kagan, etc., his family made a proud claim of 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."[1] 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.Cohen idolized his father, and his death threw him into a deep depression. As he grew older he began taking the then-legal drug LSD. Cohen has said that he believes the drug opened his awareness to the "hypocrisy" and "self-delusion" that are "common traits of humanity," ideas which are prominent themes in his songs. His mother Masha Cohen, from whom he inherited his love for songs and poets, died in 1978. Cohen's depression did not lift until the late 1990s.
In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he was president of the McGill Debating Union. His first poetry book, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was published under Louis Dudek as the first book in the McGill Poetry Series, while Cohen was an undergraduate. The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) made him well known in poetry circles, especially in his native Canada.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 finding his identity in writing.In contrast, Beautiful Losers can be considered as an 'anti-bildungsroman' since it — in an early post modern fashion — deconstructs the identity of the main characters by combining the sacred and the profane, religion and sexuality in a rich, lyrical language. Reflecting Cohen's Québécois roots, but perhaps unusually for someone from a Jewish background, a secondary plot in Beautiful Losers concerns Kateri Tekakwitha, the Roman Catholic Iroquois mystic. Beautiful Losers initially shocked Canadian reviewers, with its explicit sexual content.
In 1967, Cohen relocated to the United States to pursue a career as a folk singer-songwriter. His song "Suzanne" became a hit for Judy Collins. After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records representative John H. Hammond (who signed artists such as Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen).The sound of Cohen's first album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was too dark to be a commercial success, but was widely acclaimed by folk music buffs. He became a cult name in the UK, where the album spent over a year on the album charts. He followed up with Songs from a Room (1969) (featuring the oft-covered "Bird on the Wire"), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), Live Songs (1973), and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974).Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cohen toured the United States, Canada and Europe. In 1973, Cohen toured Israel and performed at army bases during the Yom Kippur War. Beginning around 1974, his collaboration with pianist/arranger John Lissauer created a live sound praised by the critics, but which was never really captured on record. During this time, Cohen often toured with Jennifer Warnes as a back-up singer. Warnes would become a fixture on Cohen's future albums and she recorded an album of Cohen songs in 1987, Famous Blue Raincoat.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 at gunpoint. Cohen thinks the end result is "grotesque"[2], but also "semi-virtuous". [3]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 releasing the live version of songs from its 1979 tour on record Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979
In 1984, Cohen released Various Positions, a highly spiritual and synthesizer-guided album, featuring the often covered "Hallelujah". Columbia declined to release the album in the United States, where Cohen's popularity had declined in recent 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 has shown in promoting his records.)In 1986 he made a guest appearance in the episode French Twist of the TV series Miami Vice. In 1987, Jennifer Warnes' 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, although in a much more subdued manner than on Death of a Ladies' Man, and Cohen's lyrics included more social commentary and dark humour. It was Cohen's most acclaimed and popular since Songs of Leonard Cohen, and "First We Take Manhattan" and the title song became two of his most popular songs.
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. 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 controversial and violent 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 criticises 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."In 1994, following a tour to promote The Future, Cohen retreated to the Mount Baldy Zen Centre near Los Angeles, beginning what would become five years of seclusion at the center. In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name Jikan, meaning 'silent one'. He left Mount Baldy in 1999.
In 2001, following the five years' seclusion as a Zen Buddhist monk at the Mount Baldy Zen Centre (where he served as personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi), 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. Although not Cohen’s bitterest album, it may rank as his most melancholic.In October 2004, he released Dear Heather, largely a musical collaboration with jazz chanteuse (and current Cohen 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 neurological processes of aging. 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. Cohen has been under new management since April 2005.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."[4] 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.Cohen's new 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.[5] Cohen's new album meanwhile is also slated for late 2007, while announced touring, first after 1993, still isn't confirmed.Cohen's recent activity has been necessary because Cohen alleges that his financial resources (including the publishing rights to his songs) were misappropriated by his longtime former manager, Kelley Lynch. A lawsuit is pending for gross misappropriation of funds.[6] Cohen stated that Lynch has misappropriated over US$5 million from Cohen's retirement fund, leaving only $150,000. Cohen was sued in turn by other former business associates. These events have put him in the public spotlight, including a cover feature on him with the headline "Devastated!" in Canada's Maclean's magazine. In March of 2006, Cohen won the civil suit, and was awarded US$9 million by a Los Angeles County superior court. Lynch, however, had completely ignored the suit, and did not respond to a subpoena issued for her financial records.[7] As a result it has been widely reported that Cohen may never be able to collect the cash.
