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Leonard Cohen

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Leonard Cohen
File:Leonard Cohen (2001).jpg
Photograph by Bob Ludwig
Background information
OriginQuebec, Canada
Years active1967—present

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC (born September 21, 1934 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a Canadian poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter. His musical career has largely overshadowed his prior work as a poet and novelist, although he has continued to publish poetry sporadically after his breakthrough in the music industry.

Musically, Cohen's early songs are based in folk music, both for melodies and instrumentation, but, beginning in the 1970s, his work shows the influence of various types of popular music and cabaret music. Since the 1980s he typically sings in a deep bass register, with synthesizers and female backing vocals.

Cohen's songs are often emotionally heavy and lyrically complex, owing more to the metaphoric word play of poetry than to the conventions of song craft. His work often explores the themes of religion, isolation, and complex interpersonal relationships.

Cohen's music has become very influential on other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand cover versions of his work have been recorded. He is also popular in his native land, having been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and awarded the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Biography

Early life

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, who owned a substantial Montreal clothing store, 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 priestly 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 and formed a country-folk group called the Buckskin Boys. His father's will provided Leonard with a modest trust income, sufficient to allow him to freely pursue his literary ambitions for some time without risking economic ruin.

Cohen idealized his father and his death threw him into a deep depression. As he grew older he began taking the then legal drug LSD as a treatment. 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 depression did not lift until the late 1990s. His mother Masha Cohen, from whom he inherited his love for songs and poets, died in 1978.

Development as a poet

In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he was president of the McGill Debating Union and pursued a career as a poet. His first poetry book, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was published while he 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 even as a young man 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 postmodern 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 Tekakwitha, the Roman Catholic Iroquois mystic. Beautiful Losers, greeted initially with shock by Canadian reviewers who berated it for its explicit sexual content, is today considered by many critics to be among the finest literary novels of the 1960s. For a good early survey of Cohen's written work, see Leonard Cohen by Steven Scobie (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1978).

Music

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, and after performing at a few folk festivals, Cohen was discovered by John H. Hammond, the same Columbia Records representative who discovered Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

The sound of Cohen's first album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was much too downtrodden to be a commercial success, but was widely acclaimed by folk music buffs and by Cohen's peers. He became a cult name in the UK, where it 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), 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 almost universally praised by the critics, but never really captured on record. During his time, Cohen often toured with Jennifer Warnes as a back-up singer. Warnes would become a fixture on Cohen's future albums and recorded an album of Cohen songs in 1987, Famous Blue Raincoat.

In 1977, Cohen released an album called 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 much different from Cohen's usually minimalist instrumentation. The recording of the album was a complete fiasco. Spector reportedly mixed the album in secret studio sessions and Cohen said Spector once threatened him at gunpoint. The end result was considered gaudy and ostentatious, and Cohen's songs were considered some of his weakest as well.

In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs. Produced by Cohen himself, and Henry Lewy (Joni Mitchell's sound engineer), album included performances by jazz fusion band, introduced to Cohen by Mitchell, and oriental instruments (oud, Gypsy violin, mandolin). In 2001, Cohen referred to Recent Songs as his best album, releasing the live version of songs from its 1979 tour on record Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979.

In 1984, Cohen released Various Positions, featuring the oft-covered "Hallelujah," but 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 an episode 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.

He followed with another acclaimed album, The Future, in 1992. The Future is his most political album to date, articulating a politics to urge (more often than not in terms of biblical prophecy) perseverance, reformation, and even hope in the face of prospects ranging from the grim to the dire. Three tracks from the album - "Waiting for the Miracle", "The Future" and "Anthem" - were featured in the controversial 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." Some describe it as anti-abortion due to the lyrics "destroy another fetus now, We don't like children anyhow. I've see the future, baby, 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 describes his own politics as: "I'm neither left or right/I'm just staying home tonight/getting lost in that hopeless little screen."

Cohen's humility also shines through "Waiting for the Miracle" (co-written with Sharon Robinson), where he lampoons his own severity (along perhaps with his religious austerity and even his instrumentation), singing: "There ain't no entertainment and the judgments are severe/ The maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble-gum/ When you're waiting for the miracle to come." And in "Closing Time", Cohen gives the dire prophecies of "The Future" as forgiving and humble a reworking as is perhaps imaginable, observing biblical, personal, and political "end times" from the perspective of an old guy being kicked out of a sleazy but jubilant bar. The album ends with "Anthem" where in perhaps the album's best-loved and most-often-quoted passage, he urges perseverance and faith in the face of broken Liberty: "Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in."

In 2001, following five years' seclusion as a zen Buddhist monk at the Mount 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. 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.

"Blue Alert," an album of songs co-written by Thomas and Cohen, is scheduled for release on May 23, 2006. It is sung by Thomas, who on the album reportedly "sounds like Cohen reincarnated as woman. . . . though Cohen doesn't sing a note on the album, his voice permeates it like smoke."[2]

Recent activity

In 1994, following a tour to promote The Future, Cohen retreated to the Mount Baldy Zen Center 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.

Cohen has been under new management since April 2005. He recently wrote and produced the album Blue Alert for Anjani Thomas, scheduled for release May 23, 2006. Cohen's new book of poetry and drawings Book of Longing will be published in April 2006; in March the Toronto publisher offered signed copies to the first 1500 orders placed online, which saw the entire amount sold within hours. Cohen's new album meanwhile is also slated for late 2006, with subsequent touring.

This recent activity has been necessary—Cohen states—because his financial resources, including the publishing rights to his songs, reportedly have been gutted, leading him to file suit against his longtime former manager, Kelley Lynch, for gross misappropriation of funds [3]. Cohen stated that he has been deprived of over US$5 million placed in a fund for his retirement, 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 [4]. As a result it has been widely reported that Cohen may never be able to collect the cash [5].

Family life

Cohen has never married. In the 1960s, during his stay at Hydra, Cohen befriended the Scandinavian novelists Axel Jensen and Göran Tunström. Leonard lived there with Axel's wife Marianne Jensen (now: Ihlen) and their son Axel after they broke up. The song "So Long, Marianne" is about her. For a long time it was believed that the character Lorenzo in Jensen's novel Joacim (1961) was based on Cohen, but Axel told him it was influenced by Tunström.

He fathered two children with artist Suzanne 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.

Contrary to popular belief, "Suzanne," one of his best-known songs, refers to Suzanne Verdal, the wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, rather than Elrod.

Around 1990, Cohen was romantically linked, and by some accounts formally engaged, to actress Rebecca De Mornay. He is now seeing and working with Anjani Thomas.

Themes

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.

Love and sex are common enough themes in popular music; Cohen's background as a novelist and poet brings an uncommon sensibility to these themes. "Suzanne," probably the first Cohen song to gain broad attention, 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 the harsh reality of AIDS: "… the naked man and woman/ Are just a shining artifact of the past." "Sisters of Mercy" evokes of genuine love (agape more than eros) found in a hotel room encounter with two Edmonton women, whereas "Chelsea Hotel #2" treats his Janis Joplin one-night stand rather unsentimentally, and 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 in "Who by Fire," whose words and melody echo the Unesaneh Tokef, an 11th century liturgical poem recited on Rosh Hashanah. 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"; "Coming Back to you" and "If It Be Your Will" are clearly addressed to a Judeo-Christian God. In his early career as a novelist, Beautiful Losers grappled with the mysticism of the Catholic/Iroquois Katherine 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." [6]

Having suffered from psychological 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." A reviewer once remarked tongue-in-cheek that Cohen's albums should be sold with razor blades.

As in the aforementioned "Hallelujah", music itself 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: A specifically (and classically) leftist position, as is his practically Chomskyan 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." 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." And in "On That Day," in a sincere and genuine lament for the 9-11 tragedy, he nevertheless, startlingly, raises (and takes an agnostic position on) the question of whether "It's what we deserve/ For sins against God/ For crimes in the world."

War is an enduring theme of Cohen's work which in his earlier songs, as indeed in his early life, he approached ambivalently. In "Field Commander Cohen" he (perhaps metaphorically) imagines himself 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 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 1973 war with Egypt, had instead been assigned to a USO-style entertainer tour of front-line tank emplacements in the Sinai Desert, at one of which he both came under fire and reportedly shared cognac with an unlikely self-professed fan, then-General Ariel Sharon. Disillusioned by encounters with captured and wounded enemy troops, and having expressed ambivalence from the start about the causes of the conflict, he eventually left, but not before beginning to write his song "Lover Lover Lover," as he later claimed, "for the soldiers of both sides."[7]

His recent politics continue a lifelong predilection for the underdog, the "beautiful loser," whether the WWII French resister of Anna Marly and Hy Zaret's The Partisan (which he covered) or the royalist of his own "The Old Revolution," 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.

Several of Cohen's songs apparently oppose abortion. "Story of Isaac" leaves completely unclear whether those "who build these altars now/ To sacrifice these children" are sacrificing young soldiers, or the unborn, or neither or both. But "Diamonds in the Mine" explicitly and infuriatingly declaims, "The only man of energy/ Yes the revolution's pride/ He trained a hundred women/ Just to kill an unborn child," and in "The Future", Cohen sings sarcastically "Destroy another fetus now/ We don't like children anyhow." Some manner of social conservatism may be a subtext in "Stories of the Street," where "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," and in songs where Cohen and various women seem to be on either sides of a war: as in "There is a War," and "First We Take Manhattan."

Cohen blends a good deal of pessimism about political/cultural issues with a great deal of humor 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").

Some of his songs, such as "Ballad of the Absent Mare" and "Hallelujah" are simply beautiful, and "Democracy" looks at a future as hopeful as that of "The Future" is bleak.

Cohen has also covered 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.

Titles and honours

Quotations

(Also see the external referances section below)

Quotes Attributed to Cohen

  • "Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year'."—first words of his speech accepting the Juno Award for Best Male Vocalist in Canada (1992)
  • "I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin."—from interview with The Daily Telegraph (1993)
  • "Now, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a great musicologist, but I'm a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five."—from interview with BBC Radio 1FM (1994)
  • "I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work—just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege."—(same interview with BBC Radio 1FM (1994))

Lyrics

  • "So the great affair is over/ but whoever would have guessed/ it would leave us all so vacant/ and so deeply unimpressed/ It's like our visit to the moon/ or to that other star/ I guess you go for nothing/ if you really want to go that far"—from "Death of a Ladies' Man" (1977)
  • "Everybody knows that you love me baby/ Everybody knows that you really do/ Everybody knows that you've been faithful/ Ah give or take a night or two/ Everybody knows you've been discreet/ But there were so many people you just had to meet/ without your clothes/And everybody knows …"—from "Everybody Knows" (1988).
  • "Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ It's how the light gets in."—from "Anthem" (1992)
  • "You say I took the name in vain. I don't even know the name. But if I did, well really, what's it to you? / There's a blaze of light in every word; it doesn't matter which you heard: the holy or the broken hallelujah." - from "Hallelujah" (1984)
  • "And sometimes when the night is slow/ The wretched and the meek/ We gather up our hearts and go/ A Thousand Kisses Deep."—from "A Thousand Kisses Deep" (2004)

Poetry

  • "It was only when you walked away I saw you had the perfect ass. Forgive me for not falling in love with your face or your conversation."—from The Energy of Slaves (1972)

Quotations About Cohen, and Other Media Referances

Works

Albums

Compilations

  • The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975) (also known as Greatest Hits)
  • More Best of Leonard Cohen (1997) (including two new tracks)
  • The Essential Leonard Cohen (2002), double CD

Books

Soundtracks

Cohen's music has often been used in film soundtracks.

Tribute albums

Cover songs

Many of Cohen's songs have been interpreted (and sometimes translated in other languages) by other artists, occasionally receiving more popular attention than Cohen's own, typically minimalistic arrangements. Some of Cohen's most covered songs include:

As of December 18, 2005, the site www.leonardcohenfiles.com had counted a total of 1105 published cover versions of Cohen's songs.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Leonard Cohen.

General sites on Cohen

Sites about specific albums and works

Articles, conferences, academic papers

Foreign-language sites

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