Leonard Cohen
1934-2016
After the seemingly constant seismic shocks that have characterised 2016 thus far it’s easy to feel numb and desensitised. When David Bowie died in early January no-one could guess that the unbelievably large public outpouring of emotion and sense of dislocation would be repeated ad infinitum with the deaths of other musical legends such as Prince, alongside shocking global developments like the unimaginable rise of Donald Trump. But even after a year that feels unprecedentedly miserable, the death of Leonard Cohen still had the capacity to shock. This isn’t due to the suddenness of his passing, unlike the other greats who passed away this year, Cohen let it be known how ill he was (even said in a statement that he was “ready to die,” adding only that “I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.”), but rather due to a sense of disbelief that the poet laureate of pop could possibly be gone.
Born in 1934 as part of a well to do Jewish family, in an upmarket suburb of Montreal, Leonard Norman Cohen began his career as a novelist and poet in the late 50s and early 60s who defined his intended audience as “inner-directed adolescents, lovers in all degrees of anguish, disappointed Platonists, pornography-peepers, hair-handed monks and Popists.”. Even in these early days a keen interest in the mechanics of human relationships was shot through his writings and when he turned his hand to music (having reportedly learned his chosen instrument because “guitars impress girls”) this interest bloomed into an all consuming obsession on his debut album Song From Leonard Cohen being released in 1967. Funereal, serious, broken hearted and sung with a weariness that seemed to belie his relative youth (at 33 Cohen was close to a decade older than most of his 60s contemporaries.) and without even a touch of the contemporary craze of psychedelia, the album was far from a commercial success. However, the extremely literate poetry of his lyrics caused the album to be feverishly consumed by fellow folk artists who fell over themselves to cover songs like Suzanne and So Long Marianne. Cohen’s songs were built on a bedrock of sex, death and religious theology in a blend that is deceptively simple yet immensely powerful. As a result whilst many of his songs are more famous for their cover versions, Cohen’s mind has proven truly inimitable.
Swiftly following his debut with two more minimalist (in his early albums the synths and Greek Choruses of backing vocalists that would come to characterise his style are notably absent) classics: Songs From A Room and Songs Of Love And Hate Cohen built up a fanatical following who held him up as the finest lyricist in music. This claim has often been backed up by his ostensible rivals with Bob Dylan describing him as “number 1 to my zero”. However the controversial decision to hire a notably unstable Phil Spector to produce 1977’s Death Of A Ladies Man whose Wall Of Sound approach to production (Spector was possessed with a paranoid mania that saw the producer pointing a gun at Cohen and “mixing [the album] in secret under armed guard”) led to an album that was widely ridiculed as “Cohen’s Doo-Wop Nightmare”. Whilst later albums helped rebuild his reputation, commercial success seemed like a distant memory, to the point where Columbia Records decided it would not be releasing his newly recorded album Various Positions, and label head Walter Yetnikoff reportedly telling Cohen, “Look, Leonard; we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.”
Cohen finally burst back into the public eye with the hit 1988 album I’m Your Man, a wryly amusing mediation on sexual politics and social commentary that fairly writhed with sleazy synths counterpointing an ever deepening, gravitas-filled growl. This was a style he continued until he abruptly put his musical career on hold in 1995 in order to become a Buddhist monk. Rather than proving a midlife crisis, Cohen credits his Buddhism as finally curing the depression that haunted him for most of his adult life. He finally re-emerged in 1999 with a wealth of new material, some of which featured on his 2001 album, aptly titled Ten New Songs and was exposed to a new generation by the use of his song Hallelujah in the animated film Shrek. In 2006 Cohen, at the age of 73, was obliged to return to touring when he discovered that his manager (and former lover) Kelley Lynch had embezzled more than $5m from his account. However in his new frame of mind, touring, which he had long found terrifying, had become unexpectedly enjoyable for him and over the course of sprawling 18 month tours he decisively took his position as one of popular musics most loved and respected elder statesmen. The last two albums recorded after this period (2012’s Old Ideas and 2016’s You Want It Darker) were increasingly preoccupied with mortality, but overflowed with a far slyer wit than the seemingly downbeat subject matter would normally allow.
Cohen’s death draws the curtain on a man whose influence over successive generations of musicians and fans could not possibly be overstated. In his last days Cohen claimed that his own accounts of his illness were “exaggeration” due to the fact that he “has always been into self-dramatization” and clarified that “I intend to live for ever”. Thankfully, due to one of the finest back-catalogues in the business, he will.
By Max Feldman
For the review of Cohen’s most recent album You Want It Darker, please click here
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