Leonard Cohen

In the closing stretch of the 1960s, Leonard Cohen emerged as one of the era's most intriguing and elusive singer-songwriters, even if widespread commercial dominance remained beyond his reach. Over the course of six decades in music, punctuated by extended forays into private reflection and artistic experimentation, he sustained a devoted listenership whose loyalty only deepened the aura of intrigue that clung to him. Among the artists who first surfaced in the 1960s yet remained active deep into the following century, Cohen drew steadier critical regard and exerted greater sway over subsequent generations of musicians than nearly any peer, an accomplishment rendered especially striking by the fact that he harbored no serious ambitions in music until his thirties.

Leonard Norman Cohen entered the world in 1934, one year prior to Elvis Presley's birth, into circumstances—familial, societal, and intellectual—that stood sharply apart from those shaping the rock or folk icons of any period. Although he absorbed fragments of country music and dabbled with it during childhood, he refrained from even occasional performances, let alone studio work, until after multiple volumes of writing had already appeared; as a recognized novelist and poet by that point, his literary standing surpassed that of Bob Dylan or most other musicians one might name.

Born into a middle-class Jewish household in Montreal's Westmount neighborhood, Cohen lost his father, a clothing merchant who also possessed an engineering degree, in 1943 when the boy was nine. His mother nurtured his early interest in writing, poetry in particular, within the intellectually progressive setting that granted him latitude to explore an unusually wide array of interests. Music entered his life more cautiously: at thirteen he began guitar lessons partly to attract a classmate's notice, yet he advanced quickly enough to perform country-and-western numbers in neighborhood cafés and later assembled the Buckskin Boys. He enrolled at McGill University as an English major at seventeen, by which time he was composing poetry with genuine commitment and had joined the school's small bohemian circle. Academic performance remained unremarkable, but his writing earned the McNaughton Prize in creative writing upon graduation in 1955. The following year, with his degree still fresh, he issued his debut poetry collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), which attracted strong notices without achieving substantial sales.

By then he had already passed the age demographic that rock and roll primarily targeted. Bob Dylan, still known as Robert Zimmerman and not yet out of his teens, remained young enough to become an admirer of Buddy Holly upon the latter's arrival. Cohen's second poetry volume, The Spice Box of Earth, appeared in 1961 and achieved both critical and commercial success abroad, confirming his stature as a significant literary voice. He briefly attempted to enter the family trade and spent time at Columbia University in New York while continuing to write. Royalties from the second book, combined with Canadian government literary grants and a family inheritance, afforded him a comfortable existence that included extensive travel, experimentation with LSD during its period of legality, and a prolonged stay on the Greek island of Hydra. Further publications followed: the novels The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), along with the poetry collections Flowers for Hitler (1964) and Parasites of Heaven (1966). The Favorite Game drew closely from his Montreal youth, yet Beautiful Losers marked a decisive advance, receiving reviews of a caliber most writers only dream of; the Boston Globe likened it to the work of James Joyce, and cumulative sales eventually reached well into six figures.

Around this period Cohen resumed songwriting, an activity that flowed naturally from his poetic practice. His seclusion on Hydra, the constant movement that followed his departures from the island, an inherently contrarian disposition, and the absence of any deep immersion in popular music currents since the 1940s together produced a singular compositional voice. Although he lived briefly in Nashville during the mid-1960s, his output diverged markedly from prevailing country conventions. This distinctiveness might have hindered progress had it not been for the intervention of folksinger Judy Collins, then ascending within her field. Her distinctive vocal quality allowed her to remain audible beyond the shrinking circle of acoustic purists after Bob Dylan's electrification; she included Cohen's "Suzanne" on her album In My Life, a release already controversial in folk circles for its Beatles title track and therefore widely noticed. The track received substantial radio exposure, and Cohen appeared again on the same album with "Dress Rehearsal Rag."

Collins also persuaded Cohen to resume performing after a long hiatus since adolescence. His return occurred at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival, followed by sold-out New York concerts and an appearance reciting poems and singing on the CBS program Camera Three, presented under the title "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen." Actor and singer Noel Harrison simultaneously brought "Suzanne" onto the pop charts with his own version. Among those who witnessed Cohen at Newport was producer John Hammond, Sr., whose career stretched from Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie in the 1930s through Bob Dylan and later Bruce Springsteen. Hammond secured Cohen a contract with Columbia Records, resulting in The Songs of Leonard Cohen, issued just before Christmas 1967. Producer John Simon devised a spare yet effective setting for Cohen's voice, often characterized as an engagingly sensitive near-monotone, ideally matched to material steeped in intimate language, somber imagery, and revelations reached through despondency.

The album's minimal production and melancholy themes—or perhaps precisely because of them—brought immediate success within folk and emerging singer-songwriter circles. At a moment when vast audiences awaited new releases from Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel (whose recent album concluded with a minor-key "Silent Night" overlaid on a radio bulletin announcing Lenny Bruce's death), Cohen quickly attracted a small yet fiercely loyal following. Thousands of college students purchased the record; in its second year it surpassed 100,000 copies sold. The Songs of Leonard Cohen represented the closest Cohen ever came to broad commercial breakthrough.

He did not neglect his literary output amid the musical activity. In 1968 he published Selected Poems: 1956-1968, encompassing both earlier and new work, which earned him Canada's Governor General's Award—an honor he declined. By then he had become more closely associated with the rock milieu, residing for a time at New York's Chelsea Hotel among neighbors that included Janis Joplin and other performers whose presence directly shaped certain songs.

His second album, Songs from a Room (1969), carried an even heavier atmosphere of melancholy. Even the comparatively animated "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" remained steeped in despondency, while the sole non-Cohen composition, "The Partisan," offered a stark account of resistance to oppression that included the line "She died without a whisper" and imagery of wind moving across graves. Joan Baez later recorded the song in a more uplifting manner; Cohen's version emphasized its costs. "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," though equally somber, featured Cohen's most nuanced and commercially viable vocal to that point—nasal yet finely shaded. Overall, Songs from a Room met with more modest commercial and critical response than its predecessor. Bob Johnston's austere production rendered it less immediately inviting, yet it contained two enduring standards, "Bird on the Wire" and "The Story of Isaac," that stood alongside "Suzanne." The latter, a parable drawn from biblical imagery and directed at the Vietnam conflict, ranked among the most incisive antiwar statements of its time; a stronger reading appeared on the Live Songs album, captured in Berlin in 1972.

Although Cohen never achieved mass popularity as a performer, his singular voice, the force of his writing, and its pervasive influence secured him a place among the leading figures of rock music—an unusual position for the thirty-five-year-old author and composer. He performed at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival in England, a large post-Woodstock event that included late appearances by Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. Appearing somewhat ill at ease alongside fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell, Cohen played acoustic guitar supported by two female vocalists before an audience of 600,000 that encompassed enthusiasts, countercultural participants, and confrontational gatecrashers. His placement on the bill, between Miles Davis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, signaled the regard he commanded even without widespread sales. His "Suzanne" performance was featured in Murray Lerner's 1996 documentary Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival, and the complete set was issued in both audio and video formats in 2009.

By this stage Cohen had established a distinctive niche as both writer and recording artist, allowing songs to mature over extended periods. His resolutely noncommercial delivery became part of his appeal, attracting listeners whose sensibilities echoed those who had embraced Bob Dylan's earliest recordings prior to the 1964 breakthrough. In a manner reminiscent of the pre-1970s Dylan audience, people acquired Cohen's albums in the tens or occasionally hundreds of thousands yet experienced the music in intensely personal terms. He built his following listener by listener, largely through word of mouth rather than radio airplay, which more readily favored cover versions by other artists.

Cohen's third studio album, Songs of Love and Hate (1971), stands among his most intense statements, filled with sharply observed lyrics and music whose emotional directness matched its minimalist arrangements. Paul Buckmaster's string contributions remained deliberately restrained, and the children's chorus on "Last Year's Man" appeared sparingly. Cohen's singing reached new expressive heights on such notable tracks as "Joan of Arc," "Dress Rehearsal Rag," and "Famous Blue Raincoat." The pervasive bleakness ensured he would never become a conventional pop act; even the rhythmically driven "Diamonds in the Mine," complete with children's chorus and twangy guitar, remained as caustic as any Columbia release that year. Lines such as "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" exemplified the album's power. Songs of Love and Hate, together with earlier hit renditions of "Suzanne" and other songs, solidified Cohen's large international cult following. Director Robert Altman incorporated his music into the 1971 film McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie—a revisionist Western set at the turn of the twentieth century that initially suffered critical hostility yet later became one of Altman's most admired works. In 1972 Cohen published the poetry collection The Energy of Slaves.

True to habit, Cohen allowed several years to elapse between studio albums. In 1973 he released Leonard Cohen: Live Songs, an unconventional live collection drawn from multiple venues and years, focusing on material from 1969 onward. The set highlighted both his writing and his rapport with dedicated listeners: those who could engage with the lengthy "Please Don't Pass Me By" recognized their readiness to join his innermost circle, while others content with "Bird on the Wire" or "The Story of Isaac" remained comfortably at a remove. That same year, Gene Lesser mounted a theatrical piece titled Sisters of Mercy, loosely inspired by Cohen's life. After the three-year interval following Songs of Love and Hate, many assumed creative inertia, with the live album filling the gap. Cohen had in fact continued performing across the United States and Europe in 1971 and 1972, extending his schedule to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. During this time he began collaborating with pianist and arranger John Lissauer, whom he chose to produce the next album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). The record placed Cohen in a richer musical setting while demonstrating that he could function within a pop framework even when the songs retained their characteristic gloom.

Columbia issued The Best of Leonard Cohen in 1975, gathering twelve of his most recognized songs—largely successes in other artists' hands—from the preceding four albums, though it omitted "Dress Rehearsal Rag." Mid-decade also marked Cohen's first professional encounters with Jennifer Warnes, with whom he shared bills at numerous concerts; those meetings led to significant later collaborations. By then Cohen's persona had grown somewhat less enigmatic through extensive touring and increased visibility, and he had acquired a reputation for remarkable appeal to women that aligned with the romantic preoccupations of his songs.

In 1977 Cohen returned with the provocatively titled Death of a Ladies' Man, the most divisive album of his career, produced by Phil Spector. The pairing of Spector's dense, maximalist approach with Cohen's intimate style may have seemed promising in theory, yet Cohen harbored reservations about many of the finished tracks, which Spector mixed without further input. The resulting album combined the least effective aspects of both artists: an oppressively thick sound that immersed the listener in Cohen's melancholic outlook while exposing the limitations of his vocal range, owing to the use of guide vocals and the refusal to permit retakes. For the only time in Cohen's discography, his characteristic near-monotone delivery ceased to function as an asset. Fans purchased the record with awareness of Cohen's dissatisfaction, sparing his reputation. A year later he published a literary collection bearing the slightly altered title Death of a Lady's Man.

Recent Songs (1979) restored the spare aesthetic of Cohen's early-1970s work and presented his singing to particular advantage. Working with producer Henry Lewy, best known for his association with Joni Mitchell, Cohen delivered performances that were quietly attractive and expressive; tracks such as "The Guests" bordered on the melodic. Although he continued to examine relationships in unflinching terms, certain songs, including "Humbled in Love," suggested a move toward a more polished pop sensibility. Frank Sinatra had little reason to regard Cohen as a vocal rival, yet Cohen appeared to pursue a smoother surface at moments on the record.

The year 1984 brought two important releases: the poetic and religious volume The Book of Mercy and the album Various Positions. The latter, recorded with Jennifer Warnes, ranks among Cohen's most approachable works up to that point. His voice, now a richly expressive baritone, paired beautifully with Warnes, and the songs remained as strong as ever, suffused with themes of spirituality and sexuality. "Dance Me to the End of Love" served as a memorable opening—a wry, fatalistic yet passionate pop ballad impossible to dismiss. Around the same period Cohen ventured into additional creative domains, writing, directing, and scoring the award-winning short film I Am a Hotel and composing the score for the 1985 conceptual film Night Magic, which received a Juno Award for Best Movie Score in Canada.

Various Positions attracted relatively little attention at the time and was followed by another extended recording hiatus that ended with I'm Your Man (1988). During the intervening years, Warnes had released her album of Cohen material, Famous Blue Raincoat, which sold briskly and introduced him to a fresh audience. When I'm Your Man finally appeared, its electronic (yet still restrained) production and injection of dark humor alongside his customary pessimism and poetic imagery yielded his strongest-selling album in more than a decade. The momentum continued in 1991 with I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, a tribute album featuring contributions from R.E.M., the Pixies, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and John Cale, restoring Cohen—by then approaching sixty—to prominence for the 1990s. He responded with The Future (1992), an album preoccupied with looming threats to humanity in the years ahead. Although it never aimed at mainstream charts or heavy MTV rotation, it drew his customary audience along with sufficient press and sales to justify the 1994 live album Cohen Live, compiled from his two most recent tours. Another tribute collection, Tower of Song, appeared in 1995 with interpretations by Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, and others.

Amid this renewed activity surrounding his writing and compositions, Cohen entered a new personal phase. Religious questions had always remained close to his thought and work, even during periods when love songs predominated, and they occupied still greater space after Various Positions. He spent time at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in California, eventually becoming a full-time resident and a Buddhist monk in the late 1990s. When he re-emerged in 1999, he carried dozens of new songs and poems. His principal collaborator on the resulting album, Ten New Songs (2001), was singer-songwriter Sharon Robinson, who also served as producer. During the same period, Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 appeared, containing live recordings from the tour two decades earlier.

In 2004, the year Cohen turned seventy, he released Dear Heather, one of the more debated albums of his later career. The record presented his voice in its current register—a deep baritone narrower in range than on any prior release—yet it addressed the change directly, much as Cohen had always confronted the character of his singing. The album also included several songs for which Cohen supplied music but not lyrics, a departure for an artist who had begun as a poet, and it stood as one of his most personal statements. On a separate front, in 2005 Cohen initiated legal action against his longtime business manager and financial advisor, alleging the misappropriation of more than five million dollars, some of it occurring while he resided at the Buddhist retreat.

Five decades after first gaining recognition as a literary figure and then as a performer, Cohen remained among the most absorbing and mysterious musical presences of his generation, and one of the very few from that period who commanded comparable respect, attention, and audience size in the twenty-first century. Like few other survivors of the 1960s, he retained his original listeners while attracting successive generations, consistent with a body of work that felt genuinely timeless. In 2006 his continuing influence received acknowledgment with the Lions Gate Films release of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, director Lian Lunson's concert and portrait film. The live album Live in London followed in 2009. In 2010 the combined audio and video package Songs from the Road documented his 2008 world tour, which ultimately extended into late 2010 and encompassed 84 dates that sold more than 700,000 tickets worldwide.

Cohen did not pause for long. In early 2011 he began work on what became Old Ideas, his first collection of new material in seven years. Sessions involved producers Ed Sanders, Patrick Leonard, saxophonist Dino Soldo, and partner Anjani Thomas. Old Ideas comprised ten new songs exploring spirituality, mortality, sexuality, loss, and acceptance, sonically akin to Dear Heather. "Lullaby" and "Darkness" became fixtures of the subsequent world tour, while "Show Me the Place" was issued in advance in late 2011. The album appeared at the end of January 2012 and achieved substantial success, entering the top five in the United States and United Kingdom and reaching number one in Canada. European performance proved even stronger, with Old Ideas topping charts in nearly ten countries.

Following another world tour that garnered widespread praise, Cohen returned to the studio with producer and co-writer Patrick Leonard more quickly than was his custom, resulting in nine new songs, at least one of which—"Born in Chains"—dated back four decades. Popular Problems was released in September 2014 to favorable reviews and strong chart placement, again reaching number one across much of Europe and in Canada. Cohen maintained an ambitious international touring schedule, and in December 2014 he issued Live in Dublin, his third live album since resuming the road. The recording captured a September 2013 performance at Dublin's O2 Arena, accompanied by a simultaneous high-definition video release. Another concert document, Can't Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour, appeared in May 2015, assembled from live performances and soundcheck rehearsals. Cohen resumed work on new material despite declining health. On September 21, 2016—his eighty-second birthday—the title track of the forthcoming album You Want It Darker, an eerie meditation on mortality, premiered online. The full album, produced by his son Adam, was released on October 21. It served as his farewell; Cohen died on November 7,