A Leonard Cohen Minute

Photo by Jan Persson/Redferns, year unknown. From “Folk...

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:33:16 -0400

Photo by Jan Persson/Redferns, year unknown. From “Folk Singers and Folk Revolutionaries,” Biography.

And this info from Getty Images: “DENMARK - APRIL 04: Photo of Leonard COHEN; Leonard Cohen performing live onstage (Photo by Jan Persson/Redferns)”

Leonard performed in Copenhagen, Denmark at Falkoner Teatret on April 4, 1972.

Songs Of Leonard Cohen Back Cover

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:30:58 -0400

“The picture on the back is a Mexican religious picture called ‘Anima Sola,’ the lonely spirit or the lonely soul. It is the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison.”

Leonard Cohen in an interview from “An interview with the ‘beautiful creep’ who never does interviews” by Jack Hafferkamp, Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.

Mimi Fariña, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Judy...

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:24:00 -0400

Mimi Fariña, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Chad Mitchell. Photo by Daniel Kramer. From Black and White Photos of Folk Singers, December 29, 2011.

Date unknown.

How Leonard Cohen Charms Women…Lesson 3

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:09:44 -0400

A tale told by Val Hennessy of Sunday Express (London):

Leonard Cohen at the Albert Hall. I nearly missed him. Yes, me, his number one fan, beetling to the Box Office to discover all seats sold out.

Only one ticket left, standing room only. I grabbed it.

Jammed behind the wrought iron railings with kids-in-grunge leaning over my shoulder to read my programme, I sensed that I was the only one in the gallery who could remember Cohen the first time around.

God. 1967. His first album Songs of Leonard Cohen. In student bedsits across the nation Cohen’s doom-laden ballads were the downfall of an entire generation of gullible girls.

How many millions surrendered their virtue to shaggy young guitar twangers droning: “Travelling lady stay a while, until the night is over…”? How many jilted idealists sobbed on mattresses in darkened rooms with Cohen’s: “Like a bird on a wire…” groaning from their gramophones? Oooh, it was music to slash your wrists by.

Best of all you could actually hear the words. And what words. Real poetry. “Oh take this longing from my tongue / all the useless things these hands have done,” for example.

Anyway, I’m up in the gallery hemmed in by people…

I’m peering down from a vertiginous height, and there he is, 58 years old and more popular than ever, in the blue spotlight with an eight-piece band, breaking into the bouzouki bounce of “Dance Me To The End Of Love.”…

I’m singing along, eyes closed (almost “sent” as we used to say in the Seventies) until someone old enough to be my son, if not my grandson, jabs me in the back and says: “Give Leonard a chance, will ya?”…

The gig ends at 10 pm. The encore ends at 11:30. Some people are holding hands and skip-jiving.

Naturally I gatecrash the party in the Elgar Room. “I couldn’t get him off the stage,” says Cohen’s harassed tour manager, Geoff Clennel, “the guy was having such a great time.”

Enter Cohen. At first no-one notices, except me…

What I do next is not the sort of behaviour you expect from a hardened hack who has spent two decades interviewing the famous. Flushed with the effort of holding my stomach in I ask Cohen to autograph my programme.

“Sure,” he says, his top lip twitching in a suicide smile. “Would you like to sleep with me tonight, my friend, I’m feeling kinda lonesome?” My knees knock like a doting groupie’s. Twenty five years ago you couldn’t have held me back.

Cohen jabs me playfully in the ribs and gives a hollow, mournful laugh that makes me think of clods landing on a coffin: “But that’s the sort of thing they expect a poet to say at the party.”

Then the flashbulbs pop, and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics claims his attention but not before Cohen gloomily pecks my cheek, fixes me with his funereal gaze and says: “The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold, keep flying with the angels, see ya again in three years’ time…”

I tell you, I didn’t come down for the next three days.

From “Cohen Round Again” by Val Hennessy, Sunday Express (London), May 16, 1993.

Photo by Dominique Issermann. Thanks to Christine R. for...

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:00:19 -0400

Photo by Dominique Issermann.

Thanks to Christine R. for sharing on the Facebook group I need a regular dose of Leonard Cohen.

Year unknown.

Leonard Cohen Has 150 Million Girls in Every Port

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:45:32 -0400

Jennifer Warnes on Leonard Cohen:

“The first thing that you notice is that he doesn’t sleep,” she says of life on the road with Cohen. “I don’t know what he does to preserve his energy, but he doesn’t sleep. And there are a hundred girls in every port. I mean, 150 million girls, all who seem to know him as deeply as the others. And they’re not all that jealous of each other, because he does tend to make people feel like they’re very special. The men, too, feel like they’re his deepest buddies, comrades in the trenches.”

“So it causes this immense intimacy. And then there’s this thing he does with the audience. He seems to understand, in every city, what they need, to suss out the audience and how far he can push them.” In Israel, she recalls, Cohen got sad in the middle of a show, decided he needed a shave and left the stage; while he was gone, the audience sang to him.

From “Jenny Sings Lenny” by Steve Pond, Rolling Stone, March 12, 1987.

Photo by Laszlo. Year unknown. From “Music: Leonard Cohen...

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:57:08 -0400

Photo by Laszlo. Year unknown.

From “Music: Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End Of Love - Lyrics - Links” by Ricardo Marcenaro, Solitary Dog Sculptor I, July 2010.

"If it be your will that I speak no more, and my voice be still as it was before, I will speak no..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:01:56 -0400

“If it be your will
that I speak no more,
and my voice be still
as it was before,
I will speak no more,
I shall abide until
I am spoken for,
if it be your will…”

- From “If It Be Your Will” — a song by Leonard Cohen from his album Various Positions.

No. 17 from a wonderful set by David Boswell - ‘Leonard Cohen -...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:35:15 -0400

No. 17 from a wonderful set by David Boswell - ‘Leonard Cohen - 20 October 1978 - Vancouver, B.C.’

Thanks to Christine R for sharing on the Facebook group I need a regular dose of Leonard Cohen

"There is Good Wine in Every Generation" -- Leonard Cohen

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:04:57 -0400

While he admitted he finds much of today’s pop music incomprehensible (“I find it getting more and more arcane, difficult to penetrate”) he has no time for people of older generations who put down such new music forms as rap, which he enjoys listening to.

“I would affirm the position in the Talmud, which is that there is good wine in every generation,” he said.

“I think the notion that some art form or some kind of excellence has disappeared from the world or evaporated is very much the indulgence of the old. There will always be people who arise to speak with music and authority.”

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Peter Howell from “Cohen Grows into The Future Gracefully, and with a Grin,” Toronto Star, November 19, 1992.

From “Leonard Cohen, Down from the Mountain” by Neil...

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:45:33 -0400

From “Leonard Cohen, Down from the Mountain” by Neil Strauss, Rolling Stone, March 19, 2009. Photo by Tad Kubler.

The Necessity of Paradox and Ambiguity per Leonard Cohen

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:41:53 -0400

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Biba Kopf:

“You know it’s hard to keep up with your position in the stock market,” sighs Cohen. “I’ve been attacked by Maoists, supported by Maoists, attacked by Freudians, supported by Freudians, attacked by feminists, supported by feminists. I think it’s because what they call poetry, that has harmonics and the necessity of paradox and ambiguity, that’s it’s pretty hard to get a take on what I’m actually singing.

“Because it comes from a deep place where these paradoxes and ambiguities are resolved and I think that’s why these songs are effective when they are. Of course, I sometimes blow it, but when they do work it’s because they track a lot of resonances, even if it’s hard to associate them with a hard and fast social and political position.”

Is the poet absolved from responsibility towards clarity?

“No, I think he’s consecrated and dedicated to that position. But there’s clarity that is perceived by the heart and clarity that is perceived by the mind. You know, clarity’s not a fixed idea. Sometimes something that is clear to the heart demands quite a complex expression. You just let the words or tune speak to you and it’s very clear. You give yourself to the kiss or embrace and while it’s going on there’s not any need to know what is going on. You just dissolve into it…”

“Jenny Sings Lenny” by Biba Kopf, New Musical Express, March 14, 1987.

Artwork by Leonard Cohen - Part 6

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:28:18 -0400

21. Leonard Cohen - Marianne 1960

22. Leonard Cohen - Montreal kitchen

23. Leonard Cohen - Montreal visitor no 3

24. Leonard Cohen - Much Hangs down

Artwork by Leonard Cohen was on exhibit at Galleri Ramfjord in Halden, Norway until August 29, 2012. The exhibit moved to Porvoo Art Factory in Porvoo, Finland until September 23, 2012.

cohenyearsphotos: Portrait of “Leonard Cohen in April 1972 in...

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:12:10 -0400

cohenyearsphotos:

Portrait of “Leonard Cohen in April 1972 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)”

Posted by yousra_taoufik, Statigram.

"…in Phillips Square, on newspaper-covered benches, unaware of St. Catherine Street..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:56:55 -0400

“

…in Phillips Square,
on newspaper-covered benches,
unaware of St. Catherine Street
or grey and green pigeons
inquiring between their boots —

public men,
letters of reference crumbling in wallets,
speaking all the languages of Montreal.

”

- From “Les Vieux” — a poem by Leonard Cohen from his book Let Us Compare Mythologies.

cohenyearsphotos: Kyōzan Jōshū Sasaki rōshi and Leonard Cohen,...

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:25:00 -0400

cohenyearsphotos:

Kyōzan Jōshū Sasaki rōshi and Leonard Cohen, circa 1973.

Posted by Paolo Veneto on Facebook.

Photographer unknown.

The Verdict of Poetry

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:03:53 -0400

JEFFREY BROWN: And now, Cohen has published “Book of Longing,” his first new collection of poetry in 20 years. I spoke with Leonard Cohen recently at Arena Stage Theater in Washington.

Did you start out seeing yourself as a poet or aspiring to be a poet?

LEONARD COHEN: I never thought of myself as a poet, to tell you the truth. I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It’s for others; it’s for others to use.

Leonard Cohen in a radio interview with Jeffrey Brown from “Songwriter Leonard Cohen Discusses Fame, Poetry and Getting Older,” PBS, June 28, 2006. Listen to this interview here.

From “Jenny Sings Lenny” by Steve Pond, Rolling...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:57:49 -0400

From “Jenny Sings Lenny” by Steve Pond, Rolling Stone, March 12, 1987. Photograph of Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen by Darren E. Lew.

"Your father’s gone a’hunting He’s deep in the forest so wild And he cannot take..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 14:15:51 -0400

“

Your father’s gone a’hunting
He’s deep in the forest so wild
And he cannot take his wife with him
He cannot take his child

Your father’s gone a’hunting
In the quicksand and the clay
And a woman cannot follow him
Although she knows the way

Your father’s gone a’hunting
Through the silver and the glass
Where only greed can enter
But spirit, spirit cannot pass…

”

- From “Hunter’s Lullaby” — a song by Leonard Cohen from the album Various Positions.

Leonard Cohen photographed by Ethan Hill From Pinterest:...

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:29:49 -0400

Leonard Cohen photographed by Ethan Hill

From Pinterest: Alidajoyas via Vanessa Correa.

Year unknown.