{"id":82806,"date":"2016-11-14T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82806"},"modified":"2016-11-11T17:18:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T17:18:28","slug":"leonard-cohen-epic-and-enigmatic-songwriter-is-dead-at-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/leonard-cohen-epic-and-enigmatic-songwriter-is-dead-at-82\/","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Cohen, Epic and Enigmatic Songwriter, Is Dead at 82"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Cohen\u2019s Death, <\/em>\u2018Hallelujah\u2019 Lives On – <\/em>Watch in Times Video \u00bb<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Everybody Knows\u2019 \u2013<\/em> Watch on TMS Music Video of the Week \u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n

10 Nov 2016 – <\/em>Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who abandoned a promising literary career to become one of the foremost songwriters of the contemporary era, has died, according to an announcement Thursday [10 Nov] night on his Facebook page<\/a>. He was 82.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cohen\u2019s record label, Sony Music, confirmed the death. No details were available on the cause. Adam Cohen, his son and producer, said: \u201cMy father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records. He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over a musical career that spanned nearly five decades, Mr. Cohen wrote songs that addressed \u2014 in spare language that could be both oblique and telling \u2014 themes of love and faith, despair and exaltation, solitude and connection, war and politics. More than 2,000 recordings of his songs have been made, initially by the folk-pop singers who were his first champions, like Judy Collins and Tim Hardin, and later by performers from across the spectrum of popular music, among them U2, Aretha Franklin, R.E.M., Jeff Buckley, Trisha Yearwood, Justin Timberlake, and Elton John.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cohen\u2019s best-known song may well be \u201cHallelujah,\u201d<\/a> a majestic, meditative ballad infused with both religiosity and earthiness. It was written for a 1984 album that his record company rejected as insufficiently commercial and popularized a decade later by Jeff Buckley. Since then some 200 artists, from Bob Dylan to Justin Timberlake, have sung or recorded it. A book has been written about it, and it has been featured on the soundtracks of movies and television shows and sung at the Olympics and other public events. At the 2016 Emmy Awards, Tori Kelly sang \u201cHallelujah\u201d for the annual \u201cIn Memoriam\u201d segment recognizing recent deaths.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cohen was an unlikely and reluctant pop star, if in fact he ever was one. He was 33 when his first record was released in 1967. He sang in an increasingly gravelly baritone. He played simple chords on acoustic guitar or a cheap keyboard. And he maintained a private, sometime ascetic image at odds with the Dionysian excesses associated with rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n

At some points, he was anything but prolific. He struggled for years to write some of his most celebrated songs, and he recorded just 14 studio albums in his career. Only the first qualified as a gold record in the United States for sales of 500,000 copies. But Mr. Cohen\u2019s sophisticated, magnificently succinct lyrics, with their meditations on love sacred and profane, were widely admired by other artists and gave him a reputation as, to use the phrase his record company concocted for an advertising campaign in the early 1970s, \u201cthe master of erotic despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mr.<\/a>

Mr. Cohen in February 2009 during his first world tour in 15 years, which, he said, was driven partly by financial necessity. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know where the bank was,\u201d he said at the time.
Credit Fred R. Conrad\/The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in his career, enigmatic songs like \u201cSuzanne\u201d and \u201cBird on a Wire,\u201d quickly covered by better-known performers, gave him visibility. \u201cSuzanne\u201d begins and ends as a portrait of a mysterious, fragile woman \u201cwearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters,\u201d but pauses in the middle verse to offer a melancholy view of the spiritual:<\/p>\n

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water,
\nAnd he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower,
\nAnd when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him,
\nHe said \u201cAll men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them.\u201d
\nBut he himself was broken, long before the sky would open,
\nForsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Mr. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which described him as \u201cone of the few artists in the realm of popular music who can truly be called poets\u201d and praised him for having \u201craised the songwriting bar.\u201d In 2010, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammys\u2019 group, gave him a lifetime achievement award, praising him for \u201ca timeless legacy that has positively affected multiple generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wearing a bolo tie and his trademark fedora, Mr. Cohen dryly made light in his acceptance speech of the fact that none of his records had ever been honored at the Grammys. \u201cAs we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I\u2019d get a Grammy Award,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up in the prosperous suburb of Westmount. His father, Nathan, whose family had emigrated to Canada from Poland, owned a successful clothing store; he died when Leonard was 9, but his will included a provision for a small trust fund, which later allowed his son to pursue his literary and musical ambitions. His mother, the former Masha Klonitzky, a nurse, was of Lithuanian descent and the daughter of a Talmudic scholar and rabbi. \u201cI had a very messianic childhood,\u201d Mr. Cohen would later say.<\/p>\n

In 1951, Mr. Cohen was admitted to McGill University, Canada\u2019s premier institution of higher learning, where he studied English. His first book of poetry, \u201cLet Us Compare Mythologies,\u201d was published in May 1956, while he was still an undergraduate. It was followed by \u201cThe Spice-Box of Earth\u201d in 1961 and \u201cFlowers for Hitler\u201d in 1964. Other collections would appear sporadically throughout Mr. Cohen\u2019s life, including the omnibus \u201cPoems and Songs\u201d in 2011.<\/p>\n

A period of drift followed Mr. Cohen\u2019s graduation from college. He enrolled in law school at McGill, then dropped out and moved to New York City, where he studied literature at Columbia University for a year before returning to Montreal. Eventually, after a sojourn in London, he ended up living in a house on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote a pair of novels: \u201cThe Favorite Game,\u201d published in 1963, and \u201cBeautiful Losers,\u201d published in 1966.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful Losers,\u201d about a love triangle all of whose members are devotees of a 17th-century Mohawk Indian Roman Catholic saint, gained a cult following, which it retains, and eventually sold more than three million copies worldwide. But Mr. Cohen\u2019s initial lack of commercial success was discouraging, and he turned to songwriting in hopes of expanding the audience for his poetry.<\/p>\n

\"Mr.<\/a>

Mr. Cohen in August 1970. He released four albums in the 1970s, a prolific decade for him.
Credit Tony Russell\/Redferns<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI found it was very difficult to pay my grocery bill,\u201d Mr. Cohen said in 1971, looking back at his situation just a few years earlier. \u201cI\u2019ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I\u2019m very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I\u2019m really starving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within months, Mr. Cohen had placed two songs, \u201cSuzanne\u201d and \u201cDress Rehearsal Rag,\u201d on Judy Collins\u2019s album \u201cIn My Life,\u201d which also included the Lennon-McCartney title song and compositions by Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Donovan. But he was extremely reluctant to take the next step and sing his songs himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeonard was naturally reserved and afraid to sing in public,\u201d Ms. Collins wrote in her autobiography, \u201cSweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music\u201d (2011). She recalled him telling her: \u201cI can\u2019t sing. I wouldn\u2019t know what to do out there. I am not a performer.\u201d He was \u201cterrified,\u201d she wrote, the first time she brought him onstage to sing with her, in the spring of 1967.<\/p>\n

Later that year, after being signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond, the celebrated talent scout who also signed Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Cohen released his first album. Its simple title, \u201cSongs of Leonard Cohen,\u201d and its cover, a portrait of the artist gazing solemnly into the camera, matched the music, which was spare and unembellished, in stark contrast to the psychedelic style that then prevailed.<\/p>\n

The record began with \u201cSuzanne,\u201d which was already being performed by folk singers everywhere thanks to the popularity of Ms. Collins\u2019s version. It also included three other songs of great impact that would become staples of Mr. Cohen\u2019s live shows, and that numerous other artists would record over the years: \u201cSisters of Mercy,\u201d \u201cSo Long Marianne\u201d and \u201cHey, That\u2019s No Way to Say Goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n

His second album, \u201cSongs From a Room,\u201d released early in 1969, cemented his growing reputation as a songwriter. \u201cThe Story of Isaac,\u201d a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac, became an anthem of opposition to the war in Vietnam, and \u201cBird on a Wire\u201d went on to be recorded by performers including Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.<\/p>\n

\"Mr.<\/a>

Mr. Cohen in October 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, with Javier Mas on guitar. He toured and recorded extensively throughout the past decade. His final studio album, \u201cYou Want It Darker,\u201d was released last month.
Credit Josep Lago\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1971, Mr. Cohen released \u201cSongs of Love and Hate,\u201d which contained the cryptic and frequently covered \u201cFamous Blue Raincoat,\u201d but after that his production began to tail off and his live performances became less frequent. He released three more albums during the 1970s but, amid bouts of depression, only two in the 1980s and one in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

The quality of his songs remained high, however: In addition to \u201cHallelujah,\u201d future standards like \u201cDance Me to the End of Love,\u201d \u201cFirst We Take Manhattan,\u201d \u201cEverybody Knows\u201d and \u201cTower of Song\u201d date from that era.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cohen, raised Jewish and observant throughout his life, became interested in Zen Buddhism in the late 1970s and often visited the Mount Baldy monastery, east of Los Angeles. Around 1994, he abandoned his music career altogether and moved to the monastery, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk and became the personal assistant of Joshu Sasaki, the Rinzai Zen master who led the center, who died in 2014. He took the name Jikan, which means \u201csilence.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the remainder of the decade, there was much speculation that Mr. Cohen, rather than merely taking a sabbatical, had stopped writing songs and would never record again. But in 2001, he released \u201cTen New Songs,\u201d whose title suggests it was written while he was in the monastery. It was followed in 2004 by \u201cDear Heather,\u201d an unusually upbeat album.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Mr. Cohen sued his former manager, Kelley Lynch, accusing her of defrauding him of millions of dollars that he had set aside as a retirement fund, leaving him with only $150,000 and a huge tax bill and forcing him to take out a new mortgage on his home to cover his legal costs. The next year, after Ms. Lynch countersued, a judge awarded Mr. Cohen $9.5 million, but he was unable to collect any of the money.<\/p>\n

The legal battles may have soured Mr. Cohen\u2019s mood, but they did not seem to damage his creativity. In 2006, he published a new collection of poems, \u201cBook of Longing,\u201d which the composer Philip Glass set to music and then took on tour, with Mr. Cohen\u2019s recorded voice reciting the words and Mr. Glass\u2019s ensemble performing the music.<\/p>\n

\"Mr.<\/a>

Mr. Cohen was never married, but was known as \u201cthe master of erotic despair.\u201d
Credit Evening Standard\/Hulton Archive<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2008, Mr. Cohen hit the road for the first time in 15 years for a grueling world tour, which would continue, with a few short breaks, through 2010. He was driven, he acknowledged, at least in part by financial necessity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a long, ongoing problem of a disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation,\u201d he told The New York Times in 2009. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know where the bank was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Combined with a pair of CDs and accompanying DVDs recorded in concert, \u201cLive in London\u201d and \u201cSongs From the Road,\u201d the constant touring, before audiences often larger than those he had enjoyed in the past, clearly eased Mr. Cohen\u2019s financial problems. Billboard magazine estimated that the 2009 leg of the tour alone earned him nearly $10 million.<\/p>\n

Over that three-year period, Mr. Cohen performed nearly 250 shows, many of them lasting more than three hours. He seemed remarkably fit and limber, skipping across the stage, doing deep-knee bends and occasionally dropping to his knees to sing.<\/p>\n

The shows were not without incident: During a show in Valencia, Spain, in 2009, he fainted, and early in 2010 one segment of the tour had to be postponed when he suffered a lower back injury. He recovered, however, and in 2012 he released \u201cOld Ideas,\u201d his first CD of new songs in more than seven years, and embarked on another marathon tour.<\/p>\n

That pattern of extensive touring and recording continued into the decade. In 2014, for instance, Mr. Cohen released a CD of mostly new material, \u201cPopular Problems,\u201d as well as a three-CD, one-DVD set called \u201cLive in Dublin.\u201d His final studio album, \u201cYou Want It Darker,\u201d was released in October 2016.<\/p>\n

Mr. Cohen never married, though he had numerous liaisons and several long-term relationships, some of which he wrote about. His survivors include two children, Adam and Lorca, from his relationship with Suzanne Elrod, a photographer and artist who shot the cover of his 1973 album, \u201cLive Songs,\u201d and is pictured on the cover of his critically derided album \u201cDeath of a Ladies\u2019 Man\u201d (1977); and three grandchildren.<\/p>\n

To the end, Mr. Cohen took a sardonic view of both his craft and the human condition. In \u201cTower of Song,\u201d a staple of live shows in his later years, he brought the two together, making fun of being \u201cborn with the gift of a golden voice\u201d and striking the same biblical tone apparent on his first album.<\/p>\n

Now you can say that I\u2019ve grown bitter, but of this you may be sure
\nThe rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
\nAnd there\u2019s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
\nYou see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of song.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe changeless is what he\u2019s been about since the beginning,\u201d the writer Pico Iyer argued in the liner notes for the anthology \u201cThe Essential Leonard Cohen.\u201d \u201cSome of the other great pilgrims of song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction: November 10, 2016 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the awards show on which Tori Kelly sang \u201cHallelujah.\u201d It was the 2016 Emmy Awards, not the Grammys.<\/em><\/p>\n

Correction: November 11, 2016 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to Mr. Cohen\u2019s survivors. They include his two children, Adam and Lorca, and three grandchildren; the singer, songwriter and pianist Anjani Thomas has not been Mr. Cohen\u2019s companion for many years.<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Jon Pareles and Christopher Mele contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

A version of this article appears in print on November 11, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Leonard Cohen, Writer of \u2018Hallelujah,\u2019 Dies at 82<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Nov 2016 – Over a musical career that spanned nearly five decades, Mr. Cohen wrote songs that addressed \u2014 in spare language that could be both oblique and telling \u2014 themes of love and faith, despair and exaltation, solitude and connection, war and politics. More than 2,000 recordings of his songs have been made by Judy Collins, Tim Hardin, U2, Aretha Franklin, R.E.M., Jeff Buckley, Trisha Yearwood, Justin Timberlake, Elton John, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}