Leonard Cohen dead at 82

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Leonard Cohen dead at 82

Postby radiofan » Thu Nov 10, 2016 6:57 pm

Leonard Cohen Dead at 82
Hugely influential singer and songwriter's work spanned five decades


Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned five decades, died at the age of 82. Cohen's label, Sony Music Canada, confirmed his death on the singer's Facebook page.

"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away," the statement read. "We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief." A cause of death was not given.

Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet. Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns, Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year.

"I never had the sense that there was an end," he said in 1992. "That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot."
Leonard Norman Cohen was born on September 21st, 1934, in Westmount, Quebec. He learned guitar as a teenager and formed a folk group called the Buckskin Boys. Early exposure to Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca turned him toward poetry – while a flamenco guitar teacher convinced him to trade steel strings for nylon. After graduating from McGill University, Cohen moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he purchased a house for $1,500 with the help of a modest trust fund established by his father, who died when Leonard was nine. While living on Hydra, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964) and the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

Frustrated by poor book sales, and tired of working in Montreal's garment industry, Cohen visited New York in 1966 to investigate the city's robust folk-rock scene. He met folk singer Judy Collins, who later that year included two of his songs, including the early hit "Suzanne," on her album In My Life. His New York milieu included Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, and, most importantly, the haunting German singer Nico, whose despondent delivery he may have emulated on his exquisite 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

Cohen quickly became the songwriter's songwriter of choice for artists like Collins, James Taylor, Willie Nelson and many others. His black-and-white album photos offered an arresting image to go with his stark yet lovely songs. His next two albums, Songs From a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971), benefited from the spare production of Bob Johnston, along with a group of seasoned session musicians that included Charlie Daniels, gave them in Nashville.

During the Seventies, Cohen set out on the first of the many long, intense tours he would reprise toward the end of his career. "One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people," he told Rolling Stone in 1971. "I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don't feel like a citizen." His time on tour inspired the live sound producer John Lissauer brought to his 1974 masterpiece, New Skin for the Old Ceremony. However, he risked a production catastrophe by hiring wall-of-sound maximalist Phil Spector to work on his next album, Death of a Ladies Man, whose adversarial creation resulted in a Rolling Stone review titled "Leonard Cohen's Doo-Wop Nightmare."

Cohen's relationship with Suzanne Elrod during most of the Seventies resulted in two children, the photographer Lorca Cohen and Adam Cohen, who leads the group Low Millions. Cohen was well known for his wandering ways, and his most stable relationships were with backing singers Laura Branigan, Sharon Robinson, Anjani Thomas, and, most notably, Jennifer Warnes, who he wrote with and produced (Warnes frequently performed Cohen’s music). After indulging in a variety of international styles on Recent Songs (1979), Cohen accorded Warnes full co-vocal credit on 1984's Various Positions.
Various Positions included "Hallelujah," a meditation on love, sex, and music that would become Cohen's best-known composition thanks to Jeff Buckley's incandescent 1994 reinterpretation. Its greatness wasn't recognized by Cohen's label, however. By way of informing him that Columbia Records would not be releasing Various Positions, label head Walter Yetnikoff reportedly told Cohen, "Look, Leonard; we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good." Cohen returned to the label in 1988 with I'm Your Man, an album of sly humor and social commentary that launched the synths-and-gravitas style he continued on The Future (1992).

In 1995, Cohen put the breaks on his career, entered the Mt. Baldy Zen Center outside of Los Angeles, became an ordained Buddhist monk, and took on the Dharma name Jikan ("silence"). His duties included cooking for Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the priest and longtime Cohen mentor who died in 2014 at the age of 104. Cohen broke his musical silence in 2001 with Ten New Songs, a collaboration with Sharon Robinson, and Dear Heather (2004), a relatively uplifting project with current girlfriend Anjani Thomas. While never abandoning Judaism, the Sabbath-observing songwriter attributed Buddhism to curbing the depressive episodes that had always plagued him.

The final act of Cohen's career began in 2005, when Lorca Cohen began to suspect her father's longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, of embezzling funds from his retirement account. In fact, Lynch had robbed Cohen of more than $5 million. To replenish the fund, Cohen undertook an epic world tour during which he would perform 247 shows from 2008 to 2010. He continued to record as well, releasing Old Ideas (2012) and Popular Problems, which hit U.S. shops a day after his eightieth birthday. "[Y]ou depend on a certain resilience that is not yours to command, but which is present," he told Rolling Stone upon its release. "And if you can sense this resilience or sense this capacity to continue, it means a lot more at this age than it did when I was 30, when I took it for granted."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... 82-w449792
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: Leonard Cohen dead at 82

Postby jon » Thu Nov 10, 2016 9:18 pm

Weird, as it was only three days ago that the Edmonton Journal published a review of his latest album.

Album Reviews: Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave confront death on their new albums
Sandra Sperounes
Edmonton Journal
Published on: November 7, 2016
Last Updated: November 7, 2016 4:36 PM MST

Album: You Want It Darker
Artist: Leonard Cohen
(Columbia Records)
4 out of 5 stars

140 or less: An 82-year-old man surveys his life and beliefs as he inches closer to decrepitude and death.

In other words: “I’m out of the game,” Leonard Cohen admits on Leaving the Table, a ‘60s slow dance swaying with the rumbles of a surf guitar and the hovering swells of strings. The Montreal native doesn’t as much sing as he narrates the nine tracks on his 14th album, a sombre and sparse affair about regrets, religion and resignation. It’s a deeply personal effort, but his words could apply to the state of the world, too.

“Now I’m living in this temple / Where they tell you what to do / I’m old and I’ve had to settle / On a different point of view,” he laments on On the Level, a lullaby with soulful back-up vocals, wafts of Wurlitzer, and hints of piano reminiscent of the Righteous Brothers.

“I’m angry and tired all the time,” Cohen confesses on Treaty, a gentle but spry piano and string number.

He may be physically frail — he recorded much of the album from an orthopedic medical chair, according to his son/producer Adam Cohen — the octogenarian doesn’t sound like he’s ready to concede yet. Even as he recounts former glories and failures, his rich bass-baritone feels strong and reassuring, gracefully cupped by the strums of a bouzouki or the soft hums of back-up singers or the forlorn cries of a violin.

Best track(s): You Want It Darker opens the album with what could be mistaken for the chants of Christmas carollers — until a drum beat, bass plunks, and Cohen’s stentorian pipes take over: “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game / If you are the healer means I’m broken and lame.”

Unexpected moment(s): His voice always gives the impression of a man who is sure of his beliefs and decisions, so it’s startling when he questions them, as he does on It Seemed the Better Way.

Skip this song: String Reprise/Treaty. Strings fill up the first 2 1/2 minutes. Cohen then emerges, repeating lyrics from a previous song, Treaty, to close out the final minute of the final track on You Want It Darker. On its own, it’s fine, but it’s not necessary as part of this collection.

Versus: His last album, Popular Problems (2014), offers some sense of hope. You Want It Darker doesn’t.
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Re: Leonard Cohen dead at 82

Postby jon » Fri Feb 24, 2017 4:58 pm

UBC picked up on the fact that Leonard Cohen and Fidel Castro died in the same month, so put together a piece from one of Cohen's biographies, that talks about his time in Cuba in 1961.

You can either read it or listen to it here:
http://trekmagazine.alumni.ubc.ca/2017/ ... y-of-pigs/
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