The Death of Leonard Cohen

On November 11^th, I woke to the news on NPR of the death of Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite singer songwriters. Apparently he died on November 7^th, at the age of eighty-two, but his family didn’t release the news of his death until the 10^th. I’m guessing they waited until the election and its aftermath was over. I thought I’d play his music all day, but then realized it would only hurt worse. Instead, I went online and read more about him and listened and watched a lot of videos of him there, too. I have a two CD album Live in London from a concert he did in July 2008. I watched it on PBS, and then ordered the CD. I’ll not only listen to it over the next few days, but I plan on ordering more of his albums. Especially You Want it Darker, the latest that just came out last month. Apparently the songs have words showing he’s ready to pass on.

I heard a recent short interview with him a week or two before he died. He didn’t mention it in his interview, but I guess he was suffering from a lot of back problems, and apparently other problems. His son Adam worked with him to get You Want It Darker published.

Louise Penny liked him, too, and named her eighth book How the Light Gets In from an excerpt from his poem/song “Anthem.” She first used the stanza in her second book, and when she contacted him to see if she could use it and how much she’d have to pay, he said she could have it for free. The most quoted line of his from his song is “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

As I wrote in a previous blog about the death of Pete Seeger, I’m a big fan of folk music. Much of it is upbeat and cheerful, but Cohen’s songs were more serious and had a lot of depth. Of course, especially in the sixties there were a lot of folk songs against the Viet Nam war and others of a serious nature, too.

Probably Cohen’s best known song is Hallelujah. I heard and read somewhere it took him years and years to write this song. In fact, he kept writing more and more stanzas for this before he finally settled on the ones he put on his album. A lot of other singers sang the song, too, and some used different stanzas with his permission. His songs are serious and have a lot of depth. Many of his songs are based on the poems he wrote.

A lot of singers have sung his songs. In fact, he was very generous in agreeing to it. His song Suzanne became a hit when Judy Collins sang it. She eventually recorded other Cohen songs. too. I have her album singing Suzanne.

Cohen was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist. He was born in Westmount, Quebec to a well-to-do Jewish family. In his early years, he was more of a poet before turning to music. He won numerous awards for his poetry.

Although he didn’t turn away from the Jewish faith, he also explored other faiths. In 1994 he went to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles, and stayed there in seclusion for five years. Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk.

When he returned, he found out his long-time manager, had ripped off most of his money including almost five million dollars from his retirement fund. It was probably why he decided to start touring.

From 2008 to 2010, he began going on world tours, and discovered large audiences that loved him. Tickets to his large concerts always sold out. In those concerts Hallelujah was always one of the favorites.  The album from the London concert has twenty six songs, and if both CD’s are played, it lasts two and a half hours.

Just a few of my many, many CDs

I watch very little TV. Instead I read and listen to music. The only problem I have playing his CD’s are his songs are so rich in meaning that I tend to stop reading just to listen to his voice and the words.

A few of my favorite songs of his although there are many are Hallelujah, Anthem, Tower of Song, Everybody Knows, Suzanne, So Long Marianne and Ain’t No Cure for Love. Of course, there are others I like, too, but I’m not going to list them all.

He is just one more of the singers I love, who have passed on: Pete Seeger, Odetta, Paul Robeson, John Hartford, Johnny Cash, Jean Redpath, and Pavarotti. I know there are some others I’m forgetting, too. The good thing is that their music lives on so I can still listen to them. Meanwhile I plan to order some of the albums I don’t have as well as books of his poetry.

Do you like the music of Leonard Cohen?

What other singers have you liked that passed on?