Music legend Leonard Cohen dead at 82
Enigmatic ‘godfather of gloom’ was one of Canada’s greatest treasures and most influential artists
Leonard Cohen himself predicted the day was coming mere weeks ago — with typical elegance and eloquence, of course, but also a solemn sense of certainty that seemed sombre even by Cohen’s sombre standards — on his 14th album, You Want it Darker, but on Thursday the poet laure- ate of Canadian pop music made his graceful exit from this world official at the age of 82.
“It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away,” read a message posted to his Facebook page around 9 p.m. EST on Nov. 10. “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.”
Cohen’s 45-year recording career — begun with Songs of Leonard Cohen when he was already established as a published poet and novelist in1966 at 32, a relatively advanced age by rock ’n’ roll standards that legendarily prompted one New York agent to ask him at the time: “Aren’t you a little old for this game?” — was famously preoccupied with matters of mortality, religion and existential darkness in gen- eral, yet he seemed acutely aware that the end was looming on You Want It Darker.
The record’s opening, title track began with the words “If you are the dealer / I’m out of the game,” then followed through with an ominous rumble of Cohen’s beloved baritone that declared with no little finality “I’m ready, my lord.”
And the media-shy master, in an exceedingly rare interview given to the New Yorker to mark the album’s release, did nothing to dispel the doom and gloom.
He told the magazine: “Maybe I’ll get a second wind, I don’t know. But I don’t dare attach myself to a spiritual strategy. I don’t dare do that. I’ve got some work to do. Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.”
Like David Bowie, who passed away this past January after issuing a definitive last will and testament of similar, stirring power in the form of the album Blackstar, Cohen shuffled off this mortal coil in total control of his art. Which totally befitted a dapper gent from Montreal — albeit a noted lady-killer — whose doomy-and-gloomy poetic proclivities earned him such nicknames as the “godfather of gloom,” the “poet lau- reate of pessimism,” the “grocer of despair” and the “prince of bummers” over the decades.
In many respects, Cohen could be considered the great-grandfather of Goth, since his dour, deliberate and oft-obsidian recorded output cast a long shadow over fellow delvers in the dark arts from the Velvet Un- derground and Joy Division to Nick Cave and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Let’s not forget, after all, from whence Sisters of Mercy took their name. There’s a reason why the late Kurt Cobain wheezed “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld / So I can sigh eternally” on “Pennyroyal Tea.” Cohen had the darkness dialed in.
He had a sense of humour about it, though. Forced back onto the touring trail after a long period of ascetic, spiritual exile in 2008 at 73 by the financial indiscretions of others, he quipped that he would start smoking again at 80 even as he shut the room down night after night with the mortal weight of the spoken-word in- terlude “A Thousand Kisses Deep” (“Been working out, but it’s too late / It’s been too late for years”).
It seemed like a goodbye then, it seemed even more like a goodbye when a slightly creakier Cohen returned and offered the same poem on his next tour on his Old Ideas tour in 2012. Earlier this year, however, when the 1991 Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductee sent a note to the family of Marianne Ihlen, the Muse behind such Cohen classics as “Song Long, Marianne,” the man’s flirtations with finality took on a rather more final tone.
“Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon, “Cohen wrote in a letter made public by her family after her death this July. “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”
“Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.” LEONARD COHEN