‘Hallelujah’ songwriter Cohen dies
Leonard Cohen, the baritone-voiced singer-songwriter who seamlessly blended spirituality and sexuality in hits like “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire,” has died at 82.
Leonard Cohen, a singer-songwriter whose literary sensibility and elegant dissections of desire made him one of popular music’s most influential and admired figures for four decades, has died. He was 82.
Cohen’s death was first announced Thursday night on his official Facebook page. The cause of death was not released.
In songs such as “Suzanne,” “Bird on the Wire” and “Hallelujah,” and in his poems and two novels, the Montreal-born artist provided a rarefied alternative to more accessible troubadours, employing meticulous language to plumb the vagaries of the human condition.
His dry, monotone voice, which over the years deepened to a cigarette-charred whisper, contributed to Cohen’s popular image as a depressed — and depressing — artist. He teasingly alluded to that stereotype in one of his songs, referring to “the patron saint of envy and the grocer of despair.”
Humor was in fact abundant, if subtle, in his work, along with a prominent vein of spirituality and, especially later in his life, a penetrating social and political eye.
“Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the ‘illogical’ line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture,” author Tom Robbins wrote in the booklet of “Tower of Song,” a 1996 tribute album.
Despite his stature among critics and other artists, Cohen struggled to find an audience for much of his career. But he enjoyed a late renaissance, as a young generation of musicians, including Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, R.E.M. and U2, discovered him in the 1990s.
Cohen never married but was known for a succession of relationships with notable women, including singers Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin, artist Suzanne Elrod (the mother of his two children), actress Rebecca De Mornay and, most recently, singer Anjani Thomas.
Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and was a member of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame — one of several honors bestowed by institutions in his native country. He won a Grammy as a guest singer on Herbie Hancock’s 2007 album “River: The Joni Letters.”
Leonard Norman Cohen was born Sept. 21, 1934, in Montreal. His father, Nathan, was a garment merchant, and his mother, Marsha, was a nurse who encouraged his interest in poetry.
Cohen attended Montreal’s McGill University as an English major. After graduating in 1955, he joined the city’s thriving literary scene and published his first volume of poetry, “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” in 1956.
A second collection, “The SpiceBox of Earth,” earned acclaim when it appeared in 1961, and was followed by the autobiographical novel “The Favourite Game” in 1963.
In 1960, Cohen bought a house on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote his second novel, “Beautiful Losers,” a sexual and spiritual phantasmagoria that brought him to wider critical and public attention, with comparisons to James Joyce and Henry Miller.
Despite the growing prestige, Cohen found it hard to make a living, so he started writing songs. He intended to move to Nashville, but when he stopped in New York he was seduced by the city’s folk music scene.
His 1967 debut album, “The Songs of Leonard Cohen,” wasn’t a big seller, but it had a strong impact on a cult of fans and other musicians.
After “Live Songs” in 1973, he was a stranger to the sales charts. Interest in his work was renewed when pop singer Jennifer Warnes, a former collaborator and backing vocalist, released “Famous Blue Raincoat,” an acclaimed 1987 album of Cohen material.
With his own engaging and often humorous album “I’m Your Man” following in 1988, Cohen soon found himself the object of tribute albums and effusive praise from that new generation. He was especially popular in Europe, where his persona fit the tradition of the romantic, world-weary cabaret singer.
In the mid-1990s he suspended his career and lived in a Buddhist monastery, where he became a monk.
Cohen continued releasing albums in the early 2000s, but his plans for retirement hit a snag when he discovered that his former business manager, Kelley Lynch, had drawn $5 million from his savings. With his funds depleted, Cohen returned to the road at age 73, in Europe and the U.S. in 2008 and 2009.