LEONARD COHEN - BIOGRAPHY

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934. His father, an engineer who owned a clothing concern, died when Leonard was nine. He went on to attend McGill University, where at 17 he formed a country-western trio called the Buckskin Boys. He also began writing poetry and became part of the local boho-literary scene, a scene so "underground" that it was bereft of "subversive intentions because even that would be beneath it." His first collection of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published in 1956, while he was still an undergrad. The Spice Box Of Earth (1961), his second collection, catapulted Leonard Cohen to international recognition.

After a brief stint at Columbia University in New York, Leonard Cohen obtained a grant and was able to escape the confines of North America. He travelled throughout Europe and eventually settled on the Greek island of Hydra, where he shared his life with Marianne Jenson, and her son Axel. Cohen stayed in Greece on and off for seven years. He wrote another collection of poetry, the controversial Flowers For Hitler (1964); and two highly acclaimed novels, The Favorite Game (1963), his portrait of the artist as a young Jew in Montreal, and Beautiful Losers (1966), described on its dust jacket as "a disagreeable religious epic of incomparable beauty." Upon its publication, the Boston Globe trumpeted, "James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen." To date, each book has sold more than 800,000 copies worldwide. But Cohen's restless spirit couldn't be contained, even by the warmth of Hydra. "For the writing of books, you have to be in one place," he told Musician magazine in 1988. "You tend to gather things around you when you write a novel. You need a woman in your life. It's nice to have some kids around, 'cause there's always food. It's nice to have a place that's clean and orderly. I had those things and then I decided to be a songwriter."

Leaving behind his domestic scene, Cohen returned to America, intent on settling near Nashville and pursuing a musical career. Championed by Judy Collins, who recorded both "Suzanne" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag" on her In My Life album, Cohen appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, where he came to the attention of legendary Columbia A&R man John Hammond (who also recruited Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to the label). By Christmas, Columbia had released his first album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen. It was a remarkable debut, as songs like "Suzanne," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," "So Long, Marianne," and "Sisters of Mercy" propelled Cohen to the top of the pop-confessional pantheon. The songs had such power that Robert Altman's 1971 film, "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" became, in effect, the first long-form video for Cohen's soundtrack. Songs From a Room (1969), his second album, and Songs of Love and Hate (1971) further reinforced Cohen's standing as the master ofSongs From mortification and the sentry of solitude. With "Bird On a Wire," "The Song of Isaac," "Joan of Arc," and "Famous Blue Raincoat," he continued to stretch the borders of the pop song landscape.

1972 brought with it the release of Live Songs, Cohen's only live album, which featured an amazing 14-minute improvisation, "Please Don't Pass Me By," along with live versions of songs from his first three albums. New Skin For the Old Ceremony (1973), was a bit of a stylistic departure. Featuring a more orchestrated sound (thanks to producer John Lissauer), Cohen continued his investigations into the hottest crucible of the human spirit -- the muffled battles in the boudoirs. Cohen took a sabbatical from the musical wars for the next few years, releasing only a greatest hits album, Best of Leonard Cohen (1975).

In 1977, he was back with what was certainly his most curious album, Death of a Ladies' Man. It started as a collaboration with famed producer Phil Spector, but ended with Cohen being excluded from the final stages of recording. "It was a catastrophe," Cohen remembers. "Those are all scratch vocals, and Phil mixed it in secret under armed guard. I had to decide whether I was going to hire my own private army and fight it out on Sunset Boulevard, or let it go. I let it go." Recent Songs (1979), the next album, was another stylistic departure from its predecessor. Gone was the Spectorian wall-of-sound, replaced with a more delicate musical patina partly due to the influence of co-producer Henry Lewy (who had previously worked with Joni Mitchell). The songs continued Cohen's dissections of the vicissitudes of the male-female union, but also began to reflect his long-standing explorations into the religious arena.

Various Positions (1984) was the full flowering of these religious concerns. Songs like "Hallelujah", "The Law", Heart With No Companion" and "If It Be Your Will" are contemporary psalms, born of an undoubtedly long and difficult spiritual odyssey, so difficult that its conclusion left Cohen literally "wiped out". "I had a lot of versions of myself that I had used religion to support," Cohen told L.A. Style in 1988. "If you deal with this material you can't put God on. I thought I could spread light and I could enlighten my world and those around me and I thought I could, but I was unable to. This is a landscape in which men far stronger than you, far braver, nobler, kinder, more generous, men of extremely high achievements have burnt to a crisp on this road. Once you start dealing with sacred material you're gonna get creamed".

I'm Your Man (1988) was the culmination of Cohen's professional and personal reintegration, an amazingly crafted work that speaks eloquently to the experience of one of our musical elders. Buoyed by now-classic songs like "First We Take Manhattan," "Tower of Song," and "Ain't No Cure For Love," it was no surprise that the album went to #1 in several European countries.

While Cohen's painstaking meticulousness has led to many long passages of time between albums, artists as diverse as Neil Diamond, Nick Cave, Diana Ross, Joan Baez, Rita Coolidge, and Joe Cocker have kept Cohen's music on the airwaves with their own interpretations of his songs. Long-time musical colleague Jennifer Warnes released the critically acclaimed "Famous Blue Raincoat" in 1986, an entire album of Cohen's work.

Cohen's output does not exist solely on paper or on disc. He conceptualizes his own videos and, in 1984, scripted, directed and scored "I Am A Hotel, a half-hour short feature that won first prize at the Festival International de Television de Montreux (Switzerland) and was submitted for Academy Award consideration. He collaborated with singer/songwriter Lewis Furey on Night Magic, a rock opera movie for which he won the Canadian Juno award for "Best Movie Score" of 1985. His work in front of the camera even included a memorable cameo as the head of Interpol on NBC's "Miami Vice".

From a man who only "aspired to be a minor poet" early in his career, Leonard Cohen has produced a body of work that has withstood the passage of time. With the release of The Future, his eleventh album, he continues to bring to us, through the musical idiom, a documentation of maturity and survival.

The last Cohen's album "Ten New Songs" confirms, that our guru is still on top: as a poet and songwriter as well as a musician.

2002 - here comes the next, huge package of Cohen's best pieces (31 ones on 2 cd's). The Essential - for low-budget fans with no money for all 15 disks (as myself).

Above biography, with my little remarks, is taken from Leonard Cohen's Home Page.