Last Year's Man: RIP Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen

Just last week, the world lost renowned artist, Leonard Cohen, to cancer.  He was 82 years old.  Originally from Canada, he was a prolific literary writer, having published numerous volumes of poetry, as well as two novels, and an established singer-songwriter with 14 albums under his belt, including "You Want It Darker", released just days before his death.

There is no way to quantify the sense of lost I felt at the passing of Cohen.  His music meant so much to me as a young man.

In 2005, at the age of 35, I made my first trek to Manhattan - around the same age that Cohen moved to New York City to start his music career.  I went with my old friend and music guru, Matt.  We spent a long weekend walking up and down the island, checking out eateries in Mid-town, scouring vinyl shops in the East Village.  We took a detour through the trash-strewn 23rd Street until we came to the dilapidated, red-brick building that is Chelsea Hotel.

"Do you know what's gone on in there?"  Matt inquired knowingly.

"Other than Leonard Cohen getting head on an unmade bed?" I said.

"This is where rock stars come to die," Matt grinned.

Me and Matt, Chelsea Hotel, 2005

The Chelsea has been the hangout spot for artists for over a century.  Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia there.  Arthur C. Clarke wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" there.  Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road" there.  Sid Vicious fatally stabbed Nancy Spungen there.

And for a time, in 1968, Leonard Cohen lived there, writing about the sexual encounter I referred to in the 1974 song, "Chelsea Hotel No. 2".  One particular night, after having limited success on his debut album, Cohen went for a walk to clear his head and met an up and coming Janis Joplin in the elevator.  After striking up a conversation with her, she revealed that she was looking for Kris Kristofferson, and Cohen lied and said that he was Kristofferson.  This lead to  one-night stand that Cohen immortalized in the song.  His talent was to take the perverse and mundane and turn it into something lyrical and beautiful.

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

You were famous, your heart was a legend

You told me again you preferred handsome men

But for me you would make an exception.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us

Who are the figures of beauty

You fixed yourself, you said, "Well, never mind

We are ugly but we have the music."

It was Matt who introduced me to the music of Leonard Cohen back in 1990.  He put a few songs on a mix tape, along with songs by Dinosaur Jr., Prong, and Led Zepplin.  I fell in love with the songs and soon bought the 1975 collection, "The Best of Leonard Cohen", which has selections from his first four albums.  I still have it, still listen to it.  When I think of Leonard Cohen, I think of these songs.  To me, he represented the artistic and unconventional side of the '60s - willing to make art on his own merit rather than giving in to anything mainstream.

In 1994, my brother sent me a copy of "Grace" by Jeff Buckley, which, to me, was an instant classic.  Right away, I noticed an angelic cover of Cohen's "Hallelujah", which is perhaps one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded.  The first time I listened to it, I had chills go up and down my spine.  Not just at the exquisiteness of the music, but the fact that Buckley - someone around my age - was covering a Cohen song.  I remember gushing about it to my brother, and I remember my brother not really caring.  But to me, it was a vindication of all of the underground music that I held dear.

Cohen in the '60s

I noticed right away that the Cohen original and the Buckley version have different verses.  I always wondered about that.  So I did a bit of research on that.  John Cale did the first cover, and he noticed that the song was different every time Cohen performed the song live.  So he wrote to Cohen and asked for the lyrics.  Cohen sent him fifteen pages of lyrics.  Over the years, artists have been known to mix and match verses, depending on how they want to make the song.

In recent years, I have an even larger collection of Cohen's music -a sprawling double CD set called "The Essential Leonard Cohen" that is a more comprehensive collection of Cohen's music.  It has all of my favorites like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Bird On a Wire", "Who By Fire?", and, my absolute favorite, "Famous Blue Raincoat".  But it also has many of his songs from the '80s that I was not familiar with - like "Ain't No Cure For Love", "Take This Waltz", and "Dance Me To the End of Love".  In many of these songs, he eschewed the minimalist, folk instrumentation I was used to in favor of glitzy, cheesy, '80s synthesizers.  Nevertheless, the songs are still good.  They still have Cohen's deep, silky voice, and his penchant for penning haunting melodies, as well as his profound, poetic words.

After learning of his death, that night, my wife and I sat down and listened to his music.  I asked her if he reminded her of other New York folk artists like Simon & Garfunkel or Bob Dylan.  A little, she said, but she saw more of an influence on Neil Diamond's music.

"He kind of reminds me of those French singers you like," she said, referring to Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel.  She is not wrong.  They come from the same era.  As I listened to him, I was surprised to see his influence on Nick Cave, something I didn't expect.

His death came as such a shock and at such a tumultuous time, the news being released after Election Day, when this nation was in the grips of the worst election in history.  It almost seemed as if God was punishing us by taking one of our brightest stars.  That was another thing I liked about Cohen was his devotion to God.  His songs are full of sexual innuendos, and some of them quite dirty.  Yet he never allowed this to alter his faith.  All of these things are part of the human experience.  He was part saint, part whore.  Kind of like me.