Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen (1988)

Leonard Norman Cohen [lɛnərd ˈkoʊən], CC , GOQ (born September 21, 1934 in Montreal ; died November 7, 2016 in Los Angeles ) was a Canadian singer-songwriter , writer , poet, and painter .

After Cohen had already made a name for himself with poems and novels in Canada and landed an international bestseller with the cult novel Beautiful Losers (1966), he published his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen , in 1967 . The commercially successful record with melodically simple folk songs made him internationally known and initiated a music career that lasted almost 50 years, interrupted by phases of retreat. During his artistic career from 1956 to 2016, Cohen wrote numerous collections of poetry and novels and, among other things, brought out fourteen studio albums as well as several live albums and compilations . The last album You Want It Darker was released on October 21, 2016, three weeks before his death.

His melancholic colored, poetic songs were by many artists gecovert . The best-known songs include Suzanne , Famous Blue Raincoat , Bird on the Wire and So Long, Marianne at the beginning of his career, and First We Take Manhattan and Hallelujah in the 1980s . In his musical work existential questions about love, friendship, meaning in life, human suffering, death and spirituality are addressed.

Cohen has received numerous prizes and awards, including nine Juno Awards , the Order of Canada , the Ordre national du Québec and the Prince of Asturias Prize in the literature category, and in 2015 the German Record Critics' Prize in the field of pop , rock and jazz for his life's work. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2018 Leonard Cohen was awarded a Grammy posthumously.

Life

origin

The family home in Westmount

Leonard Cohen was born into a wealthy, influential Jewish family in Westmount , an English-speaking suburb of Montreal. His great-grandfather Lazarus Cohen came from Vilkaviškis , Lithuania , where he was a teacher at the local yeshiva (religious college). In 1860 he emigrated to Canada, was successful as an entrepreneur and became president of the Shaar Hashomayim Jewish community, the largest in Montreal. His son Lyon Cohen, Leonard's grandfather, who was successful as a textile merchant and insurance broker, followed him in 1914 to the office of synagogue board. His son Nathan, an engineer, took over the large textile department store. Nathan Cohen died in January 1944 when Leonard was nine years old. His mother Marsha (Masha), who was interested in music, was the daughter of the rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline, who had immigrated from Russia . Cohen had an older sister, Esther, who passed away in 2014.

According to his own account, as a child he was deeply impressed by the religious tradition associated with his surname - the name Cohen identifies him as one of the Kohanim , the Jewish temple priests who are said to be direct descendants of Aaron . As a child he wished to enter the Holy of Holies in white clothing "and to negotiate with the deepest sources of my soul".

youth

At the age of 13, Cohen learned to play the guitar , according to himself, to impress a girl. A little later he had smaller appearances in cafes. When he was 15 he played in a three-piece country band called the Buckskin Boys . He completed his studies in English literature at McGill University in 1955. After that he worked for a while in his father's company.

Cohen as a writer

Hydra Harbor (1960)

Music initially played a subordinate role for Cohen, since he was involved in a university debating club and aspired to a career as a writer. His debut work, a volume of poetry entitled Let Us Compare Mythologies, appeared in 1956, before he graduated from university. In this book, with a first edition of 500 copies, many of his later main themes can already be identified. The follow-up book, The Spice-Box Of Earth (1961), increased the young artist's popularity, especially within Canada. But people also began to notice him abroad.

In the years that followed, Cohen led an unsteady life. Scholarships and the income from the sale of his books enabled him to travel long distances across Europe until he finally settled on the Greek island of Hydra between 1960 and 1967 . Here he lived for a few years with the Norwegian Marianne Ihlen , who - according to her own statement - became his Greek muse . From Hydra he published the novels The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966) as well as the volume of poems Flowers for Hitler (1964).

Switch to music

Although Cohen did not have a good singing voice - the German music magazine Sounds attested her that in the higher registers she "caws easily", according to the New Rock Lexicon it sounds like that of "an old blues singer who already lacks the high notes" - he tried has been a singer-songwriter since returning to New York in 1967. At that time, the US folk singer Judy Collins had already successfully interpreted his lyrics and songs, including Suzanne . Cohen was staying at the Chelsea Hotel , which is where many celebrities before and after him stayed. With Chelsea Hotel No. 2 , a song about his relationship with Janis Joplin , he later erected a memorial to the hotel.

In Greenwich Village in Manhattan, Cohen met Joni Mitchell , who, like him, comes from Canada. The two had a private relationship for a year. In a kind of songwriting competition, they each wrote their own song entitled Winter Lady . Mitchell processed the relationship with Cohen in the songs Wizard of Is , Chelsea Morning , Rainy Night House , A Case of You , That Song About the Midway and The Gallery .

Leonard Cohen had his breakthrough as a singer after individual concerts in Great Britain (e.g. in spring 1964 at the Haymarket Folk Club in Edinburgh ) in 1967 at the Newport Folk Festival . The producer John Hammond of Columbia Records discovered him and saw a second in it Bob Dylan . This is how Cohen's first album Songs of Leonard Cohen came about. The melancholy record became a great success in the folk and songwriting scene. Songs like Suzanne , Sisters of Mercy and So Long, Marianne are still among Cohen's most famous compositions. The three tracks The Stranger Song , Winter Lady and Sisters of Mercy also accentuate Robert Altman's anti-Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller , whose melancholy mood is largely influenced by the Cohen songs.

At first Cohen saw music only as a means of earning money quickly and being able to devote himself to his poetic activity again - an attitude that he soon gave up as he became increasingly successful.

Established musician

Record cover New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)

Leonard Cohen (1988)

The following albums Songs from a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971) represent a similar musical direction. Songs from a Room, which includes Bird on the Wire , cemented Cohen's position as a songwriter and achieved high sales, especially in Europe. Kris Kristofferson was so taken with the first lines that he as Epitaph saw on his grave stone: "Like a bird on a wire / Like a drunk in a midnight choir / I have tried in my way, to be free." Songs of Love and Hate , created during a phase of personal crisis, is probably Cohen's saddest album. At the time, critics wrote that razor blades should come with the album.

With a live album, Cohen said goodbye to the music business in 1972 and declared that he wanted to devote himself more to literature again. In 1973, after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War , he traveled from Greece to Israel , where, on the initiative of the Israeli musician Oshik Levi, he toured the Sinai with him and musicians like Matti Caspi , where they performed in front of units of the Israeli army . During this time the song Lover, Lover, Lover was created . In 1974 he started a large-scale comeback with the studio album New Skin for the Old Ceremony produced by John Lissauer and a tour. As a reason for his change of heart, Cohen said he needed money for his two children. New Skin for the Old Ceremony sounds different from its predecessors due to the strongly pronounced orchestral accompaniment, the songs focus more thematically on the theme of love. Cohen himself commented that this record was "less neurotic" than his previous albums.

The 1977 released album Death of a Ladies' Man was created in collaboration with Phil Spector . The pathos-rich mixture of Spector's strong instrumentation ( Wall of Sound ) and Cohen's vocals sparked discussions. Cohen's relationship to the album was also ambivalent, probably also because it ultimately led to a dispute and Spector had to secure the tapes against Cohen's access while mixing. Cohen himself described the collaboration with Spector as a disaster.

With the album Recent Songs , released in September 1979 , he returned to the folk song intimacy of his first albums. Here a turn to religious issues emerged. This development reached a climax in the album Various Positions, which was only released in 1984 after a long break . In addition to the prayer-like If It Be Your Will , which Cohen himself described as his best song, it also contains the often-covered Hallelujah . The self-doubt of the early albums is less noticeable, but humor and self-irony can now be made out in the lyrics. Musically, the album is, as the title suggests, quite varied - with The Captain there is an almost happy-sounding country song that forms a strong contrast to the bitter lyrics.

After Jennifer Warnes released an all-Cohen song tribute album entitled Famous Blue Raincoat in 1987 with great success , Cohen released I'm Your Man a year later . On this album, which is characterized for the first time by synthesizer sounds , the often covered First We Take Manhattan and Tower of Song , one of his most personal songs, stand out. The Future , published in 1992, is a bitter, misanthropic work. Lines like "I've seen the future, it is murder" show that Cohen did not want to share the naive optimism of society. The literally anthemic song Anthem was produced by his then partner, actress Rebecca De Mornay . In 1994, the piece was Waiting for the Miracle to the theme from Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers .

Withdrawal, comeback and late work

Leonard Cohen with his trademark, the Fedora (2008)

In the following years Cohen retired to a Buddhist monastery, the Spartan Mount Baldy Zen Center in the mountains at 2,000 meters above sea level near Los Angeles, where he devoted himself to Zen meditation. In 1996 he was ordained a monk under the name Jikan (the silent) and worked for the Rōshi Kyozan Joshu Sasaki as a cook and driver.

Hardly anyone expected that he would return to music again, but in 2001 Ten New Songs was released . The album was composed by his backing singer Sharon Robinson and is based on poems and texts by Leonard Cohen. In 2004 he released his eleventh studio album, Dear Heather . It carried on the sound of Ten New Songs , but added brass and keyboards to it . Cohen's former background singer and later partner Anjani has a strong vocal part. In addition to spoken rather than sung verses by Lord Byron and F. R. Scott , the album contains the gospel-like song On that Day, a reminiscence of the attacks on September 11th .

In 2005, film producer Lian Lunson released a film about Leonard Cohen called I'm Your Man . In 2006 Anjani published Blue Alert, for which Cohen wrote the lyrics and which he produced. In the spring of 2007 his first three LPs were released remastered and with two previously unreleased tracks (Songs of Leonard Cohen), two alternative versions (Songs from a Room) and an early version of a song (Songs of Love and Hate) .

Cohen's daughter discovered in late 2004 that his confidante, short-term lover, and manager Kelley Lynch had embezzled almost all of his multi-million dollar fortune. Cohen sued Lynch and won the lawsuit, but the money was gone. This financial loss is seen as an external reason for Cohen's late concert career. For the first time in 15 years, Cohen, over seventy years old, went on an extended tour. In 2008 he gave concerts in Canada and Europe, in 2009 in New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Canada and again in Europe in the summer. In September 2009, on his third concert tour in Israel, Cohen spoke Hebrew verses from the Fourth Book of Moses and blessed the 50,000 mixed audience in the sold-out Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv with the words and attitude of a priest in the synagogue. During a concert as part of his world tour, he suffered a fit of weakness in Valencia . In March 2009 a recording of the concert in the London O ₂ arena on July 17, 2008 was released under the title Live in London as a double CD album and video DVD. In 2010 he completed another world tour and gave five concerts in Germany. Under the title Songs from the Road , a live album was released for this tour, both on CD and on DVD and Blu-ray Disc .

Leonard Cohen, King's Garden, Odense, Denmark (2013)

In January 2012 the studio album Old Ideas was released , followed two years later by Popular Problems and the concert recording Live in Dublin . In March 2015, Popular Problems received the Canadian Juno Award for Album of the Year 2014 . In May 2015 the album Can't Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour was released, which in addition to well-known titles with Never Gave Nobody Trouble and Got a Little Secret also contained two new tracks.

In the German single charts , Cohen had only one top ten hit with Lover Lover Lover (1974), but his albums were always very successful in Germany too. They sold over six million times worldwide.

The last album in his lifetime

On October 21, 2016, two weeks before his death, Cohen's 14th studio album, You Want It , was released , which reached the top of the charts in several countries, including Austria and Canada. In this work the characteristic choir of spherical female voices is used in a very reduced manner. A male choir can be heard for the first time - the choir of his Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Montreal - accompanying the spiritual words, which not only refer to the Talmud but also quote it verbatim . The album is interpreted as a kaddish , recorded by Cohen for himself. Lines of text like “ Show me the place ”, “ I'm leaving the table ”, “ I'm out of the game ”, “ Blow out the flame ” and the clear “ Hineni ( I'm ready, my Lord )” indicate from the first piece onwards as a farewell.

Another album posthumously

On November 22, 2019, the album Thanks for the Dance , which contains nine new songs, was released. The recordings come from the time shortly before the death of Leonard Cohen, who, according to Sony , had asked his son Adam Cohen "to finish other pieces for which often only the vocals were available".

painting

The musician has not only inspired other artists to create pictures through his songs and his imagery; His own drawings and paintings have also become known. In addition to self-portraits and portraits, Cohen painted or drew objects (including musical instruments such as guitars), still lifes and animals, and female nudes. His works have been exhibited at the 2010 Jazz Festival in Montreal, Palo Alto and in Oslo , Manchester , Finland and Spain. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal ( Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal ) presented the exhibition Leonard Cohen: Une brèche en toute chose / A as part of the celebrations to mark the 375th anniversary of the city from November 9, 2017 to April 12, 2018 Crack in Everything .

Order of the Unified Hearts

Cohen is the founder of the Order of the Unified Hearts (Ordre des cœurs unifiés). Its symbol, two interwoven hearts, is carved on his gravestone and takes the place of a Star of David, the formal design of which it is based on.

Private

Family and women

Cohen, who was never married, had two children with Suzanne Elrod from California. Adam Cohen (* 1972) is also a musician. The daughter Lorca Cohen (* 1974), named after Federico García Lorca , accompanied Cohen on his tours as a photographer and filmmaker from 2008 to 2010. Cohen was a grandfather of three.

Cohen was "obsessed" with women, read in the press since the 1970s. He was perceived as the " Ladies' Man " and his relationships inspired some of his greatest musical successes. Suzanne refers to Suzanne Verdal , the then wife of an acquaintance, the Quebec sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. The Norwegian Marianne Ihlen is associated with various songs, including Bird on a Wire and So long, Marianne . Ihlen, Cohen's most beautiful woman in the world, was his partner on Hydra for several years in the 1960s ; after the end of their turbulent relationship, the two had a lifelong friendship. When Cohen found out about the terminal illness of his former muse in the summer of 2016, he wrote a suicide note, which was read to her just a few days before her death and which addresses his own physical decline and impending death. British filmmaker Nick Broomfield explored the love story between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen in a 2019 documentary.

Some of the women Cohen had love affairs with in the 1970s include Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin . For a while in the 1960s he was unhappy in love with the German underground artist Nico . For her he wrote the song Take this longing .

In the 1980s there was a relationship with the French photographer Dominique Issermann, who designed the covers and booklets of two albums (More Best of Music, I'm your Man) as well as his book Stranger Music and the recordings for the video for First We took Manhattan .

In the early 1990s, Cohen was in a relationship with actress Rebecca De Mornay and briefly engaged. The album Future was co-produced by her and is indirectly dedicated to her through a quote from the Bible from Genesis about Rebecca , who goes to the well.

In recent years Cohen has lived with the musician Anjani Thomas , whom he had known since 1984. It was his longest relationship (he rejected the word "relationship"). Together they wrote and produced, among other things, Anjani's album Blue Alert .

Sickness and death

Flower laying in front of his Montreal apartment

News of the musician's death on a drawing in Parc du Portugal, Montreal

Montreal Jewish Cemetery, on the anniversary of his death

As a student, Cohen was described as a calm, yet confident, natural leader. Nevertheless, he was tormented by intense stage fright. He struggled with depression all his life . "When I talk about depression, I mean clinical depression, which has been the background of my whole life, a background of fear and anxiety, a feeling that nothing is going right, that satisfaction is impossible and all strategies collapse." He tried various means to overcome depression and was a heavy smoker for decades. His five-year retreat in a Buddhist monastery led, according to his own statements, through mind control to a certain degree of relief.

Cohen died on November 7, 2016 at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 82, caused by bleeding disorders from leukemia in combination with a fall. Before his death was announced, he was buried on the evening of November 10, 2016 in the family burial site in Montreal at the Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, a Jewish Orthodox cemetery .

In honor of the artist, the state flags in Montreal were raised to half-mast.

Artistic effect

Awards (selection)

As early as 1991, Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame as part of his first Juno Awards ceremony and into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

On March 10, 2008, Leonard Cohen was inducted into the legendary American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . The acceptance ceremony took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York .

At the age of 77, he received the Princess of Asturias Prize in 2011 . In explaining their choice, the jury emphasized that Cohen was "one of the most influential authors of our time who has wonderfully explored the essential issues of humanity in great depth". In the same year he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In 2015 he received the so-called Nachtigall, the lifetime achievement award of the German record critics, for his musical oeuvre . He has won the renowned Juno Award several times in his home country, Canada, most recently the Juno Award 2013 in the categories "Songwriter of the Year" and "Artist of the Year". His album Popular Problems won the Juno Award "Album of the Year" 2015.

In 2017 an asteroid was named after him: (24732) Leonardcohen .

For the title track of his last album, You Want It Darker , Cohen received a posthumous award in the “ Best Rock Performance ” category at the 2018 Grammy Awards .

Cover versions

On the fan website The Leonard Cohen Files, there are more than 3,100 different cover versions of Leonard Cohen songs. Many artists were much more successful with their interpretations than Cohen himself, whose recordings are characterized by minimalist arrangements. Examples are First We Take Manhattan ( Joe Cocker , Jennifer Warnes , REM ), Bird on the Wire ( Judy Collins , Johnny Cash ) and especially Hallelujah (including Jeff Buckley , John Cale , Bono , Justin Bieber , Bob Dylan , Sheryl Crow , Rufus Wainwright , Bon Jovi , kd lang , Justin Timberlake ). Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André sang several Cohen songs in Italian in the mid-1970s, including Suzanne and Joan of Arc .

The Dutch singer Herman van Veen covered several Cohen songs over the years, including both a German and a Dutch version of Suzanne . The same applies to Roland Zoss , alongside Suzanne (1985) in German he sang First We Take Manhattan and Halleluja (2013) in Swiss dialect. German versions of Suzanne - each with different lyrics - were also sung by Dunja Rajter (1970), Jürgen Marcus (1975), Howard Carpendale (1981) and Gunther Emmerlich (2002). Bird on the Wire was u. a. covered by the Neville Brothers (in the film A Bird on a Wire with Mel Gibson) and by Katja Ebstein in German under the title Vogel im Wind .

The Polish artist Maciej Zembaty translated and interpreted poems and more than 60 Cohen songs in Polish. The Polish version of The Partisan became the unofficial anthem of Solidarność during the period of martial law in Poland .

The Cologne dialect singer Wolfgang Niedecken transferred First We Take Manhattan to Kölsch in 1988 , as well as Famous Blue Raincoat in 2001 and Chelsea Hotel No. 2 . The German tenor group Adoro has been singing Hallelujah in live performances since 2011 in a German transmission by Misha Schoeneberg ( Rio Reiser's lyricist ) personally approved by Leonard Cohen . Rio Reiser was supposed to record a number of the songs that Schoeneberg had translated, but died before that. The Berlin singer-songwriter and klezmer musician Daniel Kahn will present a Yiddish version of Hallelujah .

Tribute albums and memorial concert

Among the tribute albums published to date, the most important are I'm Your Fan (1991), on which the Pixies , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and REM interpret Cohen titles, and Tower of Song (1995, with Sting and Elton John among others ). In 2006 another tribute album was released with the title I'm Your Man (with the band U2 ). The American composer Philip Glass released the double album Book of Longing - A Song Cycle based on the Poetry and Images of Leonard Cohen in 2007 . On Cohen's 80th birthday in 2014, the songs translated into German by Misha Schoeneberg were recorded in German by various artists for Poem - Leonard Cohen .

Blue November night in front of the Mac in Montréal

On the eve of Cohen's first anniversary of his death, on November 6, 2017 , a concert entitled "Tower of Song" took place at the Bell Center in Montreal. Artists such as Sting , Elvis Costello , Courtney Love , Damien Rice , Feist , Lana Del Rey or Cœur de Pirate and Adam Cohen , who initiated the memorial, interpreted well-known works by Leonard Cohen. The Shaar Hashomayim Jewish Community Choir concluded the song with the title song of their last album, You Want It Darker .

Others

Cohen is mentioned in the nirvana song Pennyroyal Tea . There it says in the second stanza: "Give Me A Leonard Cohen Afterworld."

The band The Sisters of Mercy named themselves after the song of the same name from the debut album and quoted a line from Cohen's piece Teachers with the name of their album Some Girls Wander By Mistake .

In the film Mr. Morgan's Last Love , the eponymous Pauline quotes the lines "There's a crack in everything - that is how the light gets in" from Cohen's song Anthem during a boat trip ; later Mr Morgan takes up the quote when he describes the young woman as his "crack".

In an episode of the TV series Miami Vice first broadcast in February 1986 , Cohen made a two-minute guest appearance as a corrupt Interpol investigator. According to his own statement, Cohen only wanted to impress his children, who were big fans of the series, with his performance.

In 2015, Rolling Stone listed Cohen in 16th place of the 100 best songwriters of all time .

In 2017, the installation artist Jenny Holzer projected lines of text from Cohen's literary and musical work onto Silo No. 5 at the Montreal harbor on the occasion of the 375th anniversary of the city.

Discography

→ Main article : Leonard Cohen / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)						Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US	CA
1967	Songs of Leonard Cohen	DE- gold DE	-	CH99 (1 week) CH	UK13 gold (70 weeks)UK	US83 gold (14 weeks)US	-	First published: December 27, 1967 Chart entry in CH only in 2016 Sales: + 1,060,000
1969	Songs from a Room	-	-	-	UK2 (26 weeks) UK	US63 (17 weeks) US	CA10 (... wk.) CA	First published: April 7, 1969
1971	Songs of Love and Hate	DE24 (24 weeks) DE	-	-	UK4 (18 weeks) UK	US145 (11 weeks) US	CA63 (... weeks) CA	First published: March 19, 1971
1974	New Skin for the Old Ceremony	DE17 (24 weeks) DE	AT2 (8 weeks) AT	-	UK24 silver (3 weeks)UK	-	-	First published: August 11, 1974 Sales: + 60,000
1977	Death of a Ladies' Man	-	-	-	UK35 (5 weeks) UK	-	-	First published: November 13, 1977
1979	Recent songs	DE56 (8 weeks) DE	AT24 (4 weeks) AT	-	-	-	-	First published: September 27, 1979 Chart entry in DE in 1980
1984	Various positions	DE43 (11 weeks) DE	AT18 (4 weeks) AT	CH17 (7 weeks) CH	UK52 silver (6 weeks)UK	-	CA60 (... weeks) CA	First published: December 11, 1984 Sales: + 155,000
1988	I'm your man	DE32 (13 weeks) DE	AT22 (22 weeks) AT	CH9 (14 weeks) CH	UK48 gold (13 weeks)UK	-	CA34 gold (… Where.)CA	First published: February 21, 1988 Sales: + 700,000
1992	The future	DE79 (7 weeks) DE	AT5 (8 weeks) AT	CH21 (10 weeks) CH	UK36 silver (3 weeks)UK	-	CA7th × 2 Double platinum (… Where.)CA	First published: November 20, 1992 Sales: + 310,000
2001	Ten New Songs	DE16 (11 weeks) DE	AT5 (14 weeks) AT	CH10 gold (14 weeks)CH	UK26th gold (4 weeks)UK	US143 (3 weeks) US	CA4th platinum (3 weeks)CA	First published: October 8, 2001 Sales: + 535,000
2004	Dear Heather	DE19 (5 weeks) DE	AT13 (7 weeks) AT	CH13 (6 weeks) CH	UK34 silver (3 weeks)UK	US131 (1 week) US	CA5 (1 week) CA	First published: October 25, 2004 Sales: + 80,000
2012	Old Ideas	DE4th gold (12 weeks)DE	AT2 gold (14 weeks)AT	CH2 gold (17 weeks)CH	UK2 gold (8 weeks)UK	US3 (8 weeks) US	CA1 platinum (13 weeks)CA	First published: Jan 27, 2012 Sales: + 454,000
2014	Popular Problems	DE4 (10 weeks) DE	AT1 gold (16 weeks)AT	CH1 gold (14 weeks)CH	UK5 silver (12 weeks)UK	US15 (5 weeks) US	CA1 platinum (10 weeks)CA	First published: September 19, 2014 Sales: + 258,000
2016	You Want It Darker	DE2 gold (21 weeks)DE	AT1 platinum (19 weeks)AT	CH2 platinum (25 weeks)CH	UK4th gold (13 weeks)UK	US7 (10 weeks) US	CA1 platinum (19 weeks)CA	First published: October 21, 2016 Sales: + 590,000
2019	Thanks for the dance	DE5 (13 weeks) DE	AT2 gold (9 weeks)AT	CH4 (16 weeks) CH	UK7 (5 weeks) UK	US61 (1 week) US	CA1 (6 weeks) CA	First published: November 22nd, 2019 Sales: + 7,500

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Movies

• Ladies and Gentlemen - Mr. Leonard Cohen , Donald Brittain , Don Owen, Canada 1965, 45 min.
• Bird on a Wire , Tony Palmer , Great Britain 1974, 95 min. (Restored version released on DVD in 2010)
• The Song of Leonard Cohen , Harry Rasky , Canada 1980, 90 min.
• I Am a Hotel , director: Allan F. Nicholls, Canada 1983, 28 min., Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
• Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen , Bob Portway, Great Britain 1988, 70 min., BBC production (VHS video)
• Leonard Cohen. Una nit a Barcelona , Spain 1993, 45 min., TV production, TV3 (Catalonia)
• In Short: Leonard Cohen , short film, Canada 1996, 17 min., National Film Board of Canada
• Leonard Cohen: Printemps 96 , Armelle Brusq, France 1997, 52 min.
• På danske læber live , Martin de Thurah, Denmark 2004, 58 min., TV production
• Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man , Lian Lunson, USA 2005, 105 min. (Canada: 98 min.)
• What Leonard Cohen Did for Me , short film, Martina Hall, Great Britain 2005, 29 min., TV production
• Hommage à Leonard Cohen , Pierre Lamoureux, Canada 2008, 90 min., TV production
• Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows , Jocelyn Barnabé, Canada 2008, 54 min., TV production
• Live in London , Edward Sanders, USA 2009, 150 min., DVD
• Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 , Murray Lerner, USA 2009, 64 min., DVD
• Leonard Cohen's Lonesome Heroes , 2010, 110 min., DVD
• Songs from the Road , Edward Sanders, 2010, 252 min., DVD
• Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love , director: Nick Broomfield, USA 2019, documentary, BBC production

Books (selection)

• 1956: Let Us Compare Mythologies. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto.
• 1961: The Spice-Box of Earth. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto.
• 1963: The Favorite Game. A novel. Secker & Warburg, London (in German: Das Lieblingsspiel. March publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-87319-104-0 ).
  • Republished in a new German translation. Blumenbar-Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-936738-59-9 .
• 1964: Flowers for Hitler. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto et al. (Bilingual German / English: Flowers for Hitler. Poems and songs 1956–1970 . March publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1971).
• 1966: Beautiful Losers. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto (Roman. In German: Schöne Losierer. March publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1970).
  • Republished as paperback in a new German translation: Beautiful Losers. Novel. btb, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-442-73988-2 .
• 1966: Parasites of Heaven. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto et al. (Bilingual German / English: Parasites of the sky. Poems from 10 years. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1976).
• 1968: Selected Poems. 1956-1968. Viking Press, New York NY.
• 1972: The Energy of Slaves. Cape, London, ISBN 0-224-00787-4 (bilingual German / English: The energy of slaves. German by Harry Rowohlt . Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1975).
• 1978: Death of a Lady's Man McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, ISBN 0-7710-2177-1 (bilingual German / English: last exam. German by Rudolf Hermstein. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1982).
• 1984: Book of Mercy. Cape, London, ISBN 0-224-02261-X (bilingual German / English: Who else but Dir . März-Verlag, Herbstein 1985, ISBN 3-88880-060-9 ).
• 1993: Stranger Music. Selected Poems and Songs. Cape, London, ISBN 0-224-03860-5 .
• 2006: Book of Longing. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, ISBN 0-7710-2234-4 (in German: Book of Desires . Blumenbar-Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-936738-45-2 ).

Literature on Cohen

• Christof Graf: Leonard Cohen - partisan of love. vgs, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-8025-2349-0 (biography and Cohen's tours up to then).
• Jim Devlin (Ed.): Leonard Cohen - In his own words. From the American by Clemens Brunn, Palmyra, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-930378-41-8 .
• Ira B. Nadel: Various Positions. The life of Leonard Cohen . Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-35845-4 (English: Various Positions. A Life of Leonard Cohen . 1997.).
• Christof Graf: Leonard Cohen - titan of words. Edel, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 3-941378-64-3 (biography).
• Anthony Reynolds: Leonard Cohen. An extraordinary life. Bosworth Edition, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86543-649-8 .
• Caspar Battegay: Judaism and Pop Culture. An essay. Series: Kultur- und Medientheorie o. No. Transcript, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-2047-4 ; therein: The ghosts of Leonard Cohen. Identity and figure. Pp. 23-40.
• Sylvie Simmons: I'm Your Man. The life of Leonard Cohen . 2nd Edition. btb, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-442-74289-9 (751 pages, English: I'm Your Man. The Life of Leonard Cohen . New York 2012. Translated by Kirsten Borchardt).
• Harvey Kubernik: Leonard Cohen - Everybody knows. The pictorial biography. Knesebeck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86873-736-3 .
• Liel Leibovitz: A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen. Norton Company, 2014.
• Christof Graf: Zen and Poetry - The Leonard Cohen Lexicon. Schardtverlag, Oldenburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-89841-846-1 (reference work).
• Wolfgang Haberl : Leonard Cohen: The power of words. SWB Media Entertainment, Waiblingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-96438-005-0 .

See also

• List of songs by Leonard Cohen

Web links

Commons : Leonard Cohen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Leonard Cohen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Leonard Cohen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Leonard Cohen at Allmusic (English)
• Leonard Cohen at Discogs (English)
• Leonard Cohen on MusicBrainz (English)
• Official Homepage (German)
• Extensive archive of information about Leonard Cohen (English)
• Extensive archive with information on Leonard Cohen (German)
• You want it darker (german)
• Obituaries: spiegel.de (Arno Frank), tagesspiegel.de ( Rüdiger Schaper ), juedische-allgemeine.de (Maria Ossowski), faz.net ( Edo Reents ), rollingstone.de (Arne Willander), sueddeutsche.de , zeit. de , Deutschlandfunk.de (Christof Graf) .
• Cohen's entry in English-Canadian writers , Athabasca University , with links, including an essay by David Brundage: Leonard Cohen and the Romantic: Is He or Isn't He? , 2016.
• Francis Mus: Leonard Cohen in French culture: A song of love and hate. A comparison between musical and literary translation. In: JoSTrans. The Journal of Specialized Translation. # 29, January 2018, ISSN  1740-357X
• Leonard Cohen ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved November 20, 2019.
• Gerald Beyrodt: Leonard Cohen and the Religions - Broken Hallelujah. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Day by Day”. April 13, 2020 (also as mp3 audio , 21 MB, 23 minutes). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm your man: the life of Leonard Cohen. Cape, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-224-09063-6 , p. 14.
2. ↑ Arthur Kurzweil: "I am the little Jew who wrote the Bible" - a conversation between Leonard Cohen and Arthur Kurzweil. (PDF) The Leonard Cohen Files, p. 7 , accessed November 13, 2016 . 
3. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen . Ecco Press, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-06-199498-2 , pp. 6 .
4. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen . Ecco Press, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-06-199498-2 , pp. 7 .
5. ↑ Rose-Maria Gropp: Immortal with a few songs. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 21, 2014, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
6. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm your man: the life of Leonard Cohen. Cape, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-224-09063-6 , p. 24.
7. ^ Leonard Cohen: Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters . Ed .: Jeff Burger. Chicago Review Press, Chicago 2014, ISBN 978-1-61374-758-2 , pp. 370 .
8. ↑ Arthur Kurzweil: "I am the little Jew who wrote the Bible" - a conversation between Leonard Cohen and Arthur Kurzweil. (PDF) The Leonard Cohen Files, p. 19 , accessed December 8, 2017 . 
9. ↑ Flag at half-staff to honor Cohen, fund established in his honor on the McGill University website, November 15, 2016.
10. ^ ^{A b} Barry Graves , Siegfried Schmidt-Joos : The new rock lexicon . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, Vol. 1, p. 173.
11. ↑ Songs of Muses and Myths. In: Die Zeit , November 10, 2016.
12. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: On the trail of the songwriter. The career cost Leonhard Cohen great love. (November 8, 2019) ; viewed on June 6, 2020
13. ↑ Sounds. Plates 66-77 . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 67.
14. ^ Sylvie Simmons: I'm Your Man. The life of Leonard Cohen . btb, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-442-74289-9 , p. 241-243 .
15. ↑ Sounds. Plates 66-77 . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 203.
16. ^ ^{A b c} Barry Graves , Siegfried Schmidt-Joos : The new rock lexicon . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, Vol. 1, p. 174.
17. ↑ Songs for the soldiers . Jewish General, November 17, 2016.
18. ↑ Sounds. Plates 66-77 . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 840.
19. ↑ A hallelujah to orgasm. In: Spiegel Online , November 11, 2016.
20. ↑ Larry Rohter: Leonard Cohen, Epic and Enigmatic Songwriter, Is Dead at 82. The New York Times , November 10, 2016, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
21. ↑ Werner Theurich: The watchful dreamer. In: Spiegel Online . September 20, 2014, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
22. ^ Nathan Jeffay: 'Hallelujah' in Tel Aviv: Leonard Cohen Energizes Diverse Crowd. In: The Jewish Daily Forward , September 25, 2009.
23. ↑ Kai Wichelmann: Leonard Cohen: New live album "Can't Forget: A Souvenir Of The Grand Tour" two new songs. Rolling Stone , March 18, 2015, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
24. ↑ http://www.youngisrael.ottawa.on.ca/content/last-words-god-leonard-cohen%E2%80%99s-paradox
25. ↑ posthumous album of Leonard Cohen in November. In: orf.at . September 20, 2019, accessed September 21, 2019.
26. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
27. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
28. ↑ Simon Cosyns: Leonard Cohen: From ladies' man to reluctant poet 'genius' obsessed with sex and God, we reveal the singer's colorful life In: The Sun , November 12, 2016 (English).
29. ↑ http://recordcollectormag.com/articles/ladies-man .
30. ^ Nicholas Reilly: Leonard Cohen's letter to dying muse Marianne Ihlen is just beautiful. In: Metro , August 7, 2016.
31. ↑ One last “So Long” In: Spiegel Online , November 11, 2016.
32. ↑ Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love , USA 2019 - Direction and script: Nick Broomfield. Camera: Barney Broomfield. Editor: Marc Hoeferlin. With: Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen. Piece of Magic, 102 minutes.
33. ^ Leonard Cohen, the women he loved, and the women who loved him. In: cbcmusic.ca , November 11, 2016.
34. ^ Take this longing
35. ↑ Alex Heigl: Rebecca de Mornay Remembers ex-Fiancé Leonard Cohen: "There Was No One Like Him, and There Never Will Be" In: People , November 11, 2016 (English).
36. ↑ Johannes Wächter: “With amnesia you can get very far” In: SZ-Magazin , 12/2007.
37. ↑ Leonard Cohen is dead. In: Spiegel Online , November 11, 2016.
38. ^ Matt Schudel: Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter of love, death and philosophical longing, dies at 82. The Washington Post , November 11, 2016, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
39. ↑ DrHGuy: Leonard Cohen Is Dead; Our World Is Darker. (No longer available online.) Cohencentric.com, November 10, 2016, archived from the original on November 11, 2016 ; accessed on November 13, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
40. ↑ DrHGuy: Details of Leonard Cohen's Death From Robert Kory. cohencentric.com, November 16, 2016, accessed November 17, 2016 . 
41. ↑ Ellen Brait, Allan Woods: Leonard Cohen buried quietly on Thursday in Montreal. Toronto Star , November 11, 2016, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
42. ↑ Mort de Leonard Cohen: hommages à un artiste qui a “transcendé les générations” In: Le Parisien , November 11, 2016 (French).
43. ↑ http://canadianmusichalloffame.ca/inductee/leonard-cohen/
44. ↑ https://www.cshf.ca/songwriter/leonard-cohen/
45. ^ Leonard Cohen wins the Prince of Asturias award. In: BBC , June 2, 2011 (English).
46. ↑ Alison Flood: Leonard Cohen's 'oeuvre of immutable merit' wins major Spanish literary prize. In: The Guardian , June 3, 2011 (English).
47. ↑ price -2015 record review: Nightingale and prizes of honor ; accessed on July 4, 2015,
48. ^ Carly Rae Jepsen, Leonard Cohen Early Winners at Junos
49. ↑ Jon Dekel: Junos 2015: Canada's musical legends cast long shadow on up-and-comers as Leonard Cohen wins best album. In National Post , March 15, 2015.
50. ^ Cohen and Fisher posthumously honored. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , January 29, 2018.
51. ^ A Thousand Covers Deep: Leonard Cohen covered by other artists. The Leonard Cohen Files, June 16, 2016, accessed November 14, 2016 . 
52. ↑ Jordan Kutzik: WATCH: Amazing Yiddish Rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'. In: The Jewish Daily Forward , November 10, 2016.
53. ^ Brendan Kelly: Leonard Cohen tribute at Bell Center to feature Sting, Lana Del Rey. In: Montreal Gazette , September 18, 2017 (English).
54. ↑ T'cha Dunlevy: Concert review: Stars shine paced fast-in, Leonard Cohen touching tribute. In: Montreal Gazette , January 4, 2018 (English).
55. ↑ 80s stars who appeared on Miami Vice. In: 80s80s.de. Retrieved February 3, 2020 . 
56. ↑ The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Rolling Stone , August 2015, accessed August 8, 2017 . 
57. ^ The MAC and Jenny Holzer in Leonard Cohen's Honor. In: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal , January 18, 2017 (English).
58. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
59. ^ Albert Meier: Leonard Cohen: Live in London. in: Kiel Contributions to Film Music Research , issue 5.4, April 2011, ISSN  1866-4768 , pp. 613–617, online