Leonard Cohen. (Michael Donald/eyevine/Redux)Update, Nov. Leonard Cohen has passed away at the age of 8. Sony Music Canada has confirmed. Here is Maclean’s final profile of the Canadian visionary, discussing an album that grappled with his mortality. Share your stories of your life and Leonard Cohen here. By now Leonard Cohen is such a national treasure that we take him for granted. As if he’s always been with us. In a sense he has. His confidential baritone, which gets immeasurably deeper as the years go by, echoes between the bedroom and the Bible like some pre- Cambrian catacomb of the soul. It’s a voice that sounds older than Canada, older than time—and the voice of an artist who now seems acutely aware that his days are numbered. On Sept. 2. 1, Leonard Cohen—poet, singer- songwriter, Zen Buddhist monk, rabbinical joker, and ladies’ man emeritus—turned 8. One month later, he will release his 1. You Want It Darker. It’s a deft title, reminding us that the artist who once dubbed himself “the grocer of despair” has always liked to deflect solemnity with the backhanded wit of a gravedigger trapped in a gold mine. Leonard Cohen: Remembering the Life and Legacy of the Poet of Brokenness. For nearly half a century, the novelist, ladies' man and Buddhist monk built a tower of song. Find Leonard Cohen bio, music, credits, awards, & streaming links on AllMusic - Cerebral yet sensual Canadian poet, novelist, and. Recording. I'm Your Man was recorded in Los Angeles and Montreal and employed four producers: Roscoe Beck, Jean-Michel Reusser, Michel Robidoux, and Cohen himself. "Take 30" TV program. Year 1966, Canada. Adrienne Clarkson (later host of a major Cohen documentary in 1988) welcomes Leonard Cohen for the release of "Beautiful Losers". ![]() FROM 2. 01. 2: Leonard Cohen’s tale of redemption. But You Want It Darker is not just another Leonard Cohen album about love and death. Crowning a career that saw him perform a triumphant world tour in his late seventies, it arrives as a sad and monumental milestone. With music fit for a requiem, and songs that take dramatic vows of abdication (“I’m leaving the table / I’m out of the game”), it may well be his last album. It’s certainly one of his best. The record’s procession of nine songs unfolds with the grace and gravitas of a last will and testament. And what’s especially poignant is that it was produced by the artist’s son, singer- songwriter Adam Cohen, who captures his father’s voice with unprecedented intimacy. Leonard recorded the album at his home in Los Angeles under extreme duress. Afflicted by “severe back injuries, and other disagreeable visitations,” he says he abandoned the record after “a year of intense labour,” only to be rescued by his 4. Adam sensed that my recovery, if not my survival, depended on my getting back to work,” Leonard writes in the album liner notes. He took over the project, established me in a medical chair to sing, and brought these songs to completion.” In a recent email interview, Leonard told me he was suffering from “multiple compression fractures in the spine,” and that “Adam got me out of bed to finish this record.”Adam Cohen in his father’s living room in Los Angeles. Michael Chaves)Asked if he made the album feeling it would be his last, he said, “Not specifically, but at this stage in the game, you know that all your activities are subject to abrupt cancellation.” Adam hesitated to talk about “these delicate issues,” but said, “There’s something about this record—if it is his last—that is fitting the theme of the story. He’s really at the summit of his powers.”It was the first time Leonard and his son had collaborated. It involved quite an effort,” Adam recalls, speaking by phone from Montreal, where he’s now recording his own fourth album. There were only a few hours a day that we could work. I was dealing with an ailing old man, but an ailing old man who was showing paranormal levels of devotion and focus, and that rubbed off on everybody. The encounters were urgent and sweet and meaningful. It was as if we were riding some kind of mysterious wind.” When he asked his father how he was managing to deliver “the most compelling vocals he’d ever produced, the answer was his condition.” As Leonard sang through the pain, “his immobilized condition led to a giant decrease in distraction. Through monastic training, or something, he had the resources to deal with this acute physical discomfort.”FROM 2. What’s with that song ‘Hallelujah’? The mood, however, was leavened by “an enthusiasm that we were onto something special,” adds Adam. There were fits of laughter woven throughout what was a very serious endeavour. There were episodes where I saw an incapacitated old man stand up and dance in front of the speakers. There were hilarious, esoteric arguments fuelled by medical marijuana. There were episodes of blissful joy that sometimes lasted hours, where we’d listen to one song on repeat like teenagers. There were smiles and an inner glow that I can actually hear on the record.”Adam’s spare but exquisite production frames his father’s words with a new kind of musical architecture. Gone are the cold electronic keyboards of earlier records, replaced by warm waves of violin and cello. And the chorus of female harmonies that usually mirror Leonard’s vocals is almost entirely absent. Instead, a cantor male choir accompanies him for the first time. That was just one in a long line of indications the record was going to be different,” says Adam. The record has authority and originality and truth. It rises above sloganeering—his own past sloganeering.”Related: Leonard Cohen’s tale of redemption. Leonard had already been thinking about a male choir when Adam suggested it, and immediately sent his son the contact for a cantor at the Cohens’ family synagogue, the Shaar Hashomayim Congregation in Montreal’s Westmount. Our light bulbs lit up at the same time,” says Leonard. I always wanted to work with these singers. I had been playing a lot a cantorial music, wondering how to fit it in.”Founded in 1. Shaar Hashomayim is Canada’s oldest and largest Ashkenazi synagogue, and has been at the heart of the Cohen clan for generations—both Leonard’s great- grandfather and grandfather served as presidents. Over the years his aunt, Ruth Cohen, had been sending him recordings of the synagogue’s music, and Leonard had struck up an email friendship with cantor Gideon Zelermyer. Early one morning, the cantor woke up to a message from Leonard asking if he’d like to collaborate on the new album, saying “I’m looking for the sound of the synagogue cantor choir of my youth.” Recalls Zelermyer: “I screamed ‘Holy s–t!’ at the top of my lungs, waking up everyone in the house. I wrote back and said, ‘Hallelujah! I’m your man!’ ”FROM 2. Watch Brian D. Johnson’s backstage interview with Cohen. The 4. 0- year- old cantor has sung national anthems at Habs and Blue Jays games, but moonlighting for Leonard Cohen was clearly a bigger deal. When he heard the title track of You Want It Darker, and realized some of the lyrics are lifted directly from Hebrew liturgy, the weight of his mission began to sink in. Leonard doesn’t throw these things around loosely,” he says. The thing that hit me in the face is when he sings: ‘Magnified and sanctified / Be thy holy name,’ which are the words of the Kaddish prayer—and the most powerful association of the Kaddish is with death and mourning. It all started to make sense to me. This is a person who is struggling with the end of things, and he’s turned to his cantor, to his rabbi, to his religious roots.”As the portrait of an artist at the edge of the abyss, You Want It Darker inevitably calls to mind David Bowie’s Blackstar, although there’s no indication that Cohen is dying—except in the sense that we all are, and that life is no country for old men. Asked how concern for his own mortality informed the album, he demurred: “These are matters which simply do not arise in the writing and recording of a song.” As for his condition, he said he’s “a little too weak to get out there and boogie, and a little too healthy to die. Work is not always sweet, but it’s always sustaining.”Leonard Cohen performs on stage at Leeds Arena on September 7, 2. Leeds, England. (Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns/Getty Images)Cohen’s work in fact, has done far more than sustain him in his twilight of a music career that has endured for half a century. He has enjoyed a spectacular third act that defies the laws of showbiz physics. By the time he entered his seventies, Cohen had retreated from the spotlight, and was living a quiet life in Los Angeles, with his children, Adam and Lorca, close by. His chronic depression had miraculously lifted, and he seemed in no hurry to do anything. Then in late 2. 00. Lorca peeked into his finances, he was shocked to discover he was nearly broke. For years his friend and longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, had been selling off his publishing rights and draining millions of dollars from his savings. A lawsuit was launched and won, awarding Cohen $9 million, but he wasn’t able to recover the money.
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