Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, born in 1934 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, was one of the most iconic Canadian artists of the 20th century.
His father died when he was nine, and he was raised by his mother. Cohen studied English literature, and by the age of 22 he published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies.
Three years later, Cohen was awarded a $2,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write a novel, which he used to buy a house on the Greek island of Hydra where he lived for seven years.
“It was as if everyone was young and beautiful and full of talent, covered with a kind of gold dust.” Cohen once said about the island
There he met Marianne Ihlen, who became his lover and muse, inspiring many songs and poems.
Cohen’s second novel, Beautiful Losers, sold poorly and received mixed reviews, but is now considered one of Canada’s first postmodernist novels. Cohen traveled to New York to try to support his career and explore the folk music scene.
In 1967, while in New York, Cohen wrote “Suzanne” and sent it to Judy Collins, who later convinced Cohen to sing the song in front of a live audience. Cohen released his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1967, but with very little experience in the music, he lost the rights to “Suzanne”, “Stranger Song”, and “Dress Rehearsal Rag”, costing him a significant amount of money.
But Cohen saw that in a good way, saying “It’s a song that people loved, and fortunately the rights of it were stolen from me. So I felt that was perfectly justified because it would be wrong to write this song and get rich from it too.”
In the ‘80s, Cohen released a poetry collection, Book of Mercy, which he described as prayers. Book of Mercy won the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Poetry in 1985.
After releasing The Future at the beginning of the ‘90s, he retired to a Buddhist monastery outside Los Angeles until 1999, when he returned to the studio and worked on Ten New Songs, then Dear Heather.
In 2005 Cohen discovered that his business manager had taken around $5 million from his retirement fund. While he won a $7.9 million judgment against her, Cohen couldn’t recover the money. At that time, Cohen started a concert tour, which was his first in 15 years, so he could recover the money.
At that time Cohen was 73, but his energy was much younger. In 2008, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2010 he received a Grammy for lifetime achievement.
Following his tours, Cohen suffered from multiple fractures of the spine. As a result, he recorded his final studio album, You Want It Darker, in 2016 at his home in Los Angeles, co-produced with his son Adam. In July that same year, Marianne Ihlen died of leukemia. Cohen’s farewell letter to her was read at her funeral. Three months before his death Cohen wrote: “I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand”. In November Cohen passed away at his home.
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