Leonard Cohen
The life and music of a brilliant poet and songwriter
“Leonard Cohen was the most beautiful man I have ever known,” wrote arts critic Leon Wieseltier in the New York Times, shortly after the poet-songwriter and legend died at the age of 82. “His company was quickening in every way. The elegance and the seductiveness were the least of it. The example of his poise was overwhelming, more an achievement than a disposition, and much more than an affair of style… He was hospitable and strict, sweet and deep, humble and grand, probing and tender, a friend of melancholy but an enemy of gloom, a voluptuary with religion, a renegade enamored of tradition.”
He was born in Westmount, Québec in 1934. He learned guitar as a teen and formed a folk group, the Buckskin Boys, and strived to be a poet after falling for the radical work of the Federico García Lorca, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War. In the ’60s he moved to New York and gained fame when Judy Collins recorded his wistful love song, “Suzanne.” As a songwriter he was an insider’s favorite among performers. His most popular song, “Hallelujah,” is best known for others’ interpretations of it—Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, k.d. lang. But even into old age, Cohen’s raspy bass was transfixing, breathtaking in its depth and humor. Here, PROVOKR celebrates his life and music with video clips of him singing seven of his songs (“Hallelujah” above and six below), including two as a younger man, live at the Isle of Wight in 1970.
