PROFILE LEONARD COHEN:Reclusive, self-effacing and searingly honest, a reluctant hero of 1960s folkies and a revered icon of modern pop, he spent six years as a Buddhist monk before financial difficulties drew him back to the live stage, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.
LEONARD COHEN once said there's a school of poetry that believes the first thought is the best thought. Cohen doesn't necessarily believe this is the way for him: "It would have condemned me to a really inauspicious superficiality, because I don't have any ideas. I don't have an idea, and I don't trust my opinions. I consider my thought-stream extremely uninteresting, and it's only when I can discard it that I can say something I can get behind."
Such a lack of ego (one of the most praised songwriters of the past 40 years stating that he doesn't have an idea is surely beyond lack of ego) is typical of the man the cynics ironically describe as "laughing Lennie" and a writer of deeply confessional songs that Rolling Stone termed "bittersweet mood music for the dark nights of the soul". Now approaching his 74th year, Cohen has been a singular presence in pop culture since the mid-1960s; at that stage, in his 30s, he wasn't viewed by anyone as pop star material. Indeed, he had already published two novels (The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers) and several volumes of poetry.
Despite critical acclaim, the paltry worldwide sales at the time (Beautiful Losers sold just a shade over 3,000 copies) meant that he couldn't make a serious living from literature. What was a penurious 30-something man to do except turn to his second skill - he could play guitar - and construct some tunes around the bones of his poetry? Lucky for Cohen, then, that when he returned to the US from one of his sporadic visits to Europe he landed slap-bang in the middle of the burgeoning singer-songwriter, folk music movement. Although not strictly a novice at the music game (he was once a member of a country band called the Buckskin Boys, and while at McGill University he had been part of a songwriting circle), he nonetheless had few obvious advantages. His innate sense of fate, however, kicked in when he met singer Judy Collins, who agreed to record Cohen's song, Suzanne. Through his connection with Collins, he met famed Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond (the man who "discovered" Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan), who promptly signed him to a record deal.
From the release in 1967 of Cohen's debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, a terrible beauty was born, albeit one that wasn't very prolific (less than a dozen studio albums in over 40 years) or profitable (despite the critical kudos and praise, his albums don't hang around the charts for too long, and when they hit the charts it's usually in the mid-30 position, disappearing a week later).
What has kept Cohen in the public eye throughout his career is a mixture of influence, myth, legend and a fervent fan base. Any musician who cares a whit about songwriting studies Cohen's musical tenets; from established artists such as Peter Gabriel, U2 and Damien Rice (who supports Cohen on all three of his Irish dates, thereby supplying the inter-generational link) to up-and-coming singer-songwriters.
Fellow Canadian Ron Sexsmith told this writer several years ago that his first attempt at getting into Cohen's music failed miserably.
"But then, years later, all of a sudden it made sense to me; it was one of the things that got me writing. I was trying to write before that, but it was after hearing Cohen that I started writing my first batch of good songs - material that would end up leading to a publishing deal. The thing I love about him is that it's always about the music - never frivolous, not jumping up and down, not being embarrassing."
That's the thing, apparently: growing old gracefully under a set of self-made rules. Unwittingly setting himself apart from his 1960s peers by refusing to share their enthusiasms for radical politics or left-wing proclivities, Cohen favoured expensive suits over faded jeans, told interviewers he wasn't ashamed of his education, his country or his background.
He went to college and he wrote books, he said; he was not trying to make opinionated statements or set himself apart. Yet, by virtue of his state of independence, that is precisely what happened.
AS IF TO further strengthen this perception, Cohen chose to totally eschew his pre-eminent position within rock music by entering a Zen Buddhist monastery, the Mount Baldy Zen Center, close to San Bernardino, California.
There, for six years, he embraced Zen Buddhism. The training, by all accounts, was rigid and disciplined (Cohen described it as preparing Marines for the spiritual world), but it gave him a get-out clause from being asked to provide singer-songwriter answers to questions such as "what is life?" and "why are we here?"
IN YET ANOTHER OF HIS intriguing insights on spiritual life, he has said that the primary aspect of Zen Buddhism that appeals to him is that the religion simply doesn't demand any answers.
His departure from the Buddhist retreat was almost as much of a surprise as his entrance. About a year following his exit, he released Ten New Songs, his first new studio recording since 1992's The Future. His profile has continued to rise from this point, not all of it from a positive standpoint.
In 2005, his manager Kelley Lynch - to whom Cohen had granted wide-ranging powers of attorney over his affairs - treated his business holdings with what investigating accountants Moss-Adams termed "massive improprieties". Cohen first became aware of the improprieties in late 2004, through his daughter Lorca, who had been alerted by one of Lynch's employees that something was amiss.
The outcome has been an unhealthy state of business and personal affairs (Cohen and Lynch were, at one time, romantically involved) for all concerned, which is the primary reason why he has taken to touring at such a late stage in his life. What the fans can expect at next weekend's concerts is a mixture of consummate professionalism, a set list that engages with Cohen's material from the 1960s onwards, and a 73-year old anti-establishmentarian who for many people still remains the epitome of rugged, outsider cool.
Film-maker Lian Lunson, who directed I'm Your Man, the recently acclaimed documentary on Cohen, told The Irish Times in 2006: "They just don't make people like him any more. He has tapped into an other-worldliness - he has a foot in that door. Some people think they have, but he genuinely does. And that drives him; he doesn't conform to any sort of norm. He does what he believes is right. He's very kind, very nurturing, selfless, humble. There would be no reason whatsoever to question his belief systems because you know he's coming from a place of truth."
Lunson's film not only reintroduced Cohen to yet another generation of fans, but also finally struck out the incorrect notion that his music is depressing.
"He said to me that it's only the people who don't understand his music that think it depressing. But the music isn't depressing at all when you really think about it - he'll certainly take you out to that dark place, but then he'll say to you, 'you know, ultimately it isn't that bad, you'll be all right'."
THIS YEAR WILL see a new album released from the man who is revered for - unusually - all the right reasons. Inspired by the spiritual, the feminine, sex, love and art (and latterly, perhaps, by his financial difficulties), Cohen is simultaneously rigidly meticulous and continuously in creative freefall.
Despite the reverence, however, there is a side to him that is all too ordinary and human. In an interview in The Irish Times two years ago, his partner (their relationship was described by Cohen in a Canadian radio interview as "neighbours of the deepest kind"), musician and songwriter Anjani Thomas, said that she sees "Leonard the revered author/singer/poet in other people's eyes, but to me he's just the chap in the other room who makes my breakfast".
CV LEONARD COHEN
Who is he?An unguarded songwriter who quietly creates as fine a disarming, elegant form of poetry as you're ever likely to experience within the rock genre.
Why is he in the news?He performs in Dublin next Friday, Saturday and Sunday his first Irish concerts in over 20 years. Per head of capita, these sold-out gigs constitute more seats sold here than anywhere else in Europe.
You might know:He embraced Zen Buddhism to such an extent that in the mid-1990s he retreated from public life to Mount Baldy, near San Bernadino, California, where he lived the life of a Zen monk for six years. He has said of his time there that he loved "the voluptuous simplicity of the day".
You might not know:The inspiration behind one of his best-known songs, Suzanne, was dancer Suzanne Vaillancourt, who, close to the river in Montreal's St Mark's district (near the sailor's church, which provided him with the image in the song of Jesus as a sailor), touched his "perfect body with her mind".
A Zen Buddhist speaks:"My first album established me as a singer while I could hardly carry a tune. Still can't."