I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen

by Sylvie Simmons

The definitive biography of one of the most emigmatic, beloved, and celebrated artists of our time.
Leonard Cohen's extensive and successful recent worldwide tour has demonstrated that his popularity across generations and borders has never been greater. Cohen's life is one of singular mystique. This major in-depth biography is the book Cohen's fans have been waiting for. Acclaimed writer/journalist Sylvie Simmons has interviewed more than 100 figures from Cohen's life and work, including his main muses; the women in his life -- from Suzanne and Marianne to Rebecca de Mornay and Anjani Thomas; artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, David Crosby, Judy Collins, and Philip Glass; his record producers; his closest friends, from childhood to adulthood; and many of the spiritual figures who have influenced his life.
Cohen, notoriously private, has granted interviews himself. Thoroughly researched and thoughtful, penetrating and lively, fascinating and revealing of stories and facts never read before, I'm Your Man offers new perspectives on Cohen and his life. It will be one of the most talked-about books of the season, and for years to come.

Genres: Biography, Music, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Poetry, Canada, Memoir

560 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 2011

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revived review in honour of this great singer, songwriter, poet, novelist, comedian and graceful human being. He's been with me almost every step of the way in my life, his sorrowful black humour was often a small kind glimmer in my own sometime darkness.

I saw Leonard in concert in 1993 in London. After one song he thanked the audience. "I'd like to thank you for all the cards and letters you've sent over the years, they were all very welcome. But I have to say… they didn't help a bit."

******


A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand.

– Virginia Woolf, Orlando.

How Leonard became Cohen - fastforwardstyle

Nathan Cohen high end formalwear manufacturer, Masha Cohen, 16 years younger, recently arrived from Russia; Montreal, a thousand miles away from where they were killing all the Jews; Nathan dead at 52, Leonard aged 9; The Buckskin Boys 1952 (a country music trio);



Irving Layton; 1956 (year of Elvis, year of Howl) aged 22 first book - Let Us Compare Mythologies (we pinned Jesus like a lovely butterfly against the wood) – original print run, 400; New York, back to Montreal, rejected first novel (A Ballet of Lepers, you couldn't make it up!); one year in the brass foundry, a family firm; young Len, die-casting machinist and assistant time and motion man; we have no hesitation in recommending him for any sort of employment and would like to express our regret at his departure.
1960, Leonard's tour of the great ancient capitals of Europe, funded by a grant, starting at Mrs Pullman's boarding house, Hampstead, London. Beauty at Close Quarters (unpublished novel No 2); The Spice-Box of Earth; Jerusalem; Hydra : "everything you saw was beautiful, every corner, every lamp, everything you touched, everything" – including Marianne Ihlen. (We met when we were almost young).



Back to Montreal with Marianne; the brightest young poet in Canada visits Cuba; back to Hydra - no electricity, no phone, no water but a lot of speed and Mandrax ("as handsome a pair of pharmaceuticals as a hard-working writer could wish to meet… providing backup harmony, hashish, opium and acid" says Sylvie). Back to London; Michael X (hanged for murder in 1975) said he would appoint Leonard Minister for Tourism when he established his revolutionary government in Trinidad. And why not? I sure would.

Back to Hydra. Third novel. Is it called The Perfect jukebox? Fields of Hair ? (Ouch). No – The Favourite Game. "A sort of biography of Leonard Cohen written and at the same time ghost-written by Leonard Cohen… the contents might not stand up in court". Says Sylvie. This time published (in the UK, not Canada), and praised by many including Michael Ondaatje.
Now he's 30, applying for grants, taking bits of jobs, Hydramontrealing. Next poetry book : Opium and Hitler. His publisher objects to the title. LC says it will appeal "to the diseased adolescents who compose my public." But he changed the title to Flowers for Hitler. Ah, compromise.

Then Suzanne Verdal takes him down to her place by the river. Back to Hydra. Endless drugs, writing Beautiful Losers at breakneck speed on speed. Published in 1966, didn't sell. At all. Decides he needs to make some kind of living and poetry and novels are clearly not it. Thinks he'll try singing. New York – introduced to Mary Martin, a Canadian in the music management biz and she knows exactly who Leonard should meet : Judy Collins.



Now it comes into focus – JC loves everything LC sings to her, immediately puts 2 songs on her new album, which is a hit, and LC finally makes some public appearances as a singer.
1967, busy year – Nico, who seems to be the only woman not to sleep with him, go Nico! – Andy Warhol and his crowd – John Hammond gets interested – then (in May) begins the torture of recording the first album, it drags on for 9 months – Hammond gives up, John Simon takes over, he gives up, LC finishes it off on his own in December – but hey, it is brilliant – Joni Mitchell – Janis Joplin – and by then, he's the Leonard we have known for all these years.

ENOUGH OF THAT

I'm in several minds about this guy. All the way down the line he seems like he's posing as the frail, sad poet with a capital P, it's his schtick, all folorn and droopy and soulful and deep lines round the mouth, in order to get the girls, which he does because he's good at it, and handsome in a Dustin Hoffman Al Pacino kind of way, even now, and his lyrics are often pure tripe, gestures towards profundity, deliberately obscure, just a collection of Pavlovian words to tickle our godbone, and my God what a one track mind, women this, women that, did he ever write a non-sexual song? I must have missed it… And yet, he's funny, he always was, and daring, and his tunes are so very pretty, and he can write like an angel on occasion – sometimes all the hype is true, how annoying - God is Alive, Magic is Afoot, A Kite is a Victim, Stranger Song, Democracy is Coming to the USA, and the entirety of Beautiful Losers, all pure gold, I'd take them to my desert island. At the moment I'd also have Dance me to the End of Love as one of my desert island discs. The thing is, he gets you on his wavelength. You know what? He was my man. Like he said.

SORRY BOB

(Sorry, Bob Dylan, but Leonard is in a whole other category. I bet you flinched when you first heard him. But it's okay, there's plenty of room for the both of you, your awkward clawing and expert plagiarising has a place prepared for it at my banquet of song. I'm sitting Hank Williams between you and Leonard.)

TOM JONES FOR THE BOOK GROUP LADIES

After Leonard's first album his stuff is patchy, all the way up to the 1990s but even on poor albums there will be an amazing gobsmacker.
His whole life is a bit galling, you know, he droops and sags through all this desolation (free razorblade with every album) whilst having to shoo naked 24 year olds out of the way so he can get to his front door. He's so solitary but his concerts are sellouts and he loves working those crowds. He's Tom Jones for the book groups, they throw moist first editions at him. Audiences immediately loved him and never stopped; they love him even more now he's old. What's he got to be doleful about? He always has these dead-on cool situations going – he lives with a gorgeous young woman on Hydra, he eats a bucketful of drugs and he writes Beautiful Losers – he tosses off quotes like "I'd thought of myself as a loser. I didn't like my life" – then later with the second Suzanne, another gorgeous young woman, he doesn't like that situation either; there's no pleasing this guy. He loathes himself because there's no pleasing him. He's a monster of appetite and he's a Zen monk. He's fixated on sex but he's universal and spiritual. At the same time. He has everything, he has nothing. He's self obsessed, yet always comes across as generous. In 1993 he has his most successful album ever (The Future), a successful world tour, he's engaged to blonde bombshell Rebecca de Mornay (20 years his junior, of course, you think guys like him go out with women of his own age?), the world at his feet, and that's when he retires to do the cooking and cleaning for an old Japanese guy at the top of Mount Baldy. For five years. But even that doesn't work, he falls into another dreadful depression. He comes down from the mountain and gets back into his thing again. Then someone sidles up and says sotto voce

"Hey Leonard – did you check your bank account recently?"

Yes, just like back in the doowop days, his trusted personal manager Kelley Lynch stole all his money, at least $10 million. So back on the road he goes, and makes all his money back, and then some. That's one to tell at the next dinner party. "What have you been up to lately?" "Oh, getting my ten million back."

THIS BOOK

Sylvie Simmons has finally done it, written a great biography of Leonard Cohen after so many completely crap ones. She gets the complicated detailed story told, it motors right along, there are no longeurs. And she's funny too.

Other than finding themselves the last two left at a key party, it is hard to picture Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector ever ending up as musical bedfellows (p295).

The years Leonard has spent in the monastery had done nothing to dull his talent at sniffing out a nondescript hotel room (p419).

here he stood in the spotlight in his sharp suit, fedora and shiny shoes, looking like a Rat Pack rabbi, God’s chosen mobster (p489).

The room was so completely silent during the performances of the songs that you could hear the hairs stand up on people’s arms (p492).

On the older deeper voice :

His delivery was laconic, almost recitative, like an old French chansonnier who has mistakenly stumbled into disco. It was urbane and unhurried; as one UK critic put it, Leonard lingered on every word "like a kerb crawler". His voice was deep and dry, sly and beguiling as his songs. It was polished and mannered but very human, it was brutally honest but very accessible and his songs covered all the angles.

IF I WAS A BIG SHOT PUBLISHER


I would have liked to be a big shot publisher and commission a biography of Leonard Cohen by Henry James; and a close study of his complete work by Bob Dylan; and while I'm at it, a biography of Dostoyevsky by Woody Allen and one of Woody Allen by Dostoyevsky. And I'd like James Ellroy to do a rewrite of The Lord of the Rings, you know, make it relevant. And James Joyce for the 50 Shades of Grey follow up, he'd LOVE that commission. These interesting volumes would look good on the shelves of Borges' Library of Babel – where they already are!!

So you can forget all the other Cohen books, here's a great one stop shop. I loved it.

RECOMMENDED.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

My earliest recollection of Leonard Cohen was when I first listened to 'Everybody Knows' in 1990 yet I had no idea who sang it and didn't think much else about the artist until a few years before his death when I was given a copy of one of his albums but I distinctly remember hearing the song back then and feeling wowed by the tone of voice. It was like something I'd never heard before.

I was prompted to read this book shortly after his death as I remember having a lump in my throat at the world losing such a beautiful unique artist, I felt a deep need to learn more about this enigmatic man.

This biography well researched and intricately detailed by Sylvie Simmons is a comprehensive look at the full life of a true musical magician. A man full of complex contradictions. A man of magnificent restraint. This is a man who always grappled with self doubt. He spent a lot of time soul searching and looking for answers and often sought different religious leaders, despite his Jewish ancestry he was drawn to the Buddhist teachings of Joshu Sasaki Roshi a man who became one of his most influential teachers spending a length of time at a Zen centre and becoming an ordained Zen Buddhist Monk himself, he also sought the teachings of a Advaita Master a form of Hindu philosophy and travelled to Mumbai regularly. He often had bouts of depression and needed to spend time alone away from the spotlight, when things got too hectic he craved solitude and walked away from it all, reappearing when he felt reenergised and ready to brace the music world again. Leonard was a true bohemian and a free spirit he feared commitment and shied away from marriage but he was very committed to his art, his lifelong friends, his religious studies and ultimately his music which gave him his purpose and drive. This book has a lot of content, it covers the early days of his transition from poetry and author to accidental musician he was a reluctant celebrity but also courted it, he was there during the Chelsea days and mixed with all the greats Dylan, Ginsberg, Nico, Janis, Joni and many more but he also always felt like an outcast. To me he was the epitome of a true gentleman and a voice of a generation that left a major hole in the art and music world that will never be filled. This took me awhile to read but I can say it was a privilege to get to know intimately this true humble beautiful soul that I found myself mesmerised by his sheer brilliance.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I learned from reading "I'm Your Man":

1. How many different drugs Leonard has taken: many!

2. How many women Leonard has been romantically involved with: many, many!

3. How many celebrities in the music world Leonard has associated with and worked with: many, many, many (quite a few of whom could be on list #2 as well!)

4. Interesting tidbits about his life and career that were previously unknown to me. For example, there were two Suzannes in his life. The one who was his common-law wife for 10 years and who is the mother of his two children, Adam and Lorca, is not the one who was the muse for the song. Also, Leonard's granddaughter, Lorca's daughter, is the biological child of Rufus Wainwright, who is also of course the child of a celebrated musical dynasty.

This was a fascinating book about a fascinating man. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading about Leonard Cohen as a man and as a poet/songwriter/performer who has won a very impressive number of awards, both in Canada and around the world. Sylvie Simmons completed an impressive and exhausting volume of research about Leonard and has written a very informative and entertaining biography of a consummate professional who is still hard at work at his career despite the fact that he is in his late 70's.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my greatest regrets is not going to see Leonard Cohen play the last time he came to Portland. I thought then that the venue was too big to really enjoy him and that the tickets were too expensive. I was stupid—it would have been a priceless experience.

I fully immersed myself in this biography and I came out of it loving Leonard Cohen even more than when I began. I listened to each album as it was being talked about in the book.

This book seemed to be very comprehensive and it was kind of nice that it ended and was published before he died. I will be reading more of Cohen’s fiction and poetry in the future. I am fortunate that there is such a wealth to choose from.

[Carl R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel cheated, and by my own self. Leonard Cohen was a major part of my life, and I didn’t even know he was there. Talk about clueless.

Born in Montreal, just a few years before I was, he was raised among the well-to-do Jews of that community. As an adolescent, he became a wanderer of the nighttime streets (a habit he never discarded), then (events overlapping) a poet. Not a particularly successful one at first, though he did become part of the beat community—to the extent there was one—in Montreal. He began singing and playing the guitar more or less by accident as recreation more than an art. In fact, he valued the music more for its ability to attract women than for anything else. Start with this combination of poetic talent, a few accidents of circumstance, a lack of ability to settle into any occupation or stay with any single woman (he always had to seek another “muse.”), add drugs and wanderlust, combine them with genius, and you have one of the most remarkable men and remarkable careers in the history of the arts.

I’m Your Man is not only the story of an amazing life, but a beautifully written book more than worthy of its illustrious subject. Sylvie Simmons can write like this:images



He… dissolved all boundaries between word and song, and between song and the truth, and the truth and himself, and his heart and its aching.

All the heavy labor, … the highs, the depths to which he had plummeted and all the women and deities, loving and wrathful, he had examined and worshipped, loved and abandoned, but never really lost, had been in the service of this. And here he was, seventy-six years old, still shipshape, still sharp at the edges, a workingman, ladies’ man, wise old monk, showman and trouper once again offering up himself and his songs: “Here I stand, I’m your man.”



And she does so over and over. She plainly loves her subject, but doesn’t blink at the uglies—the relentless womanizing, the various addictions, the continuous impulse to act against his own best interests. She’s conducted prodigious interviews, mined an Everest of material, but keeps the narrative moving through all the detail. She sees to the heart of it all, and we never lose sight of the man. Right in the middle of recounting some piece of backstory, she’ll fold in a paragraph or a page of an interview with Cohen, makes it so integrally part of the narrative that the switch from third to first person flows without making a bubble on the surface of the storytelling stream.



Leonard would later immortalize the horse in the song “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” …

“I was pretty much a bust as a cowboy [laughs] But I did have a rifle. During winter there, there were these icicles that formed on this slate cliff… and I’d stand in the doorway and shoot icicles for a lot of the time so I got quite good.”



And who is this man she’s talking to, and why do I feel cheated? Cohen is a contemporary of Bob Dylan’s, and I know quite a lot about Dylan and can quote a number of his lines and verses. He’s one of my icons. As far as I can tell, Cohen is a better poet, has certainly sustained his quality for longer. A better musician, too. Yet, the first I heard of him was when my Canadian son-in-law gave me a CD as a way of introducing me to some of Canadian culture the Christmas after he married my stepdaughter a few years back. I wish I could say I was immediately taken. The lyrics sounded interesting, but the rumbling, almost chanting voice put me off, dense fool that I was. Am. The book has inspired me to go back and listen again. Then download some more. I didn’t get it. I’m starting to.

And who else is this man?

One who’s written countless songs covered by countless artists of many styles: “Suzanne,” “Hallelujah,” “Bird on a wire,” “Ain’t no cure for love.” I never knew they were his. He’s also a man who lived his convictions, even as they changed. His records never sold in the U.S., popular though he was in Canada and Europe, so maybe I have a tiny excuse for my ignorance. Every time he started to experience some success as a celebrity (or as a “husband”) he walked away from it, found a bare room, and started writing again. He was, for example, nearing sixty, firmly moored in the middle of Hollywood with a gorgeous movie star fiancée, yet walked up the hill to a monastery on Mt. Baldy, where he spent years in meditation, producing almost nothing public, though he kept writing, encouraged by his favorite monk.

Then there was his money—millions by this time—stolen by someone he trusted. Trusted too much. So he had to go back to work, which he did as gladly as he had left it. Somehow he had found some happiness in his dark world. And celebrity came again. Even in America, where he was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame along with Chuck Berry. Two different souls? He didn’t see it that way.



“Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news”: I’d like to write a line like that."

And that universality is one of his grand secrets.

On the last page of I’m Your Man, we leave Leonard a successful man with two kids, grandkids, pushing 80, and working on his next album. Having no intention of retiring. I hope he waits for that long enough for me to catch up with him. I’m way behind.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

So great to have a kid who works in a bookstore, who knows what I REALLY want. Have to keep from gulping this down at a single sitting.
________________________
This was a compulsive read, especially strong in informing us about the conditions and circumstances behind the recordings of the various albums, giving faces and stories to the sounds I know so well, having become a Leonard Cohen fan in high school--can still see my friend's lliving room where I first heard that compelling Spanish guitar. Now I know where he picked it up--from a suicidal Spaniard he met in a park in Montreal. I know something of his family life--there are amazing parallels to the life of Diane Arbus and her brother, the poet Howard Nemerov. I know more about the women and the life, and yet there's a restraint here, a gentlemanly (ladylike) tone which leaves the private life as simply the raw material of the work, rather than the subject and his relationship to persona. Decorous, I would call it.

The story was well-paced and revealed a great deal I didn't know about the mysterious singer with the seductive, slightly menacing point of view. I can say it was was exhaustive on the subject of recordings--but it certainly took no liberties to derive larger conclusions about the artist and his work. I missed the pithiness, wit and psychological insight of Patti Smith's autobiography. Cohen's mystery was by no means violated in the making of this book, and in many ways remains as elusive as ever. I think the author was more comfortable probing the earlier years, the later material oddly seems more veiled, my guess because Cohen himself was not so forthcoming with his current life. I did appreciate that the poetry and fiction was treated, as well as the songs, and just makes me want to seek out the novels, poetry, concert videos and other biographies.

[Kayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

after spending 500 pages with this man i feel like hes my ex husband

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very hard to express what Leonard Cohen means to me. He is the poet of my soul; by some impossible feat, he has written about my childhood, my love, my mind and my life without ever having met me. At times, he is so close to the truth of things that have actually happened that I wonder if he wasn't in the room with me, listening, taking part in my most intimate moments. I will never be able to properly express my gratitude for his existencr and the gift he gave to the world by creating poetry and music. His life is worth reading about - he has done much more than one would expect from a poet with a love for solitude.

His passing away has put a hole through my heart. I cried for an entire morning; this man changed my life and, unbeknowst to him, had a part in making me the woman I am today.

No, I will not speak of Cohen using the past tense. For me, he is alive through every song and every poem and every emotion his creation carries me through, to see me matured on the other side.

[nostalgebraist nostalgebraist · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found most of this book pretty uninteresting. I'm not sure how much this reflects a fault of the book in particular and how much it's just consequence of a larger issue I have with biographies.

The biographies I've read split pretty clearly into two distinct categories. The biographies of people famous for specific, exceptional, usually lurid actions -- famous criminals, cult leaders, and the like -- have been very enjoyable. On the other hand, biographies of people famous for sustained activity that falls within the normal range of human behavior -- like recording songs or writing novels -- have tended to be pretty tedious and unrewarding.

I think the difference here is pretty easy to explain. If someone is famous for doing one big, weird thing, then I come into the book with basic personal questions -- "why did they do that? what makes a person do such a thing? what sort of person would do such a thing?" Even the most mundane personal information sheds some light on these kinds of questions. It's kind of interesting to know about, say, what L. Ron Hubbard's early childhood was like, because L. Ron Hubbard was such a bizarre person that it's initially difficult to imagine any child growing up to be him. Almost any incidental detail about Hubbard has a certain sort of human interest, just by shedding light on what kind of person could/would do the things Hubbard eventually did.

With someone like Leonard Cohen, the nature of my curiosity is very different. I come in knowing Cohen's songs, and being interested in his life mostly insofar as it sheds light on those songs. To be honest, I don't really care about Leonard Cohen the person, any more than I care about anyone on earth I'm not ever likely to meet or otherwise personally interact with. Learning about his childhood, or his friends, or his girlfriends, doesn't have any inherent appeal beyond the light it sheds on his songs. There isn't that additional appeal of "what leads a person to become Leonard Cohen?" because the very existence of a Leonard Cohen is not surprising in the way the existence of an L. Ron Hubbard is. If you see what I mean.

Since this is the biography of an artist, the kind of illumination I'm looking for is interpretive. I don't just want to know that Leonard Cohen had a bunch of girlfriends, because of course he did -- for one thing, he was a straight male 20th century popular musician, and for another he wrote a bunch of songs about women in which their names are specifically mentioned. What I want to know is how the actual facts of those relationships can change my perspective on Cohen's songs. To provide that kind of insight, the biographer would have to go far beyond the most basic, material facts and into the realm of speculation, conjecture, far-reaching connections, subjective "takes," and so on.

The problem is that this kind of interpretive biography, though (obviously?) much more interesting and worthwhile than a just-the-facts biography of an artist, is never going to going to be able to achieve the same cultural cachet. It's the curse of "definitiveness": the more you stick to purely verifiable and material facts, the more your biography is going to seem objective and important -- the Definitive Statement about its subject -- but the less likely it is to say anything truly interesting about the subject.

This problem is exacerbated, I imagine, by the fact that one has to talk to lots of living people with lots of personal agendas and strong emotions in the course of writing a biography, and there's surely an incentive to make as few enemies as possible in the process. Don't interpret; don't take sides; present only the base material facts of the case in a way all parties could, at least grudgingly, assent to. The result is that information is presented in proportion to how easy it is to agree upon, not in proportion to how relevant it is. There are pages and pages in this book containing things like accounts of some minor studio engineer's uneventful experiences working with Cohen -- things that I felt must have been included simply because, being uneventful and boring, no one could possibly care enough to contest them.

Simmons' book is very comprehensive; it includes everything, and focuses on nothing. Everything is seen from a distance; entire relationships rise and fall in the course of ten pages, deep manias and depressions seem to subside almost immediately after they have risen. I now know that there were two women named Suzanne in Cohen's life, but I don't have any detailed sense of what either of them were like. The addressee of "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong" gets her desultory five or ten pages, which manage only to characterize her as an archetypical ice-queen type -- which, of course, could be gleaned from the song itself.

The iron law of Definitiveness does not quite forbid the biographer from getting into the stories they tell, as a novelist might. But it requires them to tell stories while never deviating from the verifiable material facts, which results in a uniquely odd, superficial, corny sort of storytelling. All emotions are drawn in broad strokes, because anything more than that would require an access to detailed mental states that the (non-telepathic) biographer lacks. There are never extended attempts to figure out the subject's overall worldview, or to cast their personal conflicts and affinities in terms of abstract systems of ideas, because this, again, would stray too far from the verifiable facts. The result is that the anguish of heartbreak, the intensity of religious faith, the depths of depression, and so forth come through only through series of little cutesy anecdotes and broad, superficial, cornball descriptions. The storytelling of the Definitive biographer feels very much like the storytelling of bad Oscar-bait Hollywood movies.

This damages the prose, too: I don't know if Simmons is a good writer when not straining for Definitiveness, but under its constraints her descriptions are weak, diluted, corny, stereotype-driven. The best moments in the book are the ones about Phil Spector, who is such an extreme, zany/hideous figure that Simmons' lack of subtlety can't do much damage. (Maybe I'd read a Simmons biography of Spector . . . )

Every once in a while, after Simmons described (in extensive, doubtlessly very accurate, and very boring detail) the recording process of one of Cohen's albums, I'd put the book down and listen to some songs from the album itself. Whenever I did this, there was a sudden shock of presence where there once had been absence: I felt the gravitas, the dark humor, the winking sleaze, the sincerity-that's-really-artifice-that's-really-sincerity, the magic that I love about Leonard Cohen's music. To put it simply if subjectively, that magic is just not there in Simmons' glossy, comprehensive, Definitive biography. It contains many true statements about Leonard Cohen the man, but no sustained analysis of what about Leonard Cohen the man is responsible for the magic of Leonard Cohen the artist. And if I can't get that out of a book like this, then what on earth am I reading it for?

(Most of what I've said here about Simmons' biography also applies to D. T. Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, which had most of the same problems. I liked that one a little more if only because there are apparently more funny anecdotes about Wallace than there are about Cohen.)

[Vaiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pažintis su Leonardu Cohenu daugelį metų apsiribojo tik keliomis kažkur ir kažkada girdėtomis jo dainomis - "Thousand Kisses Deep", "Dance Me to the End of Love", "Hallelujah" ir "In My Secret Life". Dalis jų visuomet atrodė kaip romantiškos baladės, kitos tiesiog malonios klausytis. Niekuomet nesigilinant į žodžius ar jų prasmę. Tai, kad dainą "Dance Me to the End of Love" įtakojo (nežinau, ar galima būtų rašyti "įkvėpė") Holokaustas, jos prasmę smarkiai perkeitė ir dabar nejauku tampa išgirdus ją vestuvėse. Į kitų gi Leonardo Coheno dainų žodžių reikšmę, šių dainų kilmę ir atsiradimo istorijas labai gerai palydi ši knyga, kurią nėra labai lengva skaityti ir, bent jau man, teko pasikankinti vis žiūrint - kiek dar liko, kiek tai tęsis ir pan., nes tas nuolatinis depresavimas, melancholinis susitelkimas sąvesp, tas, kartais net atrodantis hipertrofuotai, jautrumas ir tuo pačiu noras būti matomam, garbinamam, tas iš proto varantis dvejojimas ir abejojimas, nepastovumas ir blaškymasis kartais atrodydavo niekuomet nesibaigsiantis tąsymasis ir vilkimasis per puslapius.
Nežinau, ar įveikiau šią knygą todėl, kad Leonardo Coheno protėviai yra iš Lietuvos ir norėjosi daugiau sužinoti apie šį litvaką, ar todėl, kad šiaip nemėgstu mesti į šalį knygų, jų nebaigusi, ar todėl, kad ji visgi puikiai parašyta ir išversta (Saulius Tomas Kondrotas), bet puikiai žinau, kad Leonardo Coheno dainos niekuomet neskambės man taip pat, kaip iki tol, kol atverčiau pirmą šios knygos puslapį. Ir tai nereiškia, kad aš jų nesiklausysiu. Bet girdėsiu kitaip.

[Bruce Hatton · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be little of an exaggeration to call this biography, definitive. Thankfully, eschewing any arty cut-and-paste techniques, it take us chronologically through the life of Leonard Cohen; from his birth on 21st September 1934 to an upper-middle class Jewish family in Montreal up until 2012, the date of the book’s publication. Even at the grand age of 77, Leonard still produced two more albums of music, a book of poetry and undertook a world tour before his death on 7th November 2016. A posthumous album of new material was also released in 2019.
Thanks to a long list of interviewees, including the man himself, there is a staggering amount of fascinating detail in every chapter. As well as his musical albums, it details his novels, books of poetry and subjects of some of his best known songs. Many, of course, came from his numerous romantic relationships, including Marianne Ihlen, Suzanne Elrod ( mother of his son Adam and daughter Lorca – but not the Suzanne of the song – that was Suzanne Verdal, who did not have a relationship with Leonard) and at least two women famous in their own right: Joni Mitchell and Rebecca De Mornay.
The book also deals with Leonard’s conflicting faiths: His native Judaism and his adopted Buddhism and the period he spent in retreat at a monastery on Mount Baldy.
Highly recommended to all Leonard Cohen fans.

[Kingofmusic · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*, da es doch an der ein oder anderen Stelle etwas zu zähflüssig war, dann aber (besonders im letzten Drittel) zu einem wahren Pageturner mutiert.

Ich bin in jedem Fall froh, wieder einen Musiker entdeckt zu haben, dessen Musik und Texte viele Menschen so berühren, wie es Bob Dylan bei mir tut.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading Cohen's poetry when I was in high school, but I had no conception of him as a musician. It took me till I was in my early 20s to fall in love with his music, with his voice. At that time I was falling in love with a great many people and things. Leonard is still with me, unlike most of the rest. His music rewards contemplation, it rewards analysis, and it rewards showing up. I have seen hundreds of concerts in my life, and the two that were best by miles were Cohen's- so much so that I'm content to never see another concert.

It's fair to say that I brought a bucket-full of expectations to this book. I was crushingly disappointed by the abysmal Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life. I was pretty sure that this would be better, and it is, by at least one order of magnitude.

It still, on some level, fails to satisfy. As a chronicle of the life of a man- what he does, where he goes, who he spends his time with, it works. As a window to the man's own self, it fails in comparison with the body of work by the man himself. I know more about the essential Cohen from his poetry, from his songs. That's not to say that Simmons has written an inadequate book, just that her book doesn't scratch my itch to climb inside that mysterious head and drown in the river of Song.

[Gintautas Ivanickas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Net nebandysiu spėlioti, kaip į šitą knygą reaguotų skaitytojas, kuriam Leonardo Coheno vardas ne kažin ką reiškia. Neskubėkit sakyt, kad tokių nėra – per savo gyvenimą, kad ir kaip tai atrodytų keista, ne sykį susidūriau su situacija, kai paminėjus tą vardą, sekdavo klausimas – o kas jis toks? Tada pradedi vardinti ar tiesiog paleidi youtubėj vieną dainą, kitą. A, gera daina, žinau – seka atsakymas. Gerai, jei po to neprideda – a, tai čia tas, iš „Shreko“.
Coheno muzika mane lydi jau ir nežinau kiek metų, ir nebandysiu skaičiuot – dar paaiškės, koks aš senas, nereikia. Ir nemažą dalį jo biografijos, kaip ir dera fanui, jau žinojau. Gal ne taip smulkiai (oi, kartais net smarkiai „per smulkiai“), kaip Simmons knygoje, bet. Žinojau ir apie susitikimą su Joplin „Chelsea“ viešbučio lifte, ir kuo tai baigėsi, ir apie Dylano bei Coheno pokalbė, kiek vienas ir kitas užtruko parašyti dainą... Bet negaliu pasakyti, kad skaičiau nuobodžiaudamas.
Simmons nudirbo milžinišką ir pagarbos vertą darbą. Biografija išsami (kaip ir sakiau – vietomis net per išsami), ir knyga – tai ne tik gyvenimo faktai bei įvykiai – tai ir šiokia tokia kūrybinio Coheno kelio analizė. Taip, galima papriekaištauti autorei už bereikalingus pasikartojimus. Galima, bet ar reikia?
Keturi iš penkių. Tiems, kam patinka Leonardo eilės, kam patinka jo muzika. Jo nebėra, o muzika liks dar ilgai.

[Paula Abreu Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

" ... é extremamente difícil ser-se Leonard Cohen. Ao mesmo tempo que vai levando a cabo a sua jornada solitária, ele está perpetuamente deitado num leito de espinhos, mas, ainda assim, consegue encontrar por todo o lado janelas para o infinito. 'Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee .../ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in.' (' Todos os corações o amor hão-de alcançar, mas como refugiados ... / Esquece a tua perfeita oferenda / Em todas as coisas há uma fenda / É assim que a luz penetra.') Está tudo dito. É uma maneira ímpar de descrever a sabedoria da compaixão. Um amigo meu que esteve num centro prestigiado de toxicodependentes contou-me que citavam estes versos nos panfletos sobre o processo de recuperação. Leonard ensinou-me muita coisa, é humilde, mas é também feroz. Há nas canções dele um subtexto que nos diz: ' Vamos lá a alcançar a verdade, vamos chegar ao osso. Nada de nos iludirmos.'

Páginas 412 e 413

[Virginija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niekuomet nebuvau didžiulė Leonardo Coheno fanė, bet žinojau kas jis toks, pasiklausydavau jo dainų. Kai nusprendėme leisti šią biografiją, labai apsidžiaugiau gavus progą perskaityti knygos korektūrą, o tuo pačiu ir pačią knygą. Nuostabus pasakojimas apie spalvingą asmenybę, nugyvenusią ilgą, gražų (kartais nevisai) gyvenimą.

Erzino tik vienas dalykas – autorės pomėgis daug kartų kartoti kai kuriuos faktus, istorijas. Dažniausiai tie pakartojimai nepridėdavo naujos informacijos ir būdavo „per arti“ vienas kito, kad taptų priminimu, o ne pakartojimu.

Viską sutrumpinus: knyga patiko, Cohenas sužavėjo, rekomenduoju. Pasileiskit jo muziką, susisupkit į pledą ir pakeliaukit po pasaulį su Leonardu. (netgi po Graikijos saule pasikaitinsit) :)

[Nadja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m writing this review from a cemetery, which seems fitting. I came across Leonard’s words and melodies at the right time - I fully immersed myself in them (and in this biography) for the past four months, and have so found one of the most effective anxiety relievers as well as a major artistic influence. Finishing this book feels like a small death. Sylvie Simmons is a very gifted author and set the standards high for biography writing - I gained a lot from reading “I’m Your Man”, far more than I had expected. I’ll miss my time with it.

[john callahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of Leonard Cohen's music, even when being a fan of his was neither popular nor profitable. (Just joking about the "popular and profitable.")

I read this book because although I know his songs very well, I knew very little about his life.

The book addresses his life very closely, and the author interviewed a amazingly large number of people when researching the book, including Mr. Cohen himself. She even interviewed Mr. Cohen's love interests, all of whom, it seems, still feel that he is a great guy, even though they are "exes."

I won't go into the details of his life, but I will point out that I never knew just how popular he was in Canada, the UK, and Europe, nor how neglected he was in the USA.

I first heard of him in the late 1970s, when I was 17 or so, and I'd always thought that he had a strong following in the USA, because most people I knew also knew about him and his music. I guess we were a small minority!

Of course, many people covered his songs, sometimes before he had recorded his own versions of them. Judy Collins, for example, recorded and made famous his song "Suzanne" before he even made a record.

Columbia, his label, didn't even want to release some of his albums, and in the 1980s they passed on "Various Positions," the album that contained one of the most covered songs of the 1990s and 2000s, "Hallelujah," as well as the now well-known song "Dance Me to the End of Love."

(I was in a Russian grocery store here in New Jersey once, and they were showing a movie on the store's TV -- from a Russian-language cable network. I was very surprised to see a scene in the movie while I was there in which an accordion player sang that very song, in English, to few people in a bar. I was taken aback!)

Of course, now -- it seems since Jeff Buckley's 1994 recording of "Hallelujah" -- Mr. Cohen's music and his own recordings of it are quite famous.

It was interesting to learn that for most of his life Mr. Cohen fought terrible depression. For some reason, however, around the turn of this century, it lifted. This fact explains how he has been so active in the past several years.

I'd recommend this book for anyone who likes Leonard Cohen's music (or covers of his songs) enough to want to read an interesting book about him and his songs.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

An evening out for Paul Bryant. Ian Bell was in town to open a display of his photography of rock musicians and I was lucky enough to get to talk to him.

Paul, I’m sure you are going to want to start with the bad news.


Me: Have you photographed Leonard Cohen?

Yes, a few times?

Me: And Bob Dylan?

Maybe half a dozen.

Me: What do you think of Dylan’s concerts?

Picture being at a Heston Blumenthal dinner. It’s cost you $500. The table is lovely, the view gorgeous, the menu looks fantastic. And then you get served up cheese sandwiches. Not even special cheese sandwiches. Bob Dylan’s like that. All the elements are there, but you get something else. For a while I kept going to them figuring that I’d go to the right one, but there isn’t a right one. Do you know his radio show?

Me: No

He had this radio show for a long time, it was in themes and it was witty, the guy’s got a great sense of humour. But he isn’t willing to bring any of it to the table when he’s performing. He almost died in a car crash at one point and started acting like maybe presenting his music in a concert wasn’t the worst thing in the world that could happen to him. But it didn’t last for long. Meeting him was no fun either.

Me: So who do you prefer out of Dylan and Leonard Cohen?

I’m Team Leonard. Dylan gives nothing at his concerts. Leonard gives everything. He’s respectful, he’s….

Paul, I will spare you the rave review of Leonard.

You will be pleased to hear that there is good news.

The Ian Bell I talked to was erudicate and entertaining and informative….and…

is considering writing a book one day.

It was THE WRONG IAN BELL.

So you can relax. Maybe Bob’s best after all.

[Gintare Juknaite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Šią knygą skaičiau kuo lėčiau, su pasimėgavimu. Kiekvienas skyrius aukso vertės. Knyga man, kaip kūrėjai, padėjo atrasti ramybę ir susitaikymą su savimi. Ji įkvėpė kurti. Drąsiai galiu pasakyti, kad tai, ką sukursiu ar išleisiu ateityje, bus daugiau ar mažiau įkvėpta Leonardo Coheno biografijos. Koks įdomus dalykas, juk prieš tai žinojau tik keletą jo kūrinių.
Aplodismentai biografijos autorei ir knygos vertėjai.

[Ann Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

REPOSTING THIS REVIEW (after taking it down a few months back).

Leonard Cohen is a hero to many. A nicer, more polite and articulate public figure would be hard to find. But as Robert McKee says, "True character is revealed only by action taken under pressure." The true story of Leonard Cohen's life would expose a lot of 20th century secrets, since Cohen was part of so many world-shaking events, movements and trends. From the MKULTRA program to the Bay of Pigs, from sixties' folk music to 90s pharmaceuticals, he's been Our Man since most of us have been on the planet. And that's why the True Life of Leonard Cohen may never be told.

This biography, like the earlier one by Ira Nadel, is the next instalment in the fairytale of Leonard Cohen's "life," and repeats some of the same errors, omissions and obfuscations. I hate to be unfan-like, but some of us read biographies to find out, err, the "truth" about famous people, not to wallow in their personal myth or worship in their cult of personality.

Leonard Cohen is an odd duck. He's one of very few famous singers who made it to idol status after a long, sometimes bitter struggle. These days, fame descends on pop stars when they are still cute and marketable, but Leonard's fame really hit its peak when he was around 70, almost like a reward for a lifetime of dedicated service. It would be nice if someone, someday, actually peeked behind the curtain of stardom and exposed some of the more transparent fables.

Let's begin with his McGill undergraduate days, when he came close to flunking out with a 56.4 grade average at graduation. "He did much better in math" though, -- yes, perhaps because Leonard was infinitely more calculating than his naive schoolmates who actually studied. At age 17, he began supplementing his income by volunteering for Donald Hebb's notorious, CIA-funded, sensory isolation experiments, for which he got paid a lucrative $20/day. These led to days and weeks spent in flotation tanks on LSD. It's a miracle he managed to remain sane enough to write poetry -- but then, the CIA has long had a soft spot for poets and writers. They often make great spies.

Even in high school, Leonard had shown a tendency to embrace violence. His first short story, published in the Westmount HS yearbook, was titled "Kill or Be Killed."

At least Simmons asks the obvious question -- "How did Leonard get away with it?" -- while glossing over the answers. How does a 21-year-old McGill Law School dropout with barely passing grades get into graduate school at Columbia? Simmons admits "Enrolling at Columbia had really been a cover, something to keep Leonard's family happy."

Cohen friend Mort Rosengarten told Simmons that wealthy Montreal Jewish families did not want their sons becoming artists and intellectuals -- rather they were expected to enter the family business and churn out elegant suits and ties for the elite. While rebelliously "floundering" in New York, Leonard founded a literary magazine called The Phoenix -- a perfect way to get close to the Greenwich Village poetry scene and its beatniks who ignored his formal, McGill-influenced verse.

Anyone who knows Leonard knows he's a sharp and disciplined thinker, not the kind of unfocussed dreamer who would imagine he could make a living off poetry. How did he survive in New York as he moved from failure to failure? That's the question that never seems to get answered.

We do know that in 1959 he moved to London to work on a novel. During that time, he met Jacob Rothschild -- heir to a banking empire -- who suggested Leonard visit his mother, Barbara Hutchison, on Hydra. Barbara Hutchison had divorced Jacob's father, and was planning to marry the painter Nikos Ghikas, who had a mansion overlooking the village of Kamini. Simmons doesn't say more about that visit, which long ago found its way into Hydra legend. Following in Henry Miller's footsteps, Leonard knocked on Ghikas' door but, unlike Miller, who was welcomed, he was told to go away. As Leonard told it later to friends on Hydra, he shook his fist and shouted "Curse this house!" Soon after, the mansion burned to the ground and remains a spooky ruin to this day. Maybe the Rothschilds had a bone to pick with Ghikas over Barbara's desertion? Maybe Leonard was their messenger? Simmons does not go there.

She repeats the official story of how Leonard met Marianne and settled down on Hydra, in an expatriate community of artists that included Marianne's husband, Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen and Australian writers George and Charmian Johnston. (Late in 1959, Hydra's artists somehow figured in a photo-spread in LIFE magazine -- which Simmons doesn't mention, perhaps because the LIFE article was not only precious and tacky, it raises the question of why an obscure Canadian folksinger would appear in so many painfully posed photos depicting Bohemian life on a Greek island.)

LIFE magazine was a flagship of the CIA "MOCKINGBIRD" program -- but that's a conspiracy theory so let's move on. Next we come to the famous Cuban Missile Crisis adventure. This story gets more absurd with each repetition. Simmons delivers the standard version of how Leonard returned to Montreal in the fall of 1960, broke and separated from the woman and child he planned to support with the proceeds of his talent. After co-writing two unsuccessful TV scripts with Irving Layton, he learned his first novel had been rejected by McClelland and Stewart. On March 30, when he would normally have been going over the galleys for The Spicebox of Earth, and looking for paying work, the cash-strapped Leonard suddenly boarded a plane in Miami and flew to Cuba, just days ahead of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

"It is no great surprise that Leonard should have wanted to see Cuba," Simmons explains. "Lorca, his favourite poet, spent three months there when the country was America's playground, calling it a 'paradise' and extolling its virtues and vices."

Sure. Of course. She delivers a repeat of Leonard's carefully-honed account of days spent stumbling in and out of bars and hotels, and how he almost got arrested as a CIA agent by Castro's over-zealous militia. But wait -- what if he really was a CIA agent? What if, in a desperate moment, he volunteered for the notorious failed mission, organized by CIA director Allen Dulles, the evil genius behind the MKULTRA program at McGill?

After all, the young Cohen and spymaster Dulles were only a degree or two of separation from each other. Dulles even employed some of Cohen's mentors and professors -- like Donald Hebb -- albeit covertly. Some of their secret LSD research involved the creation of Manchurian Candidates -- mind controlled agents and couriers who could be sent around the world on various missions in the name of anti-communism.

It stands to reason, doesn't it -- that a hungry young poet with a "fascination for violence" might have signed up to go to Havana ahead of the military invasion with the group of spies who were assigned to the hotels and bars -- exactly the kind of operation the MKULTRA program is now famous for.

Ten years later, on New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Cohen decided to spill the beans in a song: "Field Commander Cohen" -- "our most important spy/ wounded in the line of duty/ parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties." However, Simmons dismisses this joking confession as having "no justification whatsoever."

Readers who are not totally brainwashed will gag on this nonsense, but in a way, it's just so interesting -- and there's more.

Like Nadel before her, Simmons doesn't know Leonard was on Hydra from December 1980 through September 1981. How could she, if he didn't tell her? Others -- like me, for example -- could have filled her in on the aftermath of his dismal 1980 European tour, which ended in Tel Aviv on late November. I met Leonard and his musicians as they landed in Tel Aviv airport. I heard the complaints and arguments in the hotel over the next two days. Simmons says Leonard took them all on a jaunt to the Dead Sea -- I think someone is pulling our leg here. I recall Leonard, holed up at the hotel in a string of meetings with Israeli journalists and mysterious officials, ending with a painful meeting where he threatened to fire the band and replace them with "$300-a-week Armenians." Except for Sharon Robinson, who was cowriting a song with Leonard, Passenger band members seemed angry and demoralized as they boarded the plane back to Texas.

Simmons has him flying straight to New York from Tel Aviv, staying at the Algonquin Hotel, and on December 11, 1980 writing in his journal that he has just bought Hannukah candles in preparation for celebrating the holiday with his children -- although Hannukah ended on December 10. (Nadel says he attended a religious ceremony). Neither biographer mentions John Lennon's assassination, two kilometers away on Central Park, which happened on the night of December 8, 1980. Leonard would have seen the streams of people in the streets, many holding candles and heading for the wake outside the Dakota where Lennon was shot.

In fact, though, Leonard flew Tel Aviv-Athens on November 26 and went to Hydra where he spent the winter. I arrived a day or two later and saw him at his house which he was preparing for his children's arrival, and several times over the following week. His Spanish translator, Alberto Manzano, also visited at Christmas for two weeks and took photos of Leonard in his kitchen, with Adam and Lorca, and around the port of Hydra. Those photos are displayed on Leonard's website.

If he was in New York on December 11, it had to have been a quick trip. He never mentioned it to me or anyone else. That's why when I reviewed Nadel's biography in 1995, I said the New York trip was one of many errors.

I have doubts about how biographies are constructed, especially when the subject is still alive and able to alter the facts of his own life. Both Simmons and Nadel shove the events of 1981 -- like Cohen's first meeting with Dominique Isserman, which happened in the spring of 1981 -- to the following year, 1982. According to their account, which really sounds like Cohen's own summary, he spent 1981 off-planet in a state of creative limbo, penning "If It Be Thy Will" as a sort of prayer to his management.

I wonder why most of 1981 simply gets vaporized by both biographers? Did Leonard experience "missing time", as he also did for periods in 1970 just after the Isle of Wight concert, only to resurface in a cabin in the wilderness of Tennessee.

And why do I care? Were we lovers? Does it really matter? The truth is, I have known Leonard Cohen since the age of 8, when we first met in a notorious mental hospital. Subsequently I knew him as an adult from 1977 to 1983, when a strange coincidence brought me to his neighbourhood where I lived for the next 12 years. I studied with his Roshi during what I think was a decisive period for Cohen at least in terms of his relationship to Zen in America. I witnessed enough to notice the whitewashing (or should I say "chemtrailing"?) of Leonard's past that seems to be intensifying as he nears his 80s and quasi-sainthood.

I think the truth is way more interesting than the hagiographic PR we have been hearing for the past 30 years. Let's just say there has been more than one holocaust in Leonard's lifetime. There is much more to Leonard Cohen than his fans suspect, and therein lies a tale on the theme of "responsibility." The true story would reveal a man acting under pressure that would destroy the souls of most ordinary people. Instead, Leonard Cohen has survived as a prototype. Our Man, our Future. And that's cause for alarm.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading this book, i feel like i got to be good friends with Leonard Cohen. Simmons was thorough in her research and compassionate. Leonard Cohen is the patron saint of lovers and poets. I hope he stays on this Earth for a good long time. for anyone who's even the slightest bit interested in the man, his poetry, his music, his lovers, his philosophies and his religion, this book will be unputdownable. i highly recommend it. i had the joy of reading it and stopping to search for videos to check out music that was mentioned. some beautiful memories here. i'm glad Canada can claim him as our own, but really Leonard Cohen belongs to the world. Read this book and listen to his music. Go back and read his poetry, his novels.

[José Miguel Tomasena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un gran biografía. Reconstruye con detalle y equilibrio la trayectoria vital de este artista increíble. Me inspira mucho. Me anima. Me consuela.
Un poeta en busca de la belleza. Un místico que conciliaba los contrarios: el placer, el sexo, la entrega a Dios.
Sufrió depresiones grandes, adicciones, un ego que lo descentraba. Y al final, en su madurez, encontró la serenidad y la paz.
Leonard es gran inspiración, por su ética de trabajo y su búsqueda espiritual.
Cuando se terminaba la lectura sentí como si se acabara su vida. Lloré agradecido por todo lo que nos dejó.

[Madi Hyatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

honestly 3.5 stars, this man’s life is so interesting

[Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Redelijk biased, maar wat een mooi boek. De muziek van Leonard Cohen luisteren is net zo goed een inkijkje in je eigen ziel als in de zijne, en zo voelde het ook een beetje om zijn biografie te lezen. Echt een prestatie. Ik zet even een cd'tje op.

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew. This is an exhaustive volume. I'm totally impressed by Sylvie Simmons' research and love the little bits where she writes about her interchanges with Leonard Cohen himself, because they're immediate and offer a point of view.

And as a writer, I love reading what Leonard Cohen says. For example, after he read Lorca he 'began to write poems in earnest'. He said

I wanted to respond to these poems. Every poem that touches you is like a call that needs a response, one wants to respond with one's own story.

And

There is no difference between a poem and a song. Some were songs first and some were poems first and some were situations. All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.

I read the book with my laptop open, flicking among YouTube versions of the songs as I read about them and that really enhanced the experience, because there aren't guitars behind Sylvie Simmons' writing. And overall there's no point of view I could discern. And there's no sense of drama, even though there's been a lot of drama in his life.

Was I expecting too much? Was she overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the information she sought out? Or did she write with half an eye on Leonard Cohen's approval, even though he did not ask her to write it and did not ask to read it? There are some strange omissions that may support this view and/or seem to show that Sylvie Simmons didn't take enough risks. For instance, Leonard Cohen's time at a monastery, his ordination there as Buddhist monk, and his relationship with the monastery's leader Roshi Joshu Sasaki born 1907 and still living all interested me deeply and are described in the book. But Sylvie Simmons doesn't refer to the ongoing controversy around the Roshi's sexual misconduct with his female students. Given Leonard Cohen's own many and varied relationships with women, I wish she had addressed this issue. Did she even ask Leonard Cohen about it?

Finally, I wanted more and better photographs.

I know many people love this book. I'm glad it's in the world, as a reference point. It must have been a huge task. But I wanted to end the book with a sense of understanding Leonard Cohen a little better. I didn't. But I loved reading what he said in the text, and I learned a lot from observing and listening to all those YouTube clips as I read.

[Kiof · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, this book blows away any former works on Cohen's life. Nadel's book was very good and it's been perhaps been unfairly overlooked by non-fans- but Nadel's book was too focused on the thesis that Cohen is a brilliant nihilist to tell a compelling and fulfilling life story. Also it had to stop just when things got interesting- the Cohen revival, the O2 show. Simmons obviously adores Cohen and that'll probably irritate those who don't feel the same way about, as Nadel and many others have labeled him, the "poet of pessimism". Slyvie's lavish praise just seems like hard-earned and deserving redemption for a old man who so extravagantly, and perhaps foolishly, suffered. Simmons decimates Nadel's book (and especially all those other bios- those cheapo press release reprints) by sheer cumulative data. Every period of his artistic life is completely documented- in exhaustive and exhausting detail. I thought this book would be a breeze, but it ended up taking weeks. Simmons is not without her faults- she says a couple of completely ridiculous things, mostly when praising Cohen to the skies- but I was perfectly willing to overlook that. The tale of this dense and extremely ambitious poet and ladies man had to be told- and it's been told for the first time, with any sort of authority, in I'm Your Man.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular. Could not put it down. I've been an enthusiastic & grateful Leonard Cohen fan since my early teens (so, decades) but knew surprisingly little about his life. I was afraid reading the book would make me like Cohen & his work less (as biographies often do) but the effect was the opposite--my respect and awe have increased. Cohen has battled all his life to express his vision as honestly as possible, which has not always made for the happiest life (for him or for those close to him). There is a very vivid picture here, relevant to all artists, of the struggle between privacy and self-promotion, easy (or easier) success and long patience, confidence and terror, vulnerability and control. And it even has a happy ending! Simmons has a mostly light touch and stays out of the way to let her extensive interviewing & synthesis of already-published material do the talking. Can't imagine I"ll read a biography equally as good for a long, long time.

[Turbulent_Architect · Rating 4 out of 5]

They say not to meet your heroes, but honestly, you shouldn't read about them either. That's not a dig at Sylvie Simmons, of course. I'm Your Man is meticulously researched and engagingly written. Simmons does an excellent job chronicling Cohen's life from the upper-middle-class Westmount household where he grew up to the mountaintop Buddhist retreat where he tried to escape his career. It's just that the portrait that emerges is less than edifying. From the methamphetamine abuse to the extramarital affairs and the ill-advised onstage antics, Cohen's life is every bit as chaotic, excessive, and self-destructive as the typical rock star's. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But I had just hoped to find, mirrored in his actions, the wisdom, the reverence, the subtly, and the beauty of his words.

[Jan Němec · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Psáno pro Hospodářské noviny.)

Mezi Schopenhauerem a Dylanem

V titulní písni čtrnáctého studiového alba You Want It Darker, které v roce 2016 vyšlo 19 dní před smrtí písničkáře Leonarda Cohena, slyšíme mužské synagogální sbory hebrejsky zpívat: "Hineni, hineni." Mužské doprovodné hlasy se přitom v Cohenově hudbě na rozdíl od těch ženských v podstatě nevyskytují. Hebrejská slova opakují, co řekl Abrahám v knize Genesis, když měl obětovat svého syna Izáka: "Zde jsem." V roce 2016 Cohen světu sděloval svou připravenost zemřít. Nyní, o čtyři roky později, znovu ožívá v českém překladu zřejmě definitivní biografie I'm Your Man od Sylvie Simmonsové, již vydalo nakladatelství Prostor.

Její autorka je uznávaná hudební novinářka. Už má za sebou životopisné knihy o francouzském šansoniérovi Sergi Gainsbourgovi nebo jiném kanadském písničkáři Neilu Youngovi. S Cohenem spolupracovala ještě za jeho života, jedná se tedy o životopis autorizovaný. Několik zpěvákových biografií už samozřejmě vyšlo, mezi ty podařené patří třeba v češtině před šesti lety vydaný Leonard Cohen − život, hudba a vykoupení od izraelského novináře Liela Leibovitze. Nikdo však dosud neměl tak exkluzivní přístup ke Cohenovým rozsáhlým archivům a přímo do jeho kuchyně − v doslovném i přeneseném smyslu slova.

Výhody autorizovaného životopisu jsou zřejmé, současně se však hodí připomenout, co napsal anglický spisovatel D. H. Lawrence: "Nevěřte vypravěči, věřte vyprávění. Kritik je tu od toho, aby zachránil vyprávění před umělcem, který ho stvořil." Všichni jsme jen nespolehlivými vypravěči svých životů.

Vypravěč stvořil vyprávění, co však stvořilo vypravěče? Právě to je otázka, na niž hledá odpověď většina životopisů. V případě Leonarda Cohena to není zas tak složité. Vypravěče stvořila touha zalíbit se všem těm krásným ženám, po cestě se pokud možno vyhnout depresi a najít absolutno. Takové zjednodušení samozřejmě žádá upřesnění. A právě tak lze přítomný životopis chápat: jako sled fascinujících upřesnění, často překvapivých i pro člověka, jenž Cohenovu tvorbu dobře zná.

Simmonsové lze přičíst k dobru, že nenapsala jen biografii písničkáře. Přestože se Cohen nejvíce proslavil jako muž s kytarou, vystupovat začal až po třicítce. V té době už byl v rodné Kanadě považován za nejtalentovanějšího básníka své generace a na kontě měl dva pozoruhodné romány, Oblíbenou hru z roku 1963 a o tři roky mladší Nádherné poražené. Ještě než se poprvé postavil před mikrofon, v jeho hlase se mísily příběhy starozákonních proroků s poetikou španělského básníka Federica Garcíi Lorcy. Po něm o mnoho let později pojmenoval i svou dceru a hlavně se od něj naučil důležitou věc: "Nikdy nehořekovat lehkovážně."

Když k prorokům a Lorcovi přidáme ještě pravidelné užívání psychedelických drog a prostý život mezi sluncem a mořem na řeckém ostrově Hydra, vychází z toho raný Cohen ve vší kráse. Žádný div, že když mu v roce 1967 vyšlo první album, recenzent deníku New York Times ho na stupni vyšinutosti zařadil "někam mezi Schopenhauera a Dylana".

Bob Dylan a Leonard Cohen pak byli srovnáváni celý život. Naposledy když Dylan v roce 2016 dostal Nobelovu cenu za literaturu a mnozí trpěli pocitem, že pokud už ji měl nějaký zpěvák dostat, měl to být Cohen. Slavná historka vypráví, jak se ti dva kdysi potkali v pařížské kavárně a vyměňovali si nové písně. Vzájemně je ocenili, ale ukázalo se, že zatímco Dylan svou I and I naškrábal za čtvrt hodiny, Cohen psal Hallelujah pět let.

Jistě, coververze Hallelujah se dnes počítají na stovky a ta píseň je stálicí talentových soutěží po celém světě. Jenže Cohen dlouhé roky psal skoro všechny své texty. Pro Hallelujah postupně vymyslel 60 slok, některé další písně měly přímo vlastní sešity, které zaznamenávaly jejich vývoj a různé verze. Zatímco k Dylanovi inspirace přicházela rychle a zároveň ležérně, Cohen platil za perfekcionistu v dvouřadém obleku.

Sylvie Simmonsová se jako každý životopisec snaží psát o životě a díle současně. Její knize by se dala adresovat výtka, že kapitoly věnované jednotlivým albům působí místy mechanicky. Postupují pravidelně od přípravy desky přes její vydání a přijetí až po koncertní turné. Na druhou stranu Simmonsová téměř vždy přispěje málo známými detaily, jež někdy mají charakter zjevení.

Vězeňské koncerty Johnnyho Cashe dávno vešly do zlatého fondu. Ale moc se neví, že Cohen v roce 1970 během svého britského turné mezi oficiální koncerty vkládal vystoupení v psychiatrických léčebnách. Muž, který celý život trpěl úzkostmi a na pódiích před desetitisícovými davy poklidně vypočítával všechna antidepresiva, která zkusil, měl pro toto publikum pochopení. Věděl, že jejich porážky mají stejné kořeny jako jeho písně.

Simmonsová se místy může zdát až otrocky faktografická vzhledem k tomu, že píše o básníkovi. Jenže píše nejen o něm: mapuje také dobový hudební průmysl, bohémské kruhy typu Warholovy newyorské Factory, k níž měl Cohen blízko na konci 60. let, a vůbec ducha doby. To vše je poměrně strhující čtení. Jen se autorka nepouští do odvážnějších interpretací a nechce ani být tím kritikem, jenž podle D. H. Lawrence zachrání vyprávění před vypravěčem. Tady se vypravěči věří − i v tom, jak nonšalantně své vyprávění shazuje v rozhovorech s autorkou.

Pro jedno koncertní turné si Cohen nechal vyrobit masku, aby nemusel publiku nastavovat tvář. Tu masku však nechal odlít z vlastního obličeje. Vypravěče není třeba demaskovat, neboť básně a písně jsou pro Simmonsovou přesně tímto typem masky: odhalují to, co skrývají.

Možná že více si běžný čtenář užije kapitoly, které se z nahrávacích studií a koncertních pódií přesunují do ložnice. Pasáže, v nichž se po řádcích procházejí ženy Cohenova života, jsou pochopitelně vděčné. Ať už jde o múzy jeho nejslavnějších písní jako Marianne Ihlenovou ze So Long, Marianne či Suzanne Elrodovou ze Suzanne. Nebo o slavné zpěvačky Joni Mitchellovou, Janis Joplinovou nebo Nico, s nimiž si něco začal či začít chtěl.

A ty synagogální sbory, které na předposledním albu zpívají Hineni, hineni? Leonard Cohen své příjmení nenosil nadarmo: pocházel z rodu Áronova, byl vnukem rabína a ke stáru opakovaně tvrdil, že své písně považuje za pokračování liturgie jinými prostředky. Kdo zažil jeho tříhodinová vystoupení, pamatuje si, že když je osmdesátiletý zpěvák končil gestem, jímž kohanim žehnají svému lidu, v sále by bylo slyšet spadnutí špendlíku.

Cohenův duchovní vývoj tvoří jeden z nosníků knihy. Slavný zpěvák například několik desetiletí dělal šoféra a kuchaře svému zenovému mistrovi; byla to dlouhá služba, róši se dožil 107 let a Cohen si mezitím v lotosovém sedu odrovnal kolena. V klášteře na kalifornské hoře Mount Baldy strávil mnoho let, a dostal tam dokonce mnišské jméno Jikan. Znamená "obvyklé ticho".

Jeho biografii lze číst jako variaci na nesmrtelný příběh o svatém hříšníkovi. Kolem sedmdesátého roku života ho konečně opustila touha a spolu s ní i celoživotní deprese. Stalo se tak poté, co se v Indii setkal s žákem Ramany Maharšiho a hinduistickou advaitou védántou, učením, jež na základě hlubokých meditačních vhledů do povahy vědomí proklamuje radikální jednotu světa.

Ten "líný bastard v obleku", jak sám sebe nazývá v písni Going Home, nakonec moc dobře věděl, že maska, co si ji nechal odlít podle vlastního obličeje, má ještě hlubší význam. Nejen maska odhaluje tvář, nejen dílo odhaluje život. Tajemství života možná spočívá v tom, že žádné tajemství neexistuje: to tento svět je tváří boží.