Just like David Bowie’s demise earlier this year, Cohen’s passing comes right on the heels of a new album, You Want It Darker, released just three weeks ago, on October 21.
During a seven-year spell there, he wrote “Flowers for Hitler“, one of his most controversial poetry collections, his first novel “The Favorite Game“, and “Beautiful Losers“, a book about religion and sexuality that prompted comparisons to novelist James Joyce.
Cohen, who never married, is survived by his daughter, Lorca, and by his son, Adam. All I did last night was listen to his music and reflect and fell asleep with the record spinning. He was also a poet and author.
Cohen’s career spanned five decades.
I can’t remember how I discovered that “Suzanne” had been written as a poem by some guy named Leonard Cohen, and that he had later set it to music.
The 82-year-old was popular mostly in the 1980s, but he performed up until this year.
“Leonard Cohen and his generation came along and sort of blew the doors off of that”, he says, writing about themes people actually cared about: love, mortality, sex, and spirituality. We now know, however, that Cohen in fact died on Monday (November 7).
“Hallelujah” was a track on Cohen’s 1984 album Various Positions, which Columbia Records president Walter Yetnikoff, his hands full releasing singles from Thriller, balked at releasing. For Del Rey, Cohen was an inspiration on par with Bob Dylan.
The singer posted a message on her Instagram page of her singing “Chelsea Hotel #2″, the song he wrote about being with Janis Joplin at the iconic Manhattan hotel. “That is something I haven’t heard before, ‘” Wilson told Daybreak Alberta in a telephone interview from Las Vegas this week.
In all, he published more than a dozen novels and books of poetry and recorded almost two dozen albums.
“Leonard became one of the most revered pop poets and a musical touchstone for many songwriters”, chief executive Neil Portnow added.
Cohen was preceded in death in July by Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian woman with whom he lived on the Greek island of Hydra and who inspired his song So Long, Marianne.
In a lengthy statement, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Cohen – a native Montrealer – “one of the most influential and enduring musicians ever”.
Ihlen received the letter two days before her death.
