Portrait of the artist: As an older man

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/02/2012 (5058 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Leonard Cohen released his 12th album, Old Ideas, on Tuesday. Born in Montreal, Cohen formed his first band while a student at McGill, but the musician has always been more than just an everyday rock star. We assembled a Cohen-centric panel to dissect seven sides of the 77-year-old icon.

COHEN AS MUSE

Cohen was living in black and white when I first met him — existing in the blurdom of a wintry December sidewalk, in a dark petticoat with an upturned collar, in a city I had never travelled toward. Here was the man who I would later speak of as though his name were a mountain, whose songs would soundtrack my life like small white arrows aimed at the stars. Here was Leonard Cohen, pausing in front of a department store window in 1965, his shoulders hunched against the cold while the St. Lawrence Seaway maintained a stony silence.

I approached him and confessed that my girl cries every night like a slow-closing season. I wanted to know why he burned the house that he loved, and what it was that would someday perfectly forget us all. While he spoke, women were hiding behind lemon trees in Sienna, cattle were carving canyons out of time, blossoms were falling in quiet courtyards, and rivers were honing their anger toward the world. While he spoke, I noticed how his face rhymed with the passing streetcars and the deep caskets of our days. I turned, and lost him for hours.

— Written by musician Justin Rutledge

 

COHEN AS MONTREALER

I only ever saw him twice in Westmount, once eating a banana outside of a fruit shop. The other time was at a bead emporium 25 years ago, where teenage girls gathered every Saturday to buy beads. Leonard was standing there as an indulgent father and Westmounters, being so polite, we pretended not to notice. I worked as a men’s clothing salesman in high school selling the Freedman line, which was the Cohen family’s topcoat and cashmere overcoat brand. Leonard came back here to raise his children and in the local alternative high school, you had Adam Cohen, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright in the same class. You didn’t want to say much if you knew Leonard. The line went: If you were a friend of Leonard Cohen and told people you were friend of Leonard Cohen, you were no longer a friend of Leonard Cohen.

— Novelist Terry Rigelhof lives in Westmount, Que.

 

COHEN AS FATHER

He remained in his children’s lives despite incredible obstacles. There was a moment, when we were living in the south of France, that my father wasn’t allowed on the property. So he bought a caravan and lived at the end of our road. Despite the distances my mother placed before him, he was always present with instruction and humour. To many, he was lugubrious because of his poetry, but to us, he was the most hysterical guy. We still get together every Friday when we’re in town for a family meal and he’s a constant source of counsel, advice, support and encouragement.

I feel loved. I’ve always felt seen. I was between five and eight when he lived in that caravan. He was parked right at the T, where the public street met the private road. It’s hard on a kid, when you see your makers at pointed odds, especially when you understand that financially, your father’s floating the whole scene and living in a caravan at the end of a dirt road. In retrospect, every visit was an education. He was there to protect values. It would be lighting the Sabbath candles and learning Hebrew prayers, singing songs, reading the bible. In the Jewish tradition, “Cohen” is the high-priest. It’s no accident my father has a ministerial quality.

— Adam Cohen released the album Like a Man in October 2011. His Canadian tour begins in Sherbrooke, Que., on Feb. 6.

 

COHEN AS JEW

My work in the synagogue is based on the fact that people are searching for a better understanding of themselves. They want to be connected to something bigger, and Cohen, who’s able to transcend one religion, feels spiritual, real and whole. In his music, he questions what it is to live a meaningful life and whether talking about Abraham thinking he needs to kill his son or how we all must eventually confront death, Cohen searches for something bigger than himself. That’s why we read his poems and sing his songs every year at Yom Kippur.

— Yacov Fruchter is the spiritual leader of the Toronto-based Annex Shul

 

COHEN AS POET

He was seen by us on the West Coast as a relief from the staid eastern poetic sensibility, he and Irving Layton. Cohen was shifting away from the national, he wasn’t writing about Canada. That was intriguing. I was a student at the University of Buffalo when Cohen came to read in 1964. The reading went smoothly, then he pulled out his guitar! He knew how to work his shtick and perform.

— Fred Wah is the Poet Laureate of Canada

 

COHEN AS SEX SYMBOL

I think there are probably millions of women around the world who have an unrequited love affair with Leonard Cohen through his music. A man who sings and plays guitar is almost always sexy. But Leonard Cohen is that and more. He is an artist who seduces with the depth of his voice, his sultry melodies, his hypnotic rhythms and his profound lyrics.

— Bernadette Morra is the editor-in-chief of Fashion magazine

 

COHEN AS BUSINESSMAN

Half the people I do business with ask me about Cohen, and I tell them, “He picked the wrong person to trust.” … The way I understood Cohen’s situation, his American business manager was simply taking money for herself out of his company. Usually, an artist has a manager, a business manager and a lawyer. It sounds like Cohen trusted this one woman to look after everything — and she took his money. The music industry can be shaky. What happened to Cohen helped lots of artists to do more than sign cheques and close their eyes.

— Jay Abraham is an accountant in the music industry.

 

• Click here to listen to Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas.

 

— Postmedia News