Rolling Stone News on Leonard Cohen

News about Leonard Cohen and his work, press, radio & TV programs etc.
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Flashback: Celebrating Leonard Cohen’s Lifetime of Achievement
1/29/10, 4:06 pm EST


http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... hievement/

Michael Jackson isn’t the only artist who will receive a Lifetime Achievement award at this Sunday’s 52nd Annual Grammy Awards: Canadian poet Leonard Cohen will also be honored for his contributions to music at the January 31st awards show. Just last week, Cohen’s “Hallelujah” once again topped the singles chart after it was covered by Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris at the “Hope for Haiti Now” special. To celebrate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and his work, let’s look back at a pair of vintage Cohen performances: Up top, watch Cohen perform his classic “Suzanne” at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, and down below, Cohen sings “The Stranger Song” on the Julie Felix Show in 1967.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s Grammy coverage and be sure to tune in Sunday for our report on this year’s show.

Bonus Flashback: Lou Reed inducts Cohen into the Rock Hall in 2008:

Daniel Kreps
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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I'm still trying to find the first and second editions from 1979 and 1983 at local libraries.

Leonard Cohen

The Rolling Stone Album Guide, 3rd Edition, 1992

Canadian poet, novelist (Beautiful Losers, 1966) and hautee monde cult figure, Cohen crafts elegant, bittersweet mood music for dark nights of the soul. While hyper-romantic at heart, he avoids mushiness by cultivating a veneer of Europeanized world-weariness a la Jacques Brel or Brecht-Weill. Like Bob Dylan, he's a deft non-singer, his ragged delivery compensated for by cinematic arrangements--on early work, his huskiness and offhand acoustic guitar jostle film-noir strings; later (Recent Songs, from 1979) he played with a mariachi band, and was accompanied by such non-pop surprises as the Middle Eastern oud and the English horn.

The Songs of Leonard Cohen (1968) remains his finest hour--his themes of love, death, betrayal and the conflict of flesh and spirit conveyed hauntingly through simple, repetitive melodies (Cohen understandably favors minor chords, and his lyrics stress suggestion over statement). Death of a Ladies' Man paired him with Phil Spector in an odd bid to join Spector's pop-orchestral Wall of Sound bravado with Cohen's high-art seriousness and occassional mystic concerns. He's also experimented with French Canadian song structures and, effectively, with duets with Jennifer Warnes (on Recent Songs and Various Positions): her bell-like singing sets off his dry-voiced pleading like gilt framing an abstract artwork.

Judy Collins and Joe Cocker ably covered Cohen ("Suzanne," from Songs of Leonard Cohen, and "Bird on the Wire," from Songs From A Room, respectively), and, continuing with such gems as I'm Your Man (1988), Cohen exerts considerable influence on the folk-poet revival of Suzanne Vega and others.


The Rolling Stone Album Guide, 4th Edition, 2004

Leonard Cohen is the Jewish Bryan Ferry. In the excellent liner notes of his 1975 The Best of Leonard Cohen, he explains the suave cover photo: "I rarely ever look this good, or bad, depending on your politics." That sums the man up. Running for the money and the flesh, especially the flesh, Cohen was the literary rogue who strummed his acoustic guitar and croaked of love and its torments. He emerged from Montreal in the 1960s, an acclaimed poet and novelist well into his thirties before he even made his first album. Yet for all his poetic angst and folkie sorrow, Cohen could never hide the fact that he was getting more rock-star booty than any Canadian before or since. Whispering in his glamorously tattered voice, he still makes his songs sound like sinful confidences shared over bottles of bloody-red wine.

He already had his style down on Songs of Leonard Cohen. No one has ever accused him of being a real guitarist, but for some reason, you can always tell it's him playing. In "Suzanne," "Master Song," and the peerless "So Long, Marianne," he sounds bemused by his own romantic travails, inventing what critic Robert Christgau called "his tuneless, grave, infinitely self-mocking vocal presence." His songs are strictly verse-chorus-verse, with hardly any bridges or fancy bits. Robert Altman used three of the tunes in the soundtrack to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, adding to Cohen's legend.

Songs From a Room is thin and sparse, weighed down by "Bird on the Wire," which became a schlock standard. But Songs of Love and Hate is the gangsta shit -- even the one with the children's choir is so intense you can't turn it off. Cohen sings about jealous rivals ("Famous Blue Raincoat"), demon lovers ("Avalanche"), cold and lonesome virgin warrior goddesses ("Joan of Arc"), and God knows what else ( "Let's Sing Another Song, Boys"), bursting with wit and imagination. New Skin for the Old Ceremony is almost as great, featuring the boho romance "Chelsea Hotel No. 2." Note: Oral sex on unmade hotel beds is almost always a bad idea, since those bedspreads are laundered usually about once every five years, but songs about it are still cool.

Since then, Cohen has recorded sporadically -- he apparently has the novel idea that before you make an album, you should wait until you have an album's worth of good songs. The only total waste is the Phil Spector collaboration Death of a Ladies' Man. Recent Songs has "Came So Far for Beauty." (Next line: "And I left so much behind.") Various Positions has "Hallelujah," which unexpectedly became Cohen's signature song after Jeff Buckley revived it in the 1990s. I'm Your Man perversely adds cheesy Eurodisco synths and disco-girl vocals to some of his bleakest tunes: "Everybody Knows," "First We Take Manhattan," "Tower of Song." The Future has a hilarious eight-minute send-up of Irving Berlin's "Always," plus political/spiritual statements along the lines of "Anthem" ("There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in").

By now, Cohen was bigger than ever, inspiring doom disciples such as Kurt Cobain, Trent Reznor, and Nick Cave. He spent most of the 1990s on a mountaintop Zen Buddhist retreat, while Cobain was down in Seattle singing, "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld/So I can sigh eternally." Ten New Songs offered "Alexandra Leaving," "In My Secret Life," and "You Have Loved Enough," the epitaph Cohen has been writing for himself throughout his career. Of his three live albums, the good one is Field Commander Cohen. Cohen's record company has released three best-of anthologies, but bizarrely, none of them include "Joan of Arc."
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Leonard Cohen Talks About First New Album of the Decade
"One song was written on tour, the rest were written before"

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/118668

By Patrick Doyle
Jun 18, 2010 2:37 PM EDT

Leonard Cohen has spent the last two years globetrotting through a marathon tour, but when Rolling Stone caught up with the poet last night in New York — where he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame — he revealed he's working on a new album, his first disc of fresh material since 2004's Dear Heather. "God willing it will be finished next spring," he said.

"I'm producing it," he said, wearing his typical dapper black suit and fedora. The 75-year-old added that the disc will contain "10 or 11 songs," mostly composed before he hit the road in May 2008 for the first time in 15 years. "One song was written on tour, the rest were written before," he said, noting that he wrote some tracks with longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson and with his longtime companion Anjani. What will it sound like? "Something good, I hope."

Check out photos of the all-star Songwriters Hall of Fame gaga.

Cohen said not much has changed on his playlist in recent years and rattled off a list of his favorite artists with long breathy pauses between names: "The same people — Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins."

Last year, Cohen debuted one new song live, the slow, moonlit blues "Feels So Good." This summer, Cohen embarks another leg of his tour, and in November he'll play Cambodia's Olympic Stadium with proceeds going to chartiable groups like the Cambodian Red Cross. "That's a long story," he said. "But if we can help there I'm very happy to be able to do it." Cohen's tour grossed $21 million in 2009 and earned stellar reviews. "I don't examine these things too closely," he said about his success on the road. "Otherwise they may evaporate."

At the ceremony, Cohen made a brief-but-spellbinding speech, said he was "overwhelmed" and then recited a stanza from his staple "Hallelujah." After the ceremony, fellow icons Paul Simon and Billy Joel made an early exit, but Cohen hung around his table, posing for photos and accepting accolades. When a couple forced electric guitar pickguards in his face, Cohen calmly told them, "You know I don't like signing these," but then signed them anyway.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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New Box Set for Leonard Cohen Catalog - Release to include all of his studio, live recordings

By MATTHEW PERPETUA
SEPTEMBER 21, 2011 9:05 AM ET

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... g-20110921

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Leonard Cohen's sprawling, highly acclaimed body of work is about to be collected in a new box set featuring everything he has released. The Complete Albums Collection will be released in two forms on October 11th – a 17-disc set with all of his albums including live recordings, and an 11-disc version with only his studio releases.

Each disc in the set will be packaged in a "mini-LP replica" CD sleeve, and the package will include a thick booklet featuring extensive liner notes, discographical annotations and an essay by Cohen scholar Pico Iyer. All of the music in the set has been remastered from the original analog master tapes.


Leonard Cohen Gearing Up for First Album of New Material in Seven Years - 'Old Ideas' to be released on January 31st

By ANDY GREENE
OCTOBER 25, 2011 2:35 PM ET

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20111025

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Leonard Cohen has been working on a new album for years, but it's finally hitting shelves on January 31st. Speaking to the press in Oviedo, Spain while in town to accept an award, Cohen said that the disc will be called Old Ideas. "I've played it for a few people and they seem to like it," Cohen said, adding that he still struggles with songwriting. "When you're writing, you're always an absolute beginner. Each time you take up your guitar or sit by a blank page, you start from scratch. It's a struggle."

Cohen hasn't released an album of new material since 2004's Dear Heather, but he went an epic world tour between 2008 and 2010 where previewed new material onstage, including "Darkness," "Lullaby," "Born In Chains" and "Feels So Good." According to a post on his official online forum, only "Darkness" made the final cut for the disc. (Watch a video of Cohen performing "Darkness" at a 2009 concert below.)

In June of 2010, Cohen spoke with Rolling Stone about his new album. "I'm producing it," he said. "One song was written on tour, the rest were written before." He also said that the disc will contain 10 or 11 songs, and some of them were written with his longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson and his companion Anjani.

The last tour was far and away the longest of Cohen's career, but the 77-year-old singer said he may hit the road yet again. "God willing," he said. "I never quite know whether there's going to be a tour or not."
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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NEW ROLLINGSTONE LEONARD COHEN BIO PAGE AND PHOTO

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/leonard-cohen

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artis ... /biography

Leonard Cohen

Singing elegant, melancholic songs in a glamorously tattered voice, Leonard Cohen emerged from Montreal in the 1960s, an artist well into his thirties before he even made his first album. After a few records, he was royalty, on equal footing with Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, and other top-notch singer-songwriters. His songs sound like sinful confidences shared over a bottle of blood-red wine; sadness is his strong suit, though sex is never far from his mind.

Over the years he's racked up classics like "So Long Marianne," "First We Take Manhattan," and the gorgeous ballad "Hallelujah," which in the 1990s and 2000s became ubiquitous in cover versions by Jeff Buckley and others. After escaping into semi-retirement around the turn of the millennium, Cohen found that his former business manager had bilked him out of $5 million, and in 2008 the 73-year-old was forced to hit the road. Cohen's world tour — his first in 15 years — turned out to be triumphant, as Cohen testified for three hours a night to adoring audiences.

Cohen, who was born in 1934 to a middle class Montreal family, already had his style down on 1967's Songs of Leonard Cohen. No one has ever accused him of being a real guitarist, but for some reason, you can always tell it's him playing. In "Suzanne," "Master Song," and the peerless "So Long, Marianne," he sounds bemused by his own romantic travails, inventing what one critic has called "his tuneless, grave, infinitely self-mocking vocal presence." His songs are strictly verse-chorus-verse, with hardly any bridges or fancy bits. Robert Altman used three of the tunes in the soundtrack to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, adding to Cohen's legend.

Songs From a Room (1969) is thin and sparse, weighed down by "Bird on a Wire," a sweet song which became a schlock standard somewhere along the line. But 1971's Songs of Love and Hate is the real deal. Even the track with the children's choir is so intense you can't turn it off. Bursting with wit and imagination, Cohen sings about jealous rivals ("Famous Blue Raincoat"), demon lovers ("Avalanche"), virgin warrior goddesses ("Joan of Arc"), and God knows what else ("Let's Sing Another Song, Boys"). New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974) is almost as great, featuring the boho romance "Chelsea Hotel No. 2."

Cohen has never been in a hurry to make a record just to have product in the racks. Apparently he has the novel idea that before you make an album, you should wait until you have an album's worth of good songs. So sometimes his output is sporadic. Most titles have been valuable. The only total waste is the Phil Spector collaboration Death of a Ladies' Man, though the song title of "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On" made tongues wag in 1977. Recent Songs (1979) has "Came So Far for Beauty." (Next line: "And I left so much behind.") 1985's Various Positions has "Hallelujah," which unexpectedly became Cohen's signature song after Jeff Buckley revived it and a parade of artists covered it through the 2000s. I'm Your Man (1988) perversely adds cheesy Eurodisco synths and disco-girl vocals to some of his bleakest tunes: "Everybody Knows," "First We Take Manhattan," "Tower of Song." The Future has a hilarious eight-minute send-up of Irving Berlin's "Always," plus political/spiritual statements along the lines of "Anthem" ("There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in").

By the end of the decade Cohen's rep as a sage elder was ultra tight, inspiring doom disciples such as Kurt Cobain, Trent Reznor, and Nick Cave. He spent most of the 1990s becoming a monk on a mountaintop Zen Buddhist retreat in L.A., while Cobain was up in Seattle singing, "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld/So I can sigh eternally." Ten New Songs (2001) was his first work in 10 years, offering "Alexandra's Leaving" and "You Have Loved Enough," the epitaph Cohen has been writing for himself throughout his career. Of his five live albums, Field Commander Cohen isn't half bad. Surely it's better than 2004's Dear Heather, a collaboration with his romantic partner Anjani Thomas. They also worked together on 2006's Blue Alert. That year also found Cohen publishing a collection of poems and drawings entitled Book of Longing.

In 2005 the singer suffered every boomer's nightmare — his retirement fund was empty. Cohen alleged that former manager Kelley Lynch bamboozled him for more than $5 million, and for all intents and purposes he was broke. He created a short-term fix by hitting the road and touring the globe. Everywhere he went — from Coachella to Glastonbury — kudos followed, and pundits believed him to be at the top of his game. When it came time to give his speech at his 2008 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he recited the lyrics of his "Tower of Song."

On January 31, Cohen was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. The DVD Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 was also released in 2010.

Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Jim Macnie contributed to this story.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Listen: Three Songs From Leonard Cohen's New Album
'Old Ideas' hits stores on January 31st

By Andy Greene
November 22, 2011 11:00 AM ET

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... m-20111122

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Leonard Cohen's new LP Old Ideas isn't hitting stores until January 31st, but the first single "Show Me The Place" is now streaming online. (Listen below.) Old Ideas is Cohen's first album since 2004's Dear Heather. He began recording it this past January, though he previewed the tracks "Lullaby" and "The Darkness" during his epic, 250-date world tour between 2008 and 2010. The disc was produced by Patrick Leonard, Anjani Thomas, Ed Sanders and Dino Soldo. Cohen has said that he's interested in launching another tour to support the disc, though so far no dates have been announced. Check out the stream of "Show Me The Place," along with live clips of "The Darkness" and "Lullaby" below.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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NOW IN STORES

ROLLING STONE REVIEWS OLD IDEAS BY LEONARD COHEN

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... e-20120118
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
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Greg Dulli
Sings Leonard Cohen's 'Paper Thin Hotel'
JANUARY 24, 2012 | By ROLLING STONE

Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers frontman Greg Dulli recorded this version of Leonard Cohen's "Paper Thin Hotel" as part of Old Ideas with New Friends, a new series of Cohen covers by artists such as Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, Old 97s' Rhett Miller, Cold War Kids and the New Pornographers' A.C. Newman. "I wanted to do a version of this song because I think they might be my favorite set of Leonard Cohen lyrics," says Dulli. "I think they kind of explain and validate love all at the same time."

http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/new- ... l-20120124
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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*****

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/album ... s-20120126

By Joe Levy
January 26, 2012

Every song on Leonard Cohen's first album of new material in eight years takes place in the wee small hours. Tempos are at a kingsnake crawl and the sound is full of caresses, variations on the classy but louche cabaret tunes Cohen once dubbed the European blues. The vocals and music unfold in a whisper, and each cut waits tremulously for the dawn, with no guarantee that this time the darkness will not be permanent.

The first words belong to God himself, who wants to have a talk with Leonard, that "lazy bastard living in a suit." Cohen, it seems, has been busy trying to write his love songs and manuals for living with defeat instead of delivering God's message, which is all the 77-year-old has been put here to do, and which is: Time to go home, a trip you make naked and burdenless to a place better than this one.

And th-th-that's all, folks! Three minutes and 50 seconds, titled "Going Home," sum up the story Cohen has been telling since he first left poetry for music in 1967 (after 11 years as Canada's most famous poet, he was 33 and thought the money would be better). When Cohen calls this album Old Ideas, he means not just that these are the thoughts of a septuagenarian, but that he's been turning over these cards for a long while: sex, love, God, and the way the three can be shuffled to relieve the pain of existence. A Jew who disappeared up a mountaintop to ponder Zen Buddhist koans, Cohen has sought rapture anywhere and everywhere he can find it – prayer, LSD, the thighs of a woman – and tried to unite the spiritual and the physical since he first made a sensation with a song about a girl named Suzanne, who touches your perfect body with her mind.

Dylan dreamed he saw St. Augustine. Cohen has walked the earth trying to be St. Augustine. He has never made a pretense of his confessions being anything other than personal – there really was a Suzanne, just like there really was a Marianne. But as time has gone on, Cohen has shorn the ornament from his language to move from the personal to the universal. The lyrics on Old Ideas reach for the stark power of prayers, hymns and religious riddles. The music is just as basic: a keyboard or guitar breaks the stillness, a drummer tries to simulate a Casio rhythm box, backup girls offer comfort to the weak, a stringed instrument gives a final blessing.

The song titles tell the story: "Going Home," "Amen," "Darkness," "Crazy to Love You," "Come Healing." His basso profundo cracked by both the frailty and the wisdom of his years, COhen holds forth on the forces of love and forgiveness, and those of hate and darkness. Which ones will win is a given. What it means is still up for grabs. In an album almost empty of imagery, it stands out when, toward the end, Cohen describes watching "a broken bajo bobbing on the dark, infested sea." It's been carried there by the waves, maybe off of someone's shoulder, maybe out of someone's grave. Some New Orleans horns swell in the distance, neither mournful nor celebratory. Just there. As if to say: life or death. It's up to you. The music goes on.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Exclusive Q&A: Leonard Cohen on New Tour, 'Old Ideas'
'Touring is like taking the first step on a walk to China'

By Andy Greene
January 30, 2012 2:40 PM ET


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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20120130

This week Leonard Cohen releases Old Ideas, his first album of original material in eight years. The 77-year-old songwriter has hardly been inactive during that time, though. In 2008 he launched a world tour that just seemed to keep going and going, eventually ending in Las Vegas in December of 2010 after an astounding 247 shows. Cohen played to the largest audiences of his career during the tour. When it wrapped, he began work on Old Ideas with producer Patrick Leonard.

Rolling Stone sat down with Cohen backstage at Joe's Pub in New York last week after he previewed the new album for the media. Among many other things, he told us that another tour is "being booked" and shared his surprising picks for his favorite covers of "Hallelujah."

Tell me what your expectations were prior to the last tour, and how they changed as the tour went on.
I never thought I'd tour again, although I did have dreams. Sometimes my dreams would entail me being up on stage and not remembering the words or the chords. It had a nightmarish quality, which did not invite me to pursue the enterprise.

How did it feel when you actually did it?
I was very grateful for the warmth of the audience, the competence of the musicians, and the coherence of the group.

I think people were surprised that you did three hours a night.
Minimum three hours.

You did about 250 shows. Did you feel drained by the end?
There's a certain fatigue I guess you could locate, but as you probably know, when the response is warm and tangible, one is invigorated rather than depleted.

You began playing new material as the tour went on. Did you write those songs on the road?
I wrote "Darkness" on the road. I wrote "Feels So Good" on the road, although we haven't recorded it. But I did play it. I wrote "My Oh My" and I rehearsed some other songs on the road – new songs that didn't make it onto the record. So I have a new record [after this one], at least two-thirds of it, anyway.

Was it always your game plan to record a new album when the tour wrapped up?
Well, I really didn't have a game plan. I kind of surprised myself. But the inertia of the tour kept a number of us active. It isn't so easy just to stop once you've been involved in that degree of activity, so we just kept going.

During the late Nineties and early 2000s a lot of people assumed that you had just retired.
I never thought so myself. Certainly the public aspect of my life was dormant, but I never stopped working myself. I never had a sense of personal retirement. I kept blackening pages and playing my keyboard. It's just that I never thought I had to take it anywhere.

You said that this new album came to you very quickly. What do you attribute that to?
If I knew what the formula was, I'd apply it more regularly.

How long did it take you to record the whole thing?
Well, we came off the tour and we didn't do very much for a little while. Then I bumped into Pat Leonard. I was listening to my son's record, which I thought was very beautiful, and Pat had done some lovely work on that, especially some string parts that he'd written. And I thought I'd ask him to do some string parts on some other songs of mine. That didn't work out, but we started to write together, and then it went kind of swiftly.

We recorded it in my backyard. I have a little studio over my garage – Pro Tools – and Ed Sanders, who is my engineer, he has a lovely little studio. So we were in very small studios, with Pro Tools. But we ran it rough analog, which is where you get warm sound. It didn't take much more than a year to record, working off and on.

Your touring band plays on it?
They're playing on one track, but mostly it's just Pat and I. I'm playing guitar by myself on "Crazy to Love You." I'm playing all the parts on "Amen," except for Sharon Robinson playing a synth bass and live strings, and I'm playing the synth on "Different Sides" with Neil Larsen playing on top of it. So I played a lot myself, and Pat played a lot himself.

Do you want to tour again soon?
A tour is being booked. Whether I'm going to show up . . . I haven't signed on for it yet, but it's certainly in the air.

Do you want to do it?
I have two minds. I don't like to do a small tour, so whether I'm going to sign up for for another couple of years . . . is that really where I want to be? Maybe it is.

But you think it's going to happen?
Looks like it's going to happen.

I know that you toured last time partially because of your financial situation. The tour must have taken care of that, so what would drive you to tour again?
I was able to restore my tiny fortune within a year or so, but I kept on touring. It wasn't exclusively that unique situation. Touring is like taking the first step on a walk to China. It's a serious commitment, so there are a lot of factors to be examined.

I've heard "Hallelujah" covered by so many singers over the years. Do you have a favorite?
There's so many fine covers of it. It's all over YouTube, so people will send me their 11-year-old daughter singing it. That's always very charming. And there are great versions of it by k.d. lang. Bon Jovi has a great version of it.

I've always like John Cale's version of it.
John Cale's is terrific.

Why name the album Old Ideas? What does that mean to you?
It was the old ideas, old – you might even say unresolved – ideas that are wracking around in my brain, and the brain of the culture.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Leonard Cohen Through the Years
A life in pictures of a tower of song

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/photo ... s-20120131

Watch for it in the news scroll too in the center of the main page!

http://www.rollingstone.com/
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Re: Rolling Stone News on Leonard Cohen

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Just read this article and examined the pictures--some great ones for sure. It almost sounds as if Leonard is being called to do another tour and while he is not really enthusiastic, he must obey the call. I am sure the people he employs will be very grateful for the work with such an amazing man. And of course the fans. Amazing how his work seems to have suddenly gone into hyperspeed. (for Leonard I mean) Like all of his music, as I listen to this latest album, songs that originally feel kind of cold seem to be gaining an amazing warmth the third or fourth time through.
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NOW IN STORES. LEONARD COHEN ON PAGE 13 AND 14. OLD IDEAS.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news ... e-20120201

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LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
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Roy
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Re: Rolling Stone News on Leonard Cohen

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Behind The Scenes at the PEN New England Awards
Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen were honored with the PEN New England Awards for Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston on February 26th, 2012. Here, Keith Richards hangs backstage with Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen to show his support.


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Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen Get First PEN Songwriting Awards
Keith Richards, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon pay tribute at JFK Library

By James Sullivan
February 27, 2012 1:00 PM ET

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20120227

Midway through Paul Simon's praise of Chuck Berry, who was honored alongside Leonard Cohen as the first two recipients of PEN New England's Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Berry beckoned Simon to lean over so he could whisper in his ear.

The presenter returned to the microphone laughing. Berry, he said, told him he had a bad ear and couldn't hear a word he was saying.

Yet fans of Berry and Cohen, unquestionably two of the most original writers the rock & roll era has produced, have been listening very closely from the beginning. Addressing a tony crowd of writers and rock fans, Salman Rushdie presented Cohen's award, and Elvis Costello and surprise guest Keith Richards (introduced as "the best-selling author in this room") performed in tribute to Berry.

Given the intent of the Song Lyrics award, the event was peppered with references to great writers. In an email read by organizer Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock & roll" and Cohen "the Kafka of the blues." Cohen, accepting his award, compared Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" to Walt Whitman's joyful noise – his "barbaric yawp."

"If Beethoven hadn't rolled over," he said, "there'd be no room for any of us."

After quoting key lines from Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" – "Like a bird on the wire/ Like a drunk in a midnight choir/ I have tried, in my way, to be free" – the author Rushdie, a former president of PEN American Center, said, "Put simply, if I could write like that, I would."

Last year the New England chapter of the world's oldest literary and human rights organization convened a panel to select the first recipients of the new songwriters' award. The panel included Costello, Simon, Rushdie, Bono, Rosanne Cash, Smokey Robinson and poet Paul Muldoon. After opening remarks from Caroline Kennedy, who spoke of her father's conviction that "the artist has a special responsibility in our democracy," PEN New England Chairman Richard Hoffman explained the symbolism of the oversize image of a lyre projected above the stage. It was a reminder, he said, that through most of history, "literature was sung."

After Shawn Colvin sang Cohen's "Come Healing" from his new album Old Ideas, Costello took the stage to pay tribute to Berry. "This is one of the more intimidating things you'll do," he joked – "play a Chuck Berry song in front of Chuck Berry, without a band." But his characteristically tweaked version of "No Particular Place to Go" drew smiles and finger-points from the master, who, at 85, looked the same as ever in his sailor's cap and string tie.

Rather than take the microphone to make an acceptance speech, Berry surprised the event organizers by indicating he'd just as soon take Costello's hollow-body guitar off his hands. After fumbling with some feedback, he played a muted version of "Johnny B. Goode."

"That's the way rock & roll is," he said when he finished. "It's funky. Is that too bad a word to say?"

For the event's final surprise, Richards, who famously squabbled with his guitar hero during the filming of Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, stepped out of the front row and onto the stage, where he took Costello's guitar and joined him – Costello grabbing an acoustic – on an unrehearsed romp through Berry's cross-country yarn "Promised Land."

"We have a Mount Rushmore thing going on here," as Flanagan noted earlier in the program. The guests of honor were, of course, united in rock.
LEONARD COHEN | HALLS OF FAME
The Official Halls of Fame Biographies of Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohenhallsoffame.blogspot.com
crystal
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Re: Rolling Stone News on Leonard Cohen

Post by crystal »

Two very cool pictures. I enjoy them very much.
Thank you for posting.
Christel
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