March issue of SAGA Mag

[lightasabreeze]

Leonard gets a mention in this month's issue of SAGA. Page 27 Emma Soames writes:

The event of the year so far has been the release of an album by Leonard Cohen. Old Ideas has received universal adulation from rock critics no doubt too young to have been out of nappies when Suzanne first took root in our generaion's consciousness. I have in thrall of Leonard Cohen ever since.
At one point it was better to keep this a secret as it was regarded as a bit, well geeky to like Cohen. (I loved the band Tindersticks too and kept very quiet about that)
Now it's just fine to 'fess up to a Cohen problem.
I thought we'd heard the last of Cohen when he disappeared up a mountain in California to live in a Buddhist retreat. But during those five years his manager nicked his money and he had to go back on the road- and he stayed on tour for two long years.
He has paid tribute to how this return to work in his seventies has invigorated him, further proof that work in late life is good for you- even rock star poets.
At 77 Cohen is now without question the grand old man of music and songwriting, the psalmist for atheists and agnostics. It is not surprising that so many young musicians sit at his feet. At the last count there must have been around 2,000 cover versions of his work. In a recent speech he explained that his songs don't come from ideas but from convictions of the heart.
The new album has great depth and has a serenity and acceptance folded into it, his voice has got even deeper and the songs more imbued with meaning - not that they were ever short of that. As with all Cohen's work, it goes to the heart of the essentials of life - failure, redemption, love and lust, it is another 'manual for living with defeat'
Most encouragingly, and delightfully for Cohen, he is now a grandfather, His 38-year-old daughter Lorca has recently had a baby girl. One year old Viva Katherine's biological father is the Canadian songwriter and musician Rufus Wainwright and has a second father in Wainwright's German partner. So watch out for Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen in the charts in a couple of decades. With that parentage it looks to me as though the family has been dealt the genetic equivalent of a royal flush. She just HAS to become a 21st- century troubadour.