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While the Godfather of Gloom, Leonard Cohen, was in Spain this week to receive the Principe de Asturias Prize for literature, he announced he has recorded enough material for a new album entitled Old Ideas.

This will be the first studio album Cohen's put out since 2004's Dear Heather (which, incidentally, was originally going to be titled Old Ideas). The 77-year old celebrated songwriter said he's unsure if he'll follow the album with a world tour. He just wrapped one up late last year, proving he can still charm the hell out of a crowd at his age.

You might think of Leonard to be an old geezer now but he's actually the classiest man you'll ever come across. In honour of his upcoming release, here's a list of why Leonard is just so damn cool:

1. He wore suits on a daily basis way before Mad Men made it cool. But he won't reveal who his tailor is.

2. He spent five years in the '90s at a Buddhist retreat in Mount Baldy, a mountain in California.

3. He smokes Marlboro Lights, none of this DuMaurier shit!

4. He once chased after Nico from the Velvet Underground. His frustration of not getting any inspired him to pen “Take This Longing”.

5. He’s won over 30 awards for both his literature and music. Definitely puts your Employee of the Month plaque to shame.

6. His middle name is ‘Norman’. 'Nuff said.

7. He keeps mum about his mistresses. With the exception of "Chelsea Hotel #2", of course -- he wrote that one about his affair with Janis Joplin.

8. He was president of the debate society at McGill University. Putting people in their place since ’51!

9. He appeared in a 1986 episode of Miami Vice. The scene involved him, a French woman and an alligator. No more context needed.

10. Phil Spector once put a gun to his head. Spector's now serving a 19-to-life prison sentence for an unrelated incident. But moral of the story: don't fuck with the Cohen.

11. While you were probably made mayor of Foursquare, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson promoted him to Companion to the Order of Canada. 

12. Over 200 artists have covered his song Hallelujah.

svennybenny wrote:I thought he gave up smoking

holydove wrote:The author left out the coolest aspect of Leonard being president of the McGill debate society; he became president & then, allegedly, refused to hold any debates!! Pretty cool (IMO), not to mention, hilarious!!

Avrum Cohen followed his father Hyman's first steps on campus, earning a BA in 1953 and a law degree in 1956. Back in the days when the position came with a room adjacent to its offices in what is now the Redpath Museum, the future lawyer served as President of the McGill Students' Society. He was also part of McGill's Debating Union Society, teaming up in 1956 with an unrelated Leonard Cohen (yes, that Leonard Cohen) for a debating contest tour that included a loss to a team of inmates from the penitentiary where one debate was held. Avrum Cohen later married Robin's mother, Barbara, who earned a Diploma in Teaching – at McGill, of course. [emphasis mine]

Cohen participated in national and international debates, engaging diverse opponents that ranged from two Cambridge students to a team of convicts from the Norfolk Penitentiary outside Boston (with who he debated the negative moral impact of TV on society). Cohen had been introduced to the convicts as a poet and he first clarified his position:

“My colleague has promised you a poet, but I am afraid that you will be disappointed. I do not converse in rhyming couplets, nor do I wear a cape or walk brooding over the moor or drink wine from a polished human skull or stride frequently into the cosmic night. I am never discovered sitting amid Gothic ruins in moonlight clutching in my pale hand a dying medieval lily and sighing over virgins with bosoms heaving like the sea. In fact I wouldn’t recognize a dying medieval lily if I fell over one, [and] hardly think I could do better with a virgin, and I’ll drink out of anything that has a bottom to it.”

Cohen lost to the inmates, who had not been defeated in twenty-four years. Impatient with the prolonged, ineffectual executive meetings of the Debating Union, Cohen moved to ban any further meetings.