September 21: The Late Great Leonard Cohen Was Born in 1934

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Like a Bird on a Wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
~Leonard  Cohen, Bird On A Wire

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.
― Leonard Cohen

I don’t remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don’t remember
if I’m here alone
or waiting for someone.
~Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

From Wikipedia:

Birth name	Leonard Norman Cohen
Born	21 September 1934 Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died	November 7, 2016 (aged 82) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genres	Folk, folk rock, rock, pop rock,spoken word, synthpop
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter,poet, novelist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano,keyboards, synthesizer
Years active	1956-present
Labels	Columbia
Associated acts	Sharon Robinson, Jennifer Warnes

 

Leonard Norman Cohen CC GOQ (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016).

His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour.

While giving the speech at Cohen’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters.”

The critic Bruce Eder wrote an assessment of Cohen’s overall career in popular music, writing, “[Cohen is] one of the most fascinating and enigmatic. . .singer/songwriters of the late ’60s. . . [and] has retained an audience across four decades of music-making. . . Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon) [in terms of influence], he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century.”

The Academy of American Poets has commented more broadly on Cohen’s overall career in the arts, including his work as a poet, novelist, and songwriter, stating that “[Cohen’s] successful blending of poetry, fiction, and music is made most clear in Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, published in 1993, which gathered more than two hundred of Cohen’s poems . . .several novel excerpts, and almost sixty song lyrics. . .While it may seem to some that Leonard Cohen departed from the literary in pursuit of the musical, his fans continue to embrace him as a Renaissance man who straddles the elusive artistic borderlines.”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]One of the most fascinating and enigmatic — if not the most successful — singer/songwriters of the late ’60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across four decades of music-making interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn’t even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties.
read more over @ allmusic.com [/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Leonard Cohen – Democracy – Live, London  2009:

Leonard Cohen – Dance me to the end of love (live. Later with Jools):

Album of the day – Ten New Songs (2001):

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– Hallgeir & Egil