Sylvie simmons leonard cohen biography hallelujah

Her style is bright, her approach often funny and rather cynical, the material fascinating and insightful and as a consequence I'm Your Man - The Life of Leonard Cohen reads like a page turner. She could count on Cohen's cooperation and that is obviously an advantage, because that way she had access to his archives and people were more willing to talk to her.

His ex-wives and girlfriends speak freely and you will find out that there never was any bitterness, because afterwards the friendship remained intact. The same goes for all the other interviewees and even those with whom Leonard Cohen did not collaborate very well. They still appreciate him as a great poet and a man with a big heart. The biography is not yet available in Dutch.

In Engeland en op het Europese vasteland was Leonard Cohen vanaf het begin een grote naam en hij groeide er uit tot een van de best verkopende singer-songwriters.

Sylvie simmons leonard cohen biography hallelujah

In Canada en Amerika was er van succes nauwelijks sprake. Pas in ! Volgens biografe Sylvie Simmons waren Amerikanen en Canadezen nooit echt onder de indruk van Cohens lage stem en parlandozangstijl en hielden ze het liever bij Bob Dylan, die in beide landen keer op keer moeiteloos de top en zelfs de top haalde. Hij mediteerde vaak, zelfs dagelijks, en als monnik deed hij het werk dat hem werd opgedragen, zelfs als het betekende dat hij soms urenlang vloeren mocht schrobben of onkruid wieden.

Leonard Cohen was zo goed als bankroet en dat kon hij zich niet permitteren met de schare mensen exen, kinderen, goeroe die afhankelijk van hem waren. Wat hij heel lang had vermeden, namelijk reizen en live optreden, leek de enige manier om aan het noodlot te ontkomen. Of hoe je nooit te oud bent om wereldsucces te oogsten. De biografie is nog niet in het Nederlands verschenen.

I must have missed it… And yet, he's funny, he always was, and daring, and his tunes are so very pretty, and he can write like an angel on occasion — sometimes all the hype is true, how annoying - God is Alive, Magic is Afoot, A Kite is a Victim, Stranger Song, Democracy is Coming to the USA, and the entirety of Beautiful Losers, all pure gold, I'd take them to my desert island.

At the moment I'd also have Dance me to the End of Love as one of my desert island discs. The thing is, he gets you on his wavelength. You know what? He was my man. Like he said. I bet you flinched when you first heard him. But it's okay, there's plenty of sylvie simmons leonard cohen biography hallelujah for the both of you, your awkward clawing and expert plagiarising has a place prepared for it at my banquet of song.

I'm sitting Hank Williams between you and Leonard. His whole life is a bit galling, you know, he droops and sags through all this desolation free razorblade with every album whilst having to shoo naked 24 year olds out of the way so he can get to his front door. He's so solitary but his concerts are sellouts and he loves working those crowds. He's Tom Jones for the book groups, they throw moist first editions at him.

Audiences immediately loved him and never stopped; they love him even more now he's old. What's he got to be doleful about? He always has these dead-on cool situations going — he lives with a gorgeous young woman on Hydra, he eats a bucketful of drugs and he writes Beautiful Losers — he tosses off quotes like "I'd thought of myself as a loser. I didn't like my life" — then later with the second Suzanne, another gorgeous young woman, he doesn't like that situation either; there's no pleasing this guy.

He loathes himself because there's no pleasing him. He's a monster of appetite and he's a Zen monk. He's fixated on sex but he's universal and spiritual. At the same time. He has everything, he has nothing. He's self obsessed, yet always comes across as generous. In he has his most successful album ever The Futurea successful world tour, he's engaged to blonde bombshell Rebecca de Mornay 20 years his junior, of course, you think guys like him go out with women of his own age?

For five years. He grew up to be more like his mother, who was warm, emotional and creative, than his reserved, kindly father, who tragically died at the age of 53, when he was just nine. When you learn there are eminent Rabbis on both sides of his family, his spiritual quest and lack of materialism become less surprising. His maternal grandfather, Rabbi Solomon Klonitzki-Kline, was the principal of a school for Talmudic study in Lithuania.

Although Leonard Cohen chose a different spiritual path to his devout ancestors, it is likely they are never too far from his thoughts. He has now found the religious fulfilment he spent most of his life searching for, in a monastery outside Los Angeles.