20 Ibid.
21 The precise date of this often-quoted appearance is unclear. Most likely it was 1957, the year Sam Gesser filmed his Six Montreal Poets, a profile that included Cohen. Snippets from the interview, undated, appear in Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen.
CHAPTER THREE: THE PROPHET IN THE LIBRARY
1 Mordecai Richler, The Street (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1969), 23.
2 Naim Kattan, “Mordecai Richler,” Canadian Literature 21 (Summer 1964): 46–51.
3 Leonard Cohen to Esther Cohen, October 7, 1961, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
4 Dusty Vineberg, “Cohen Felt Like Punching Richler,” Montreal Star, undated clipping.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Keith Cronshaw, “Let’s Be Ourselves Is Poet’s Advice,”Montreal Gazette, undated clipping.
9 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 147.
10 Leonard Cohen, The Spice-Box of Earth (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1973), 21.
11 Linda Rozmovits, “A. M. Klein and Modernism” (master’s thesis, Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, March 1988), 62.
12 Like all divisions, this one, too, is nowhere near as clear-cut. Flowers for Hitler, Cohen’s third volume of poetry, was published prior to the December 1964 speech, and Beautiful Losers, published the next year, was already largely written. Yet I use the speech here as a convenient point of distinction, and ask that readers forgive this mild stretching of the chronological truth.
13 Leonard Cohen, lecture notes, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
14 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006).
CHAPTER FOUR: NOTES FROM A GREEK ISLE
1 Quoted in Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen.
2 Ibid.
3 Hesthamar, So Long, Marianne.
4 Milton Wilson, “Letters in Canada: 1964 / Poetry,” University of Toronto Quarterly 34, no. 4 (July 1965): 352–54.
5 Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Mariner Books, 1984), 271.
6 Mary McCarthy, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995), 149.
7 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958), 55. Quoted in Cohen, Flowers for Hitler (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964).
8 Cohen, “On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken,” in ibid., 25.
9 Cohen, “The New Leader,” in ibid., 67.
10 Cohen, “Hitler the Brain-Mole,” in ibid., 43.
11 Leonard Cohen to Anne Hébert, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
12 The account of Cohen’s visit to Havana is taken from Nadel’s Various Positions, 91–97. Nadel interviewed Cohen about the experience in 1994, and his remains the most comprehensive telling of this period in Cohen’s life.
13 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 93.
14 Ibid., 94.
15 Ibid.
16 Leonard Cohen to Jack McClelland, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
17 Leonard Cohen to Corlies Smith, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
18 Leonard Cohen to Esther Cohen, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
19 Leonard Cohen to Victor Cohen, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
20 Ibid.
21 Leonard Cohen, “The Poems Don’t Love Us Anymore,” in Stranger Music (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972), 186.
22 Plato, trans. B. Jowett, The Republic (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 288.
23 Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963), 29.
24 Cohen, The Favorite Game, 40.
25 Quoted in Leonard Cohen to Esther Cohen, September 23, 1963, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
26 Quoted in the Leonard Cohen Files, http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/fgame.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
27 Leonard Cohen to Irving Layton, August 17, 1963, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
28 Leonard Cohen to Irving Layton, March 29, 1963, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
29 Quoted in Leonard Cohen to Esther Cohen, September 17, 1963, Leonard Cohen Archives, University of Toronto Library.
30 Quoted in Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 16.
31 Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (New York: Vintage, 1993), 27.
32 Quoted in Adrienne Clarkson, interview with Leonard Cohen, Take 30, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, May 23, 1966, http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/CBC+Programs/Television/Take+30/ID/1742127604/?sort=MostPopular (accessed July 18, 2013).
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Robert Fulford, “Leonard Cohen’s Nightmare Novel,” Toronto Star, April 26, 1966, 27.
36 Interview with Clarkson, Take 30.
37 Ibid.
CHAPTER FIVE: “ONE BIG DIARY, SET TO GUITAR MUSIC”
1 Quoted in Barbara Amiel, “Leonard Cohen Says That to All the Girls,” Maclean’s, September 18, 1978, 55–58.
2 The account of the party is taken from Sandra Djwa’s The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F. R. Scott (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987), 289–90.
3 For this and other insights into Dylan’s connection to Judaism, I am deeply indebted to Seth Rogovoy’s Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet (New York: Scribner, 2009).
4 Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976), 185.
5 These quotes are by Sol Litzin, whose book about the badkhn Eliakum Zunser Rogovoy cites. See Rogovoy, Bob Dylan, 1–2.
6 Quoted in ibid., 30.
7 Vicki Gabereau, This Won’t Hurt a Bit! (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Canada, 1987), 183.
8 Lorca, In Search of Duende, 60.
9 Ps. 147:7 (KJV).
10 Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 4.
11 Quoted in ibid., 29.
12 Quoted in Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen.
13 Arthur Miller, “The Chelsea Affect,” Granta 78 (2002), 237–54.
14 Cited in Rolling Stone, “100 Greatest Beatles Songs,” http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-beatles-songs-20110919/you-wont-see-me-19691231 (accessed August 26, 2012).
15 Bob Spitz, The Beatles (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), 587.
16 Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007), 191.
17 Quoted in Spitz, The Beatles, 615.
18 Augustine, Confessions, Book 9, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), 6.
19 Rom. 10:17 (KJV).
20 Deut. 6:4 (KJV).
21 Don E. Saliers, Music and Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 263–69.
22 Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 105.
23 Quoted in John Walsh, “Leonard Cohen,” Mojo (September 1994), http://1heckofaguy.com/2009/06/22/that-leonard-cohen-article-with-his-romanian-girlfriend-michelle-in-the-opening-photo/ (accessed July 18, 2013).
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Lou Reed, “The View from the Bandstand,” Aspen 3 (December 1966): item 3.
27 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 146.
28 Interview with John Hammond and Leonard Cohen, BBC, September 20, 1986, http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/jhammond.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
29 Ibid.
30 The anecdote is recalled in Judy Collins, Trust Your Heart: An Autobiography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 145–47.
31 Interview with John Hammond and Leonard Cohen, BBC, September 20, 1986.
32 John Simon, in Leonard
Cohen Under Review, 1934–1977 (DVD, Video Music, Inc., 2007).
33 Jarvis Cocker, interview with Leonard Cohen, BBC Radio 6, January 29, 2012, http://leonardcohenfiles.com/jarvis-iv.pdf (accessed July 18, 2013).
34 This summary of Simon’s approach is by John Hammond, quoted in William Ruhlmann, “The Stranger Music of Leonard Cohen,” Goldmine, February 19, 1993, http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/gold1.htm (accessed July 18, 2013).
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. The phrase is John Hammond’s.
39 These are the lyrics as sung onstage in an April 19, 1972, concert in Tel Aviv. A recording—as well as an exposition by Allan Showalter, arguably the greatest living Cohen expert—is at http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/08/01/new-video-chelsea-hotel-1-by-leonard-cohen/ (accessed July 18, 2013).
40 John Simon, interview with author, August 29, 2012.
41 Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1963.
42 Bob Dylan, interview with John Cohen and Happy Traum, Sing Out!, October/November 1968, reprinted in Jonathan Cott, ed., Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews (New York: Wenner Books, 2006), 121.
43 Ibid., 114.
44 Quoted in Greil Marcus, Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006), 70.
45 Quoted in Ian Pearson, “Growing Old Disgracefully,” Saturday Night, March 1993, 77.
46 Bob Dylan, “I Feel a Change Comin’ On,” Together Through Life, Columbia Records, 2009.
47 Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 334.
48 John Simon interview.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Dylan, interview with John Cohen and Traum, 117.
52 Donal Henahan, “Alienated Young Man Creates Some Sad Music,” New York Times, January 29, 1968, 27.
53 Arthur Schmidt, “Songs of Leonard Cohen,” Rolling Stone, March 9, 1968, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/songs-19680309 (accessed July 18, 2013).
54 Ibid.
55 William Kloman, “‘I’ve Been on the Outlaw Scene Since 15’; Leonard Cohen,” New York Times, January 28, 1968, p. D21.
56 Richard Goldstein, “Beautiful Creep,” Village Voice, December 28, 1967, http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/villv67.htm (accessed July 18, 2013).
57 Ibid.
CHAPTER SIX: WAITING FOR THE SUN
1 Quoted in Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 136.
2 Ibid.
3 The account of Cohen at the Revue and his interaction with Sloman, Dylan, and Mitchell is taken from Larry Sloman, On the Road with Bob Dylan (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002), 352–62.
4 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 167.
5 Quoted in Eve Babitz, “Roll Over Elvis: The Second Coming of Jim Morrison,” Esquire, March 1991, http://forum.johndensmore.com/index.php?showtopic=2340 (accessed July 18, 2013).
6 Ibid.
7 Rom. 8:19.
8 Donald N. Ferguson, Masterworks of the Orchestral Repertoire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), 60.
9 Leroy Ostransky, The Anatomy of Jazz (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), 83, quoted in Jeremy S. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 100.
10 Kathleen Marie Higgins, The Music of Our Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 167, quoted in ibid., 103.
11 Ibid.
12 Manny Farber, Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 135–36. Quoted in Greil Marcus, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 4.
13 Ibid., 4–5.
14 Robert Christgau, Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music, 1967–1973 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 144.
15 John Perry, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland (New York: Continuum, 2004), 120–21.
16 This imagery is mentioned in Tom DiCillo’s documentary about the Doors, When You’re Strange (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2010).
17 Quoted in James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky, “Break On Through”: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 295–96.
18 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 173.
19 Ibid., 174.
20 Harvey Kubernik and Justin Pierce, “Cohen’s New Skin,” Melody Maker, March 1, 1975, http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/melmak2.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
21 Quoted in Nadel, Various Postitions, 177.
22 Nancy Erlich, “Leonard Cohen,” in Billboard, August 8, 1970, http://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=31973 (accessed July 18, 2013).
23 “Europe’s ‘Biggest’ Fest Set Near Paris Aug. 1–3,” Billboard, July 25, 1970, 56.
24 Paul Alessandrini, “Antibes, Valbonne, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Biot ou la longue marche,” Rock & Folk 44 (September 1970): 60. Quoted in Eric Drott, Music and the Elusive Revolution: Cultural Politics and Political Culture in France, 1968–1981 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 191.
25 The quote and the account that follows are taken from Sylvie Simmons, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (New York: Ecco, 2012), 235–39.
26 Steve Turner, “Leonard Cohen: Depressing? Who, me?,” NME, June 29, 1974, at http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/rocks-backpages/leonard-cohen-depressing-who-me.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
27 Simmons, I’m Your Man, 237.
CHAPTER SEVEN: “ALL CLOSE FRIENDS OF THE ARTIST, PLEASE LEAVE”
1 My account of the 1972 tour and—unless otherwise noted—all quotes are taken from Tony Palmer’s documentary, Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire. Palmer was contracted by Cohen’s management to record the tour; for various reasons, the film was never widely released. It was finally issued as a DVD by MVD Visual in 2010.
2 Quoted in David Weigel, “Prog Spring,” in Slate, August 14, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/prog_spring/features/2012/prog_rock/the_rise_of_prog_king_crimson_keith_emerson_and_the_futurist_sounds_of_the_1970s.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
3 Quoted in Weigel, “Prog Spring.” Slate, August 15, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/prog_spring/features/2012/prog_rock/prog_comes_alive_emerson_lake_palmer_at_madison_square_garden_1973_promo_ill_cast_comedy_for_fools_the_birth_of_prog.html (accessed July 18, 2013).
4 Keith Emerson, Pictures of an Exhibitionist (London: John Blake, 2004), 119.
5 Ian Palmer, “They Won’t Bach Around the Clock,” New York Times, December 16, 1973, 17.
6 Ibid.
7 Weigel, “Prog Spring.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: “THERE IS A WAR”
1 The account that follows is based mostly on Mati Caspi’s recollections, published on his Web site: http://www.matticaspi.co.il/collaborations/jeneva.shtml (accessed July 18, 2013).
2 Quoted in the now-defunct Israeli entertainment magazine Lahiton, November 1973.
3 Robin Pike, “September 15th 1974,” ZigZag, October 1974, http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/zigzag.htm (accessed July 18, 2013).
4 Harry Raskay, The Song of Leonard Cohen: Portrait of a Poet, a Friendship and a Film (Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 2001), 91–92.
5 Lissauer interview. Lissauer’s other quotes are also from this interview.
6 In Field Commander Cohen, the album recording of Cohen’s 1979 tour, he riffs on the allusion even further, breaking into a few lines of “Rum and Coca-Cola.”
7 Talmud, Tractate Bava Metzia, 59b.
8 Quoted in Stina Lundberg, “I Failed as a Monk, Thank God,” http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/sl2001.htm. (accessed July 18, 2013).
9 The account is taken from Simmons, I’m Your Man, 296–97.
10 Quoted in Gabereau, This Won’t Hurt a Bit!, 183.
11 Simmons, I’m Your Man, 299.
12 Kevin Howlett, Leonard Cohen: Tower of Song, BBC Radio 6, August 7, 1994, http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/bbctrans.htm (accessed July 18, 2013).
<
br /> 13 Ibid.
14 Mick Brown, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector (New York: Knopf, 2007), 303.
15 Introduction to “Memories,” concert in Tel Aviv, November 24, 1980, http://www.leonardcohen-prologues.com/ (accessed July 18, 2013).
16 Carl Gustav Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: The Practice of Psychotheraphy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 208.
17 Curtis D. Smith, Jung’s Quest for Wholeness: A Religious and Historical Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 107.
18 Leonard Cohen, “Final Examination,” in Death of a Lady’s Man (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978), 212.
19 Quoted in Andriotakis and Oulahan, “The Face May Not Be Familiar.”
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Brian D. Johnson, “Life of a Lady’s Man,” Maclean’s, December 7, 1992, 64.
23 Leonard Cohen, “Blessed Are You,” in Book of Mercy (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984), 9.
24 The Smiths, “The Queen Is Dead,” The Queen Is Dead, Rough Trade, 1986.
25 John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 191.
26 Ralph Blumenthal, “A Very Old Zen Master and His Art of Tough Love,” New York Times, December 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us/09zen.html?pagewanted=all (accessed July 18, 2013).
27 Quoted in Nadel, Various Positions, 232.
28 Quoted in Pearson, “Growing Old Disgracefully.”
29 Ralph Blumenthal, “Excerpts from Interview with Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi,” New York Times, December 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us/09zentext.html?ref=us (accessed July 18, 2013).
30 Quoted in Headlam, “Life on Mount Baldy,” 72.
CHAPTER NINE: “A SECRET CHORD”
1 Quoted in Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 303.
2 Quoted in Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America, 325.
3 Quoted in “Q Questionnaire,” Q, September 1994, 170.
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