Leonard Cohen's dead

rob aylestone said:
I don;t quite get this.
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Heh, I'm not in the least surprised.
Cohen was very successful but was not an in-your-face mainstream personality.

When Bowie died and I saw people who only knew him for two or three very obvious songs, I was thinking wtf? How can you not at least be aware that this man had 20-something albums behind him,
not to mention art, film, theatre etc.

With Cohen it's just like....yeah, you know?! The dude who did Hallelujah...No, not Jeff Buckley...the old dude....ah never mind.

I like that there probably won't be a big social media bandwagon for Cohen. It fits.


Edit: If anyone's thinking of finding out a bit more about him, I'd suggest watching him live in later years.
The sheer humility and gratitude of the man is almost overpowering before anything even starts. Renditions (spoken) of 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' are captivating, if you're into that kind of thing.
There always something very personal about the whole thing.
 
I am actually really saddened by the news. Maybe it's because I am emotionally raw from what happened this week, but I am more bummed out about this than pretty much any other celebrity death this year.
 
You had an election, we had wall to wall coverage on it here too. Ended up a shock, like our brexit. In the great scheme of things, probably not that important (yours or mine) and not worth getting stress over - after all, politicians get voted out as well as in.

I've had a listen on spotify, hoping to be inspired, but they're all the same. I'm sure lots of people find him entertaining or maybe the words mean something, but I don't hear anything special at all. In fact - most of the music I hate, but can appreciate is less difficult to listen to.

For all the fans - I apologise, but I guess he's some kind of cult figure I just missed and can't relate to at all. I don't even remember hearing any of his material on UK radio at all - so probably explains why at least here, younger people have never heard of him.
 
rob aylestone said:
I've had a listen on spotify, hoping to be inspired, but they're all the same.
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It may not be for you but I wouldn't say that.
He has three early albums which are almost literally all the same, but as with almost any artist with a 60 ish year career span, he had various stages and phases.
"Songs of"/"Songs from" are the three I referenced, but then if you listen to something like 'The Future' you'll get a very different vibe and attitude.
The three most recent albums stand as a 'genre' on their own, to me. A different Leonard Cohen.

Like I say, if it's not for you then it's not for you, but not everything is a whiny sounding 20 something picking a guitar. :p

rob aylestone said:
For all the fans - I apologise.
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Ha! None necessary. He certainly wasn't a big public mainstream figure.

rob aylestone said:
I'm sure lots of people find him entertaining or maybe the words mean something, but I don't hear anything special at all.
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Yeah...I imagine a great percentage of his followers are in it for the poetry, the stories, and the man. The music is just a nice vehicle a lot of the time.
That's particularly obvious with the live performances I was talking about earlier. He just recites some of the songs without music at all and those truly are the moments those people came for.


A lyricist friend of mine just posted a message. I thought some of you might like it.
It's all the more meaningful if you know the guy - Social media bandwagons are not his thing, putting it mildly.


"Dear Leonard,

I don't normally bother adding to the legions of clichéd tributes that swamp the airwaves when someone on the A list dies
but I figure, if there's one dead celebrity who'll take the time to read a mourning fan's Facebook status, it's gonna be you.

So much of your music is directed at God, and I can't help feeling like your last album riled him up so much he had to respond in person.

I bet you stole the whiskey from the limousine he sent you and took the train like everyone else.

I should be relieved you're gone, I was never gonna be able to pay you back anyway.

Thank you for your words, your wisdom, your razor wit, your example and your company.
I wouldn't raise a glass at this hour of the morning for anyone else.

So long Mr Cohen.


Sincerely
Name Here."
 
:)
His Father introduced us both to Leonard.
If I had a £ for every time I'd played Famous Blue Raincoat at their house at 4am, I'd be doing OK.

Well..I'd probably have 10 or 20 quid but you get the idea.
 
rob aylestone said:
I've had a listen on spotify, hoping to be inspired, but they're all the same.
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Definitely it is a place and space kind of thing...The old farts here ( like me ) were youngsters when he emerged and music was not as varied or evolved as music is today...had he come onto the scene singing and doing the songs he did in the 70's in 2000 or 2016 he very likely would never had any commercial success and the world would never have known his name...maybe

It's the fact that he was one of those integral building blocks in and of what music has grown and evolved to today...for those of us that were there it holds a lot different perspective and sentiment than someone who is completely unaware of him or his role in the history and evolution therein of pop / folk music.
 
rob aylestone said:
For all the fans - I apologise, but I guess he's some kind of cult figure I just missed
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No, he was fairly mainstream for his time. My folks had his records when I was a little kid, and they (my folks) were far from any sort of music revolutionaries. He was an author first, and had several published books before he even recorded a note of music. He had a pretty far reaching effect on the music of many songwriters from that era whose names I'll bet you are familiar with. His music was featured in some pretty famous movies.. including a popular Robert Altman movie with Warren Beatty.

rob aylestone said:
I don't even remember hearing any of his material on UK radio at all - so probably explains why at least here, younger people have never heard of him.
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Lol, do young people even still listen to music?? I thought they were all into EDM and youtube videos of dogs licking babies now. I know the kids at my school have no idea who Donovan is/was. Luckily my music landscape has never really been affected by such trends, but to each his own.
 
Anyways I haven't even heard anything he's done since 1980, including Hallelujah. I only know the Jeff Buckley version of that.
 
Actually I heard some of The Future when that came out.. didn't really grab me.. he was experiencing a resurgence at the time due to being on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack iirc. Seriously, does any of his post-1975 output match his first 3 albums? I'm truly curious.
 
Of course it's subjective but I'd guess most of his fans probably rate the early material above all else.
I am a huge fan of The Future and I'm Your Man - I think most of his albums have at least one or two tracks that I go back to over and over.
There's gold (to me) on New Skin, Dear Heather, Various Positions...

I've got a lot of time for the three most recent records too but I think, in fairness, I'm always most likely to go back to the first three.
 
rob aylestone said:
You had an election, we had wall to wall coverage on it here too. Ended up a shock, like our brexit. In the great scheme of things, probably not that important (yours or mine) and not worth getting stress over - after all, politicians get voted out as well as in.

I've had a listen on spotify, hoping to be inspired, but they're all the same. I'm sure lots of people find him entertaining or maybe the words mean something, but I don't hear anything special at all. In fact - most of the music I hate, but can appreciate is less difficult to listen to.

For all the fans - I apologise, but I guess he's some kind of cult figure I just missed and can't relate to at all. I don't even remember hearing any of his material on UK radio at all - so probably explains why at least here, younger people have never heard of him.
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I reckon you get to like whatever you like!
 
I wouldn't expect many under 40 to have been into him. I started listening in 74 as a late teen - I was lucky.
New Skin is as good as the 1st three and I'm Your man is pretty close.
Live Songs - VERY cool.
My personal fave is Songs of Love & hate but I bought & listened happily all the way to Old ideas. I haven't had the chance to buy the follow ups though.
Many Australians 1st heard of him through this 1975 single by Skyhooks...at the 2 min mark...
 
fat_fleet,
He wrote well.
I have a bundle of DVDs - mainly docos and some concert stuff (including the Isle of Wright which inlcudes a couple of tracks then used on SOL&H), a book or three and most of his albums - mainly on CD - and the luck to have seen him in a venue that only held about 4 thousand.
 
rob aylestone said:
I don;t quite get this. UK breakfast TV and radio playing his music, and pretty well all of it is dire? The only song that people might know could also not be pronounced by any of our TV people - who seemed to have to put "lu-lee-ya" on the end. Most younger people have never heard of him and I can understand some famous deaths - Bowie and the others - being publicised, but Cohen didn;t even make headlines here releasing his latest album - I never even heard he did it. It's sad he died, like any elderly person - but he was not a great performer, wasn't even a great writer, and in his entire career had very few true hits. Ironic that some of the people who covered the popular song were dreadful too - but even their renditions are better than his own. I wonder if the news people and programmers believe the hype. I cannot believe that when they play his output they don't look at their colleagues and do the "what the hell is this?" face.

To be truthful - I didn't even realise Hallelujah was his song. RIP - but not for inflicting some truly dire music on the world.
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Do better, or STFU.

Poor form to come in and call "dire" music that meant a hell of a lot to a hell of a lot of people, when the guy has just died, just because it's not to your taste.
 
Armistice said:
Do better, or STFU.

Poor form to come in and call "dire" music that meant a hell of a lot to a hell of a lot of people, when the guy has just died, just because it's not to your taste.
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lol. Hadn't really looked at it that way, but it is a little bit like turning up at a funeral and announcing "I didn't really know the guy, but he sounds like he was an asshole". :p
 
Had my mum's old vinyl copy of Songs of Leonard Cohen on permanent loan since I was about 15. I thought it was a best of compilation for a long time - partly because of the name but mainly because it's such a flawless collection. Heard a number of his other albums over the years, but this is the one that really sticks with me and I always go back to.

Saddened to hear the news, but given how mentally prepared he has appeared and how eloquently he's spoke about death over the last year, I think it would do him a slight disservice to be too upset.
 
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