Michael Posner - Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories: The Early Years

ALSO BY MICHAEL POSNER

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Cover Image: Getty Images / Gab Archive

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Leonard Cohen, untold stories : the early years / Michael Posner.

Names: Posner, Michael, 1947 author.

Description: Simon & Schuster Canada edition.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200210777 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200210823 | ISBN 9781982152628 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982152635 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cohen, Leonard, 19342016. | CSH: Poets, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography. |

LCSH: SingersCanadaBiography. | LCSH: ComposersCanadaBiography. | LCGFT: Biographies.

Classification: LCC PS8505.O22 Z84 2020 | DDC C811/.54dc23

ISBN 978-1-9821-5262-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-5263-5 (ebook)

For Lauren, Susan, Sam, Gabriel, Deborah, Joseph, Matan, Max, Nathan, Marianna, and June

Somewhere within the vast cybernetic archives of the Globe and Mail, my former employer, a brief message is interred. It was sent to me from a much-coveted e-mail addressbaldymonk@aol.comthe handle used for many years by Leonard Cohen. I had written to him proposing to organize an oral biography of his extraordinary life, a book based on interviews with his friends, family, bandmates, backup singers, record producers, monks, rabbis, and loversa book not unlike the one you now hold, literally or electronically, in your hands.

Cohen, infallibly sympathetic to even the most outlandish journalistic inquiries, responded with alacrity. It was, he allowed, an intriguing ideaI think he might have even used that word. But alas, he was thenthis was about 2007knee-deep in the miasmic swamps of litigation with his former business manager, who stood accused of relieving his bank account of some five million American dollars. It had been enough, he joked in interviews at the time, to put a crimp in his mood.

Therefore, as encouraging as he might have wanted to be, the prospect of his being able to sanction and then cooperate in what he probably would have called my little enterprise, had to be considered remote. Perhaps, he said, we could revisit the proposal when the smoke had cleared, though he would never have resorted to such a prosaic construct. It was as gracious a letdown as one could have hoped for.

Time passed, and Cohen was soon engaged in what would turn out to be the remarkable final chapter of his professional life: a worldwide concert tour that would span the better part of five years and solidify his rightful lease (had it ever been in doubt?) on the penthouse suite in the Tower of Song. Not incidentally, it would also replace the coin allegedly pilfered from the Cohenian coffers. Replace, and then some.

And then, in November 2016, Leonard Norman Cohen passed away, having endured, silently and stoically, the frightful pains and indignities of blood cancer. Not long after, it occurred to me to resurrect the oral biography. Cohen himself was gone, but scores, if not hundreds of people, who had been part of his life were still alive. Their stories were still untold, and they had powerful insights still to share.

And his was a life that deserved to be more closely examined. Not just a poet-novelist, not just a singer-songwriter, he functioned as a kind of seer, a magus. His songs were more than songsthey were hymns and psalms. Often writing in the hip, accessible, ironic vernacular, Cohen had matured into a master cartographer of the human heart and its many mysteries, commingling the sacred and the profane. A friend of his had once cautioned him: Leonard, you have to decide whether youre a lecher or a priest. Well-intentioned advice, but wrong. He was bothwe all areand our challenge is to come to terms with that reality.

Cohens body of work, I was further convinced, would stand the test of time. Future generations would continue to read his poetry and novels, to savour his music, and honour his name. Cultural historians would pore over his archives, trying to connect the dots between the life of the man and the works he created. Although several very good biographies of Cohen had already been published, in various languages, I knew there was more to discover, that aspects of the diverse worlds in which he circulatedJewish and Buddhist, literary and musical, to say nothing of his labyrinthine travels in the realms of romancewere still unexplored and could add significantly to our understanding.

And so I began. Like too much of the rest of my life, my process was largely haphazard and chaotic. But, perhaps inevitably, one interview typically led to two others, and stories, most of them entirely new, began to accumulate. By January 2020, I had completed more than five hundred separate interviews, visited Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, London, Tel Aviv, Austin, and Hydra, and accumulated thousands of hours of tape. By the time I finished transcription, the full manuscript ran north of half a million words, virtually a No Fly Zone for even the most intrepid publisher. It was my incredibly good fortune to find, in Simon & Schuster Canada, a publisher willing to contemplate and ultimately champion not one book but, as currently envisaged, three.

One cautionary note: This is, transparently, a book of recollected memories. But I cannot offer a blanket guarantee of their accuracy. Nor, in many instances, can the interviewees themselves, especially when recalling events that may have occurred decades ago. Moreover, although everyone spoke eagerly and candidly about Cohen, more than occasionally, their recollections and viewpoints were in conflict. I have largely refrained from adjudicating these disputes. That, I submit, is part of the virtue of oral biography; everyone gets to take the stand, and the jurorsreadersdecide whose version of the truth they endorse. I cannot think of anyone more likely to embrace the implicit contradictions and ambiguitiesthis Rashomon version of his lifethan Leonard Cohen himself.

And who knows? Perhaps he wasnt simply being kind when he answered my exploratory e-mail thirteen years ago. Perhaps he really did intend, one day, to confer his priestly blessing on my little enterprise. And now, from whatever empyrean realm he inhabits, he has.