Published : Nov. 11, 2016 - 16:41
Leonard Cohen, the baritone-voiced Canadian singer-songwriter who seamlessly blended spirituality and sexuality in songs like "Hallelujah," "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire," has died at age 82, his son said Thursday.
"My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles," Adam Cohen said in a statement. "He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor."
Cohen, also renowned as a poet, novelist and aspiring Zen monk, blended folk music with a darker, sexual edge that won him fans around the world and among fellow musicians like Bob Dylan and R.E.M.
He remained wildly popular into his 80s, when his deep voice plunged to seriously gravelly depths. He toured as recently as earlier this year and released a new album, "You Want it Darker," just last month. Adam Cohen said his father died with the knowledge that he‘d made one of his greatest records.
Cohen’s "Hallelujah" went from cult hit to modern standard, now an unending staple on movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, reality shows and high school choir concerts.
Cohen, who once said he got into music because he couldn‘t make a living as a poet, rose to prominence during the folk music revival of the 1960s. During those years, he traveled the folk circuit with younger artists like Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and others.
His contemporary Kris Kristofferson once said that he wanted the opening lines to Cohen’s "Bird on a Wire" on his tombstone.
They would be a perfect epitaph for Cohen himself: "Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free."
"Hamilton" star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda quoted those lines on Twitter on Thursday night as one of many paying tribute to Cohen.
The Montreal-born Cohen never seemed quite as comfortable on stage, however, and he chalked it up in part to being the old man among the group. "I was at least 10 years older than the rest of them," he told Magazine, a supplement to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in 2001.
Judy Collins, who had a hit with Cohen's song "Suzanne," once recalled he was so shy that he quit halfway through his first public performance of it and she had to coax him back to the stage.
Late Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (AFP-Yonhap)
Like Dylan, his voice lacked polish but rang with emotion.
In 2016, Dylan told the New Yorker that Cohen’s best work was "deep and truthful," "multidimensional" and "surprisingly melodic."
"When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius," Dylan said. "Even the counterpoint lines -- they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music."
It was Dylan who first recognized the potential of 1984's "Hallelujah" performing it twice in concert during the mid-1980s, once in Cohen’s native Canada.
It had gone unnoticed when it came out on an independent-label album that had been rejected by Cohen's label. He had filled a notebook with some 80 verses before recording the song, which he said despite its religious references to David, Bathseba and Samson was an attempt to give a nonreligious context to hallelujah, an expression of praise.
Cohen recorded four verses, but he sent several more to John Cale, a founding Velvet Underground member who recorded "Hallelujah" for a 1991 tribute album.
It’s the Cale version that has become the standard and was used by its most celebrated singer, the late Jeff Buckley, whose 1994 recording really began the launch of the song as cultural phenomenon.
Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, telling the audience: "This is a very unlikely occasion for me. It is not a distinction that I coveted or even dared dream about."
In songs such as "Sisters of Mercy," Cohen melded romantic imagery with minimal orchestration to produce music that rang with the authenticity of traditional folk songs. Many had a dark mood, featuring black humor or sardonic social commentary.
Cohen suffered bouts of depression throughout his life that he sometimes tried to mitigate with alcohol and drugs. (AP)