I'm Your Man
I'm Your Man

Author: Sylvie Simmons

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2012-10-23

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 0771080425

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The definitive biography of one of the most emigmatic, beloved, and celebrated artists of our time. Leonard Cohen's extensive and successful recent worldwide tour has demonstrated that his popularity across generations and borders has never been greater. Cohen's life is one of singular mystique. This major in-depth biography is the book Cohen's fans have been waiting for. Acclaimed writer/journalist Sylvie Simmons has interviewed more than 100 figures from Cohen's life and work, including his main muses; the women in his life -- from Suzanne and Marianne to Rebecca de Mornay and Anjani Thomas; artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, David Crosby, Judy Collins, and Philip Glass; his record producers; his closest friends, from childhood to adulthood; and many of the spiritual figures who have influenced his life. Cohen, notoriously private, has granted interviews himself. Thoroughly researched and thoughtful, penetrating and lively, fascinating and revealing of stories and facts never read before, I'm Your Man offers new perspectives on Cohen and his life. It will be one of the most talked-about books of the season, and for years to come.

Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years
Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years

Author: Michael Posner

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1982152621

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The extraordinary life of one of the world’s greatest music and literary icons, in the words of those who knew him best. Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon—there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a true giant in contemporary western culture, entertaining and inspiring people everywhere with his work. From his groundbreaking and bestselling novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, to timeless songs such as “Suzanne,” “Dance Me to the End of Love,” and “Hallelujah,” Cohen is a cherished artist. His death in 2016 was felt around the world by the many fans and followers who would miss his warmth, humour, intellect, and piercing insights. Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories chronicles the full breadth of his extraordinary life. The first of three volumes—The Early Years—follows him from his boyhood in Montreal to university, and his burgeoning literary career to the world of music, culminating with his first international tour in 1970. Through the voices of those who knew him best—family and friends, colleagues and contemporaries, rivals, business partners, and his many lovers—the book probes deeply into both Cohen’s public and private life. It also paints a portrait of an era, the social, cultural, and political revolutions that shook the 1960s. In this revealing and entertaining first volume, bestselling author and biographer Michael Posner draws on hundreds of interviews to reach beyond the Cohen of myth and reveal the unique, complex, and compelling figure of the real man.

Various Positions
Various Positions

Author: Ira B. Nadel

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-10-29

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0307367029

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Reissued with a new afterword Leonard Cohen is back! With a #1 bestselling poetry collection, The Book of Longing, flying off bookshelves; Lian Lunson’s acclaimed documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, in theatres this summer (the DVD will release this fall); and the superb soundtrack in music stores everywhere, Leonard Cohen proves he is Canada’s most enduring icon. Now, in the newly reissued Various Positions, Ira Nadel peels back the many layers to reveal the man and explain the fascinating relationship between Leonard Cohen’s life and his art. This book is a remarkable and rare look at Leonard Cohen, up close and personal. For nearly forty years, Leonard Cohen has endured the ups and downs of an international career that has alternately identified him as the "Prince of Bummers" and Canada's most respected poet and performer. Now, author Ira Nadel brings us closer to understanding these conflicting descriptions and allows us to enter Cohen's private world. He peels back the many layers to reveal the man and explain the fascinating relationship between Cohen's life and his art. This is a remarkable and rare look at Leonard Cohen, up close and personal.

Poems and Songs: Cohen
Poems and Songs: Cohen

Author: Leonard Cohen

Publisher: Everyman's Library

Published: 2011-04-05

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307595838

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A magnificent selection of song lyrics and poems from across the storied career of one of the most daring and affecting poet-songwriters in the world. In the more than half century since his first book of poems was published, Leonard Cohen has evolved into an international cult figure who transcends genres and generations. This anthology contains a cross section of his five decades of influential work, including such legendary songs as “Suzanne,” “Sisters of Mercy,” “Bird on the Wire,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and “I’m Your Man” and searingly memorable poems from his many acclaimed poetry collections, including Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers, and Death of a Lady’s Man. Encompassing the erotic and the melancholy, the mystical and the sardonic, this volume showcases a writer of dazzling intelligence and live-wire emotional immediacy.

Book of Longing
Book of Longing

Author: Leonard Cohen

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-08-02

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0141903171

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Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's first book of new poetry since Book of Mercy was published two decades ago. It collects Cohen's poetry written between the 1980s and the present, and also includes his wonderfully witty and sensuous illustrations, including numerous playful self-portraits. The illustrations interact with, and complement, the poetry in unexpected and fascinating ways. Book of Longing demonstrates the range and depth of Cohen's work, revealing an extraordinary gift of language and visual art that speak with rare clarity, passion and timelessness.

The Favourite Game
The Favourite Game

Author: Leonard Cohen

Publisher: Emblem Editions

Published: 2011-11-16

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1551995018

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In this unforgettable novel, Leonard Cohen boldly etches the youth and early manhood of Lawrence Breavman, only son of an old Jewish family in Montreal. Life for Breavman is made up of dazzling colour—a series of motion pictures fed through a high-speed projector: the half-understood death of his father; the adult games of love and war, with their infinite capacity for fantasy and cruelty; his secret experiments with hypnotism; the night-long adventures with Krantz, his beloved comrade and confidant. Later, achieving literary fame as a college student, Breavman does penance through manual labour, but ultimately flees to New York. And although he has loved the bodies of many women, it is only when he meets Shell, whom he awakens to her own beauty, that he discovers the totality of love and its demands, and comes to terms with the sacrifices he must make.

Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems
Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems

Author: Peter Billingham

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-01-06

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1443869236

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This volume represents the first ever collection of essays on Leonard Cohen to be published in the UK and one of the very first to be produced internationally. The essays range from unique insights offered by Cohen’s award-winning, authorised biographer Sylvie Simmons through to discussions of major themes in Cohen’s output, such as spirituality and desire, and include creative reflections from a filmmaker and poets upon their own creative response to his practice. Emerging from a one day symposium organised by Professor Peter Billingham at the University of Winchester, UK, to celebrate Cohen’s 80th birthday, this Festschrift collection represents a uniquely stimulating, insightful and provocative discussion of the songs and poems of Leonard Cohen, combining academic rigour with serious engagement with this remarkable poet and singer-songwriter. In the wake of the tragic news of Cohen’s passing in late 2016, with a legacy of iconic favourites such as “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire” through to more recent worldwide successes such as “Hallelujah” and “Anthem”, this book is a must-read for cultural studies scholars and Cohen aficionados alike.

The Holy Or the Broken
The Holy Or the Broken

Author: Alan Light

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1451657854

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Praised as "brilliantly revelatory...a masterful work of critical journalism" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), The Holy or the Broken is the fascinating account of one of the most-performed rock songs in history--Leonard Cohen's heartrending "Hallelujah." How did one obscure song become an international anthem for human triumph and tragedy, a song each successive generation seems to feel they have discovered and claimed as uniquely their own? Celebrated music journalist Alan Light follows the improbable journey of "Hallelujah" straight to the heart of popular culture.

Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen

Author: Philippe Girard

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781770464896

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A captivating, revealing biography of the legendary musician and poet Leonard Cohen opens in Los Angeles on the last night of the man’s life in 2016. Alone in his final hours, the beloved writer and musician ponders his existence in a series of flashbacks that reveal the ups and downs of a storied career. A young Cohen traded in the promise of steady employment in his family’s Montreal garment business for the unlikely path of a literary poet. His life took another sharp turn when, already in his thirties, he recorded his first album to widespread international acclaim. Along the way he encountered a who’s who of musical luminaries, including Lou Reed, Nico, Janis Joplin, and Joni Mitchell. And then there’s Phil Spector, the notorious music impresario who held a gun to Cohen’s head during a coke-fueled, all-night recording session. Later in Cohen’s life, there’s the story of "Hallelujah," one of his most famous songs, and its slow rise from relative obscurity when first recorded in the 1980s to its iconic status a decade later with covers by John Cale and Jeff Buckley. And the period when Cohen went broke after his manager embezzled his lifetime savings, which ironically sparked an unlikely career resurgence and several worldwide tours in the 2000s. Written with careful attention to detail and drawn with a palette of warm, lush colors by the Quebec-based cartoonist Philippe Girard, Leonard Cohen is an engaging portrait of a cultural icon.