If you like your Leonard lyrical, this is the book for you. Christophe Lebold, an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg, teaches literature, performance studies and rock culture, and he’s devoted much of his life to studying the work of Leonard Cohen and also Bob Dylan. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that his book takes the diagnostic approach, digging deep into Cohen’s soul to reveal what he believes to be the inspiration for his work, be it manuscript, music, mystique or merely his multi-faceted imagination.
Lest this implies Lebold’s book is dryly academic, have no fear. Cohen’s text, poetry and songs are analysed deeply but warmly and, as befitting a literary scholar, his prose is at times poetic. In truth, the book is more of a tribute than a biography, and though the author’s palpable admiration for Cohen rings out from every page it never sinks to hagiography. Were this the case, it’s doubtful that Cohen himself would have given it his tacit approval. “I am deeply respectful of the mind that has produced this book,” he is quoted on its back cover, above a photograph of himself, looking elderly, with the author, both of them languidly smoking cigarettes in an outdoor setting. We can assume, therefore, that Lebold’s interpretations are as accurate as they are penetrating.
First published in French in 2013, with a revised edition following in 2018, we can also assume that Leonard read it – in French – not long before he passed. I’m pretty sure he’d have been impressed with this latest edition too, translated into English by the author, published last year as a 440-page hardback (with an extra 100 or so of end matter), excluding the 32-page picture section, with more photos scattered throughout, beautifully designed and printed to the highest production standards; a book to savour, to dip into as you listen to any of those 15 studio albums, or contemplate Cohen’s fiction and poetry. Musically speaking, of late my preference is Live In London, a 2-CD set recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 2009, to which I was alerted by Sylvie Simmons, reviewing Leonard’s catalogue in Mojo, whose own acclaimed book on Cohen, I’m Your Man, I reviewed here in 2017*.
The two books complement one another well. While Simmons takes the direct route, skilfully tracking Leonard’s life in linear fashion, creating a bit of a page-turner in the process, Lebold takes the more scenic route, stopping off at places of interest to linger over the view, over arcane details in a manner that makes his book a more leisurely, and marginally more literate, read.
Both books are heartfelt and neither miss much but I was surprised that, unlike Simmons, Lebold fails to acknowledge the interview that Cohen gave to my Melody Maker colleague Roy Hollingworth in February 1973, during which, after a discussion on the impiety rife in the music industry, he announced he was quitting. “Make this your last interview,” Cohen told Roy. “And let’s both quit together.” At the time this appeared sensational and, if my memory serves me correctly, caused some consternation in the boardroom at Columbia Records. It’s not even mentioned in Lebold’s extraordinarily extensive (18-page, nine-part) bibliography.
Then again, I was startled by a passage, exclusive to Lebold’s book, that concerns singer and songwriter Phil Ochs, once my landlord, whom Leonard had befriended during the period when he lived in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, circa 1966. Ten years later they met again, again in New York. “After several years of decline, the man who had once been Dylan’s rival was now sleeping on the subway and fighting in bars,” writes Lebold. “That evening, over a bowl of soup, he explained to Leonard that he had been murdered the year before at the Chelsea Hotel. Also, that he was a secret FBI leader and, basically, that he was no longer Phil Ochs. On April 9, he hung himself.”
Where the two authors harmonise is on those aspects of Cohen’s character that might to some appear less than saintly. He was a ladies’ man who loved, and was loved by, many striking women. He fortified himself with strong drink, hard drugs and good food, and veered from an almost reckless disregard for his well-being to the caution he displayed by spending the six years between 1993 and 1999 in relative seclusion at a monastery in Los Angeles where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk. Lebold is particularly good on this interlude in Cohen’s life, displaying as keen a knowledge of Zen as on the earthier tendencies of his teacher, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, who became known as Roshi and was linked with sexual misconduct.
All of which adds a touch of spice to Lebold’s book, as does the financial malpractice of his manager Kelley Lynch, whose behaviour he puts down, somewhat subtly, to the “wounded heart of a desperate woman.” He’s quite hard on Lynch, quite rightly so, but, as we all know, this episode led to Leonard being obliged for financial reasons to resume his touring career to wild acclaim in the new millennium. “The very light that Lynch had sought to extinguish would be sent out into the world again and Leonard’s comeback would indeed be an act of light,” Lebold writes eloquently of the silver lining beneath Lynch’s cloud.
Lebold closes his book with a deeply personal account of his encounters with Leonard, the first of which occurred out of the blue, on a Liverpool Street, the second, pre-arranged, in Los Angeles, and the third – and last – also planned and in LA. He learned a great deal from Cohen’s philosophy, he writes, and the most important he sums up simply as “we should just shine our shoes.”
Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw Angels Fall is published by Luath Press, an Edinburgh-based independent book publisher, and costs £35 (£26.16 on Amazon).
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*https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2017/02/im-your-man-life-of-leonard-cohen-by.html
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