Category Archives: Leonard Cohen

‘Height of blasphemy’: Rufus Wainwright and Leonard Cohen estate oppose Trump use of Hallelujah

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Classic ballad was played during bizarre campaign event in which Trump told audience: ‘Let’s just listen to music’

The estate of Leonard Cohen has issued a cease and desist order to Donald Trump, after a recording of Rufus Wainwright singing Cohen’s song Hallelujah was played at a bizarre campaign event.

Wainwright has also condemned Trump’s use of the song at the town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania. The singer characterised Hallelujah as “an anthem dedicated to peace, love and acceptance of the truth. I’ve been supremely honoured over the years to be connected with this ode to tolerance. Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy. Of course, I in no way condone this and was mortified, but the good in me hopes that perhaps in inhabiting and really listening to the lyrics of Cohen’s masterpiece, Donald Trump just might experience a hint of remorse over what he’s caused. I’m not holding my breath.”

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Leonard Cohen goes to the doctor: Ian Cook’s best photograph

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‘He said he had to see a throat specialist then added: “Do you want to come along?” Later, we drove to a party with me sitting on his lap in a limo’

In 1979 Leonard Cohen was in London for a few days on a European tour and I had been assigned to photograph him by the US magazine People. I arrived at the Dorchester Hotel and was shown up to his room. He announced that he had picked up some sort of larynx infection on the plane and that he might not be able to perform. He said that he had an imminent appointment with a Harley Street specialist. My heart sank and I thought: “There goes the assignment.” Then he said brightly, “Do you want to come along with me?”

We hopped in a taxi and I followed him into the surgery. The doctor examined him, sat him in a chair and gave him a nebuliser. With his dark glasses on, a scarf wrapped around his neck and a large silver-coloured mask covering his nose and mouth, he looked quite bizarre but it made an unusual photograph, not like any others I’d seen of him. Forty minutes later, much to his relief – and mine – he said he felt much better.

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‘I don’t want to remember these things’: dark pop poet John Murry on surviving rape, heroin and family strife

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The singer-songwriter talks about his relative William Faulkner, his violent childhood and drugs – and saves a surprise until the end

If you’re after cheery crowdpleasers, John Murry is not your man. Murry is 41, barely known, and has never come close to denting the charts. Yet he has been compared to the great existential pop poets Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker. And with good reason – he has a rich baritone, writes gorgeous ballads and is half in love with death. The titles of his first two albums, The Graceless Age and A Short History of Decay, reflect the melancholy at the heart of his work. The title of his third, The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes, is equally bleak. Yet, it turns out that Murry has a surprise in store.

The singer-songwriter is related to the Nobel-prize winning American novelist William Faulkner. Like Faulkner, he paddles along his stream of consciousness – sometimes ferociously. You get a sense of what his songs are about, but seldom know for sure. Take the new album’s opener, Oscar Wilde (Came Here to Make Fun of You). We get the references to terrorist attacks and the images of foreboding, but the meaning is left to us.

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Adam Cohen on Leonard: ‘It was daunting finishing my dad’s last music’

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Leonard Cohen’s final songs can now be heard on the album Thanks for the Dance. Here his son Adam talks about their emotionally complex relationship

“There are some songs I’m half way through that are not bad,” Leonard Cohen said in his final interview, published in the New Yorker on 17 October 2016. “I don’t think I’ll be able to finish those songs.” Three weeks later, on 7 November, having released his 14th album, You Want It Darker, Cohen died in his sleep after a fall in his home in Los Angeles. The task of finishing those songs was passed, at Cohen’s request, to his son, Adam. The results can be heard on Thanks for the Dance, released last Friday.

“Essentially, I wanted to take the listener on an unconscious journey through the sonic signatures of my father’s career, without it sounding like a regurgitation,” says Adam Cohen, who, in his soft Canadian cadences and carefully constructed sentences, can sound uncannily like his father. “My dad always rejected invitations from producers like Rick Rubin and Don Was to make a retro record that sounded like his older stuff. He said he didn’t want to do the nostalgia act.”

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SNL Bids Farewell to the Trump Administration

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The cast of 'Saturday Night Live' ended its record-breaking 42nd season with another rendition of the late Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." On November 12th, just a few days after Hillary Clinton lost the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump-and in the wake of legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen's passing- Saturday Night Live aired a sketch wherein Kate McKinnon, without question the most gifted cast member of SNL, performed a heartrending rendition of "Hallelujah" on the piano .

From Bowie to Prince, America lost some great musicians in 2016

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From Bowie to Prince, America lost some great musicians in 2016 It wasn't the year the music died, but we lost many of those who made it. Check out this story on northjersey.com: http://usat.ly/2ibTjsl Bowie, the innovative and iconic singer whose illustrious career lasted five decades, died Jan. 10, 2016, after battling cancer for 18 months.

More Essential Than Ever: Leonard Cohen Stands Before “The Lord of Song”

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A famous singer songwriter dies, someone you never found time to appreciate, so you go back and start listening and recognize the distant music you heard long ago walking through the fairgrounds of rock, a snatch of song coming from over there, not far, just a whisper away if you'd taken another turn somewhere between Van Morrison and David Bowie.