Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen

by Jeff Burger

  VP: Have you been that bad?

  LC: Yeah. I’ve been there.

  VP: You said one thing about Roshi—that he said you knew how to work but you didn’t know how to play.

  LC: Yeah, when I first came there … usually people are pressed into the rigorous activities of maintenance and meditation. He sent me down the hill to learn tennis, to take tennis lessons.

  VP: [Laughs.] “Leonard, have a little fun, lighten up, have a laugh.”

  LC: Lighten up—that’s what enlightenment means: that you’ve lightened up.

  VP: So you played tennis?

  LC: I never learned. I did take a number of lessons. I think the thing that scared me away was that automatic machine that hurls balls at you at about ninety miles an hour. [Cohen and Pringle laugh.]

  VP: Tell me about women.

  LC: You’re a much better authority on the matter than I am.

  VP: I don’t know. Do you feel that you ever really connected with women? That maybe there were separate relationships but there was no lifelong connection?

  LC: Sometimes you get lonely and you embrace some scenario of self-pity or loneliness but no, most of the time I don’t because I have had long-lasting attachments. Also, I think having children takes the edge off that fundamental loneliness that people who don’t have children might feel. Having been close to my kids all through my life—and, in fact, they’re living here now—and watching them grow up and being part of their lives … I think that undermines that fundamental sense of loneliness.

  VP: So you’re a good dad?

  LC: I’m probably a lousy dad but I think that everybody concerned understood that I did the best I could. Yeah, I think OK.

  VP: And Adam [Cohen, his son] is gonna be an artist, a songwriter like you?

  LC: He’s the real thing. I kind of have croaked my way through the whole enterprise. I was interested in presenting some kind of curious voice and keeping some kind of record of my own activities but Adam is the real thing. He’s got a beautiful voice, he’s got perfect pitch, he dances, he’s beautiful.

  VP: He was born with a “golden voice” [quoting Cohen’s “Tower of Song”] …

  LC: He really does have it.

  VP: So he’s living in the “Tower of Song.” How far above you is he?

  LC: Oh, I think he’s floating above the structure. He’s got some very unusual gifts.

  VP: And Lorca [Cohen’s daughter]?

  LC: Lorca … she just finished a course at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, a special pastry course, and she’s finishing up at the Southern California School of Culinary Arts. She’ll have a cooking diploma. She’s got a good job at a trendy restaurant in town. She has to accumulate a certain amount of apprentice hours.

  VP: Are there any women in your life now?

  LC: I have a number of close women friends but romantic sexual activities are really inappropriate to this particular life.

  VP: Because you’re a monk? Do you have to be celibate?

  LC: No, no. If you’ve got the strength after one of those days to lie down with someone or if you can find someone your own age that is willing to lie down with you go for it. But it’s not the appropriate place.

  VP: Is that OK with you? Because women and sex seemed like such an important part of your life. There was a great line by [novelist] Tom Robbins who said, “Nobody says the word ‘naked’ as nakedly as Leonard Cohen.” And they still call you a “chick magnet” into your sixties.

  LC: [Laughs.] Nothing is forever. I don’t know how things are going to unfold up there [on Mount Baldy] but right now it doesn’t seem to be … when you’re really studying something and you want to avoid distractions … but I have very close relationships with a number of people in my life, men and women. It’s not really going up the mountain and cutting off a life. That’s not the view of Zen practice.

  VP: The only line I’d heard about [actress and former lover] Rebecca De Mornay and the end of that relationship was “she got wise to me.”

  LC: I think it’s true. I had brunch with her several months ago. I said to her, “I want to thank you for letting me off the hook so gracefully and allowing our friendship to resume on its original basis.” And she said, “Oh yeah …” And I said, “I know why you let me off the hook so gracefully.” And she said, “Why?” I said, “Because you knew that I gave it my best shot.” And she said, “Yes, I know you gave it your best shot.”

  VP: Did you write the song “Suzanne” before you met Suzanne Elrod, the mother of your kids?

  LC: Yes, but there are a lot of Suzannes around. This was written for— or at least the narrative concerned—the wife of the Quebecois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. Her name was Suzanne Verdal. And she did live down by the river, by the Saint Lawrence.

  VP: Did she feed you tea and oranges?

  LC: She served me that tea called Constant Comment, which has little bits of dried orange in it. So I elaborated on that.

  VP: You said you beware of charismatic mystics. You could see the power of your own charisma in your performing career.

  LC: That’s why I completely understand that it has nothing to do with content. Some people—headhunters, cannibals—have the gift of gathering people around their particular fiercely burning spark of life. A lot of people have that and there are good ones and bad ones.

  VP: You gotta get people who write to you or come to you and look to you for wisdom. They think you’re wise, they think you’ve seen the future, baby …

  LC: Yeah, sure. That’s why I know how susceptible one is.

  VP: But when people say that do you just think, “I don’t know, I’m still looking”?

  LC: Well, I think that there is an oracular function in any artist. In other words, generally if he’s good, he’s working on a level that is better than he knows and better than himself.

  VP: Do you have one or two lines—’cause I know you kill yourself writing, it’s a huge amount of work—that you think, “That’s a great line …”

  LC: Occasionally I think “ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” … sometimes I feel that I nailed it. It’s more like I nailed it for myself.

  VP: The crack is interesting, given we just were talking about your depression and how you coped with life.

  LC: That defined my character and I could either have gone under with it or luckily fallen upon certain solutions for it that I have. One was that curious activity called art. And again, that curious activity called religion.

  VP: Quite a life you’ve had.

  LC: I’ve been lucky. Kids come to me and ask me for advice. Usually I say I’ve got good advice but it’s one word: duck!

  VP: [Laughs.] But you didn’t take it.

  LC: I tried to. I got hit by a little shrapnel here and there.

  VP: And you’re fit and strong?

  LC: I’m in good shape. I could probably take you at arm wrestling and you’re twenty years younger than me. Yeah, I feel fine. Thank God.

  VP: Two quick questions about the [two] new songs [on More Best of Leonard Cohen]. “The Great Event.”

  LC: Did you hear that yet?

  VP: It’s a little weird …

  LC: It’s a little odd, yes.

  VP: “Never Any Good”?

  LC: [Recites the lyrics, which end with, “I was never any good, never any good, never any good at loving you.”]

  VP: Yes you were!

  LC: Thank you. [Laughs.]

  COHEN CLIP

  On Being Produced by John Hammond

  “He got the basic tracks of ‘Suzanne,’ ‘The Stranger Song,’ and ‘Master Song,’ which were powerful songs on that particular [first] album. He allowed me leeway. I asked for a full-length mirror to be brought in. All my life, I’d practiced in front of a mirror so I could see my hands. So I could see myself and gather some kind of presentable image both to myself and the world. And he brought in a beautiful full-length mirror.�
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  —from “The Billboard Interview: Leonard Cohen,” by Susan Nunziata,

  Billboard, November 26, 1998

  PART IV

  THE NEW MILLENNIUM

  Down from the mountain, Cohen enjoys a fresh outlook on life—and the biggest successes of his half-century career.

  TV INTERVIEW

  STINA LUNDBERG DABROWSKI | Early 2001, Swedish National Television (Scandinavia)

  In the late 1990s, Cohen appeared to be making good on his decades-old promise to withdraw from the music business. Living with the Buddhists on Mount Baldy, he offered no concerts, no records, and few interviews. But the situation changed with the new decade. On February 20, 2001, Columbia Records issued Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979, a collection of vintage concert performances that arguably ranks as the best of his first three live albums; and then, on October 9, came Ten New Songs—the first collection of fresh material in nine years—which included such gems as “In My Secret Life,” “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” “Love Itself,” and “Boogie Street.”

  Now down from the mountain and living in Los Angeles, meanwhile, Cohen began to perform and give more interviews. One of the most memorable ones from this period took place in Paris with Stina Lundberg Dabrowski, whose 1997 conversation with the singer appears earlier in this book. Cohen spoke frankly with her about his decision to leave the monastery.

  “I have a rule of not interviewing a person more than once,” Dabrowski told me, “as I think you create a relationship at the first encounter and therefore you are not as willing to pose critical questions the second or third time. I made an exception with Leonard Cohen because I think he was so uniquely interesting.” This from a woman who has also interviewed everyone from Nelson Mandela to Norman Mailer to Mikhail Gorbachev.

  “I put a very embarrassing question [to Cohen] in the Paris interview,” Dabrowski added. “Something about my friends wanting to make love with him. I wanted to cut it away but thought his reaction was so nice I couldn’t do it, even though I hate myself every time I have seen it.”

  A heavily edited version of the interview aired in Scandinavia in early 2001. Here is a more expanded version, transcribed from the raw footage. —Ed.

  Stina Lundberg Dabrowski: It was a nice trip [to California to visit Cohen at Mount Baldy in 1997]. The luggage people weren’t on strike either.

  Leonard Cohen: We’ll go back.

  SLD: Yeah? Are you going back?

  LC: Oh sure, one day I’ll go back.

  SLD: When were you there last time?

  LC: Well, I haven’t been there since I left but [Cohen’s Zen teacher] Roshi’s been down in Los Angeles a lot. I always meet with him when he’s in town.

  SLD: But you haven’t been there since ‘99.

  LC: No. I think I left in ’99.

  [There is a break in the videotape, after which Cohen begins talking about his collaboration with singer/songwriter Sharon Robinson. —Ed.]

  LC: We wrote “Waiting for the Miracle” together. We also wrote several other songs together. And I’m the godfather of her son. So our families are close.

  SLD: Oh, are you? And how old is her son?

  LC: Her son’s twelve. And a very accomplished pianist. And Sharon is classically trained also. So our families have been close. And [recording engineer] Leanne [Ungar] also. We’ve worked together for many, many years. She’s engineered six or seven of my records.

  SLD: But that must be very unusual … a female technician in the music business …

  LC: I never thought of it that way but—

  SLD: I never met one.

  LC: It’s true there aren’t many and especially when she started there were very, very few. But she never presents herself as somebody who’s overcome anything.

  SLD: [To technician.] Does he need powder?

  Technician: No, he looks great. Great haircut, too.

  LC: It’s my own hair.

  SLD: Last time you didn’t have any hair at all.

  LC: But it’s with the same razor. But with a comb on it.

  SLD: You do it yourself?

  LC: Yeah, of course. I’ll do yours if you like.

  SLD: I’m not quite ready for it. I have a daughter, though, who shaved all her hair off recently.

  LC: So as I say, Leanne never presents herself as someone who’s overcome anything. She’s terribly modest. Also her husband was the guitar player for the band, so everybody is very connected. So it’s a very intimate feeling.

  SLD: And some of the songs you wrote together were Sharon’s songs?

  LC: Yes, all these songs. In fact, it’s actually Sharon’s record in a certain way. She did all the synthesizer work and all the background singing and the melodies and of course there was a little change.

  SLD: You even changed the words together with her …

  LC: No, no.

  SLD: I read the original and then I read the newest version that’s on the record and I thought you had changed it together with her.

  LC: Not together with her. I keep changing them. They get stopped at one point or another.

  SLD: And they get kind of simpler and simpler.

  LC: I try to figure out what they mean myself.

  SLD: And more and more meaningful.

  LC: I try to get down there.

  SLD: There are very many good songs. Are you happy with the record?

  LC: I like it. It’s very relaxed. Even with the anxiety we have when we’re listening to it to detect technical problems, we always find ourselves at the end of each song more or less relaxed. [To waiter:] Merci, monsieur.

  SLD: It’s funny, but you don’t speak French?

  LC: Plus ou moins, oui. [More or less, yes.]

  SLD: Oui? C’est vrai? [Yes? Really?]

  LC: Oui, c’est vrai. [Yes, really.] Would you have some milk?

  SLD: Yes please. Et pourquoi vous ne parlez pas français tout le temps? [And why don’t you speak French all the time?]

  LC: Oh, c’est plus comfortable en anglais. Je parle français mais il y a long-temps que je n’ai pas parlais, et même lá-bas je n’ai pas parlais du ventre, vraiment. [Oh, I’m more comfortable in English. I speak French, but it’s a long time since I spoke it, and even over there I didn’t speak from the gut, really.]

  SLD: Non? [No?]

  LC: Je connais la langue, mais pas comme ma langue maternelle. [I know the language, but not like my mother tongue.]

  SLD: I didn’t know that. But I was thinking—

  LC: Je viens de Montréal, non? I come from Montreal—

  SLD: I know, I know.

  LC: —mais de la minorité anglaise assez détesté maintenant. Mais oui, mes amis sont français [—but from the English minority, pretty detested these days. But yes, my friends are French]—it’s been my world.

  SLD: So it’s funny—you never wrote any song or any poem in French. [Dabrowski is correct, but it’s worth noting that Cohen has sung in the language, in such tunes as “The Partisan” and “The Lost Canadian (Un Canadien Errant),” neither of which he wrote. —Ed.]

  LC: I don’t have it from the gut. Even French poetry I have trouble with because I don’t really feel the language. I know it, I can speak it, I can make myself understood and I can understand everything. But a song, poetry, has got to come from the deepest places. I don’t have that in French. [Raises glass.] Good to see you.

  SLD: Nice to see you too. So … but I was amazed. I remember when I visited you in the monastery and you had this schedule. [Shows him the paper.] Do you recognize?

  LC: Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s a good schedule.

  SLD: That’s a very good schedule. And the schedule you have today is a bit different.

  LC: It’s a bit different … but not so different.

  SLD: Look at this schedule. [Shows him another paper.]

  LC: Oh, this schedule here. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff here, huh? Well, this is my social life. I meet lots of people.

  SLD: When I saw your schedule for this tr
ip, I was overwhelmed by the amount of things you are doing in a very short time.

  LC: Yeah. Good training at Mount Baldy. Sets you up for this sort of thing.

  SLD: So you feel ready to meet the world in this way.

  LC: Well, I think if I had my preferences, I might do something else but I have a small constituency in many countries so it’s important for me to alert them that there’s a record so I participate in the convention of promotions.

  SLD: “I’ve closed the Book of Longing and do what I gotta do.”

  LC: Yeah.

  SLD: Is that what you are doing?

  LC: I guess so.

  SLD: You’ve closed your book of poetry and you are promoting a record that people want you to—

  LC: “I’ve closed the Book of Longing, I do what I am told.” That’s right. But I haven’t quite finished that book yet so I’ll open it when I go back. I’ve got about 250 poems there now and these songs come from that book. I’d like to finish it.

  SLD: Who’s telling you what to do?

  LC: You hear these voices. Everybody has them.

  SLD: But from within or from without?

  LC: Both.

  SLD: Was it a hard decision to leave the monastery?

  LC: It was hard in the sense that I left a lot of close friends, brothers and sisters, and Roshi, who is an old, old friend of mine, and I’d been cooking for him and we were kind of dependent on one another. So in that sense it was hard. I asked his permission to leave.

  SLD: Why did you leave?

  LC: For a couple of reasons. One, I felt something had come to a conclusion. I’d been there five or six years. My association with the community, of course, doesn’t end. I see Roshi a lot. In fact, he was down in Los Angeles. He wasn’t feeling well so I made him the chicken soup that he likes.

  SLD: A Jewish kind of chicken soup?

  LC: Yeah, my mother’s recipe. I guess the only difference is that I skin the chicken first before I boil it to remove a bit of the fat but more or less the same. And Roshi doesn’t really like garlic.

  SLD: No?

  LC: No, he doesn’t like garlic.