Over the decades, she would record many of his most famous pieces. When Cohen ran offstage in panic at a 1967 anti-Vietnam war benefit in New York, it was Collins who persuaded him to go back out and finish the job.

She also played an advisory role in his career as a performer. Collins became the first artist to cover Cohen’s material when she recorded Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag for her album In My Life, released that November, giving Cohen a valuable career boost. Passing through New York in 1966 on the way to Nashville, he was introduced to the folk singer Judy Collins, played some of his songs to her, and won an immediate convert. Meanwhile, he was developing an authentic fiction-writer’s voice, displayed in the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers.

His love affair with Marianne Jensen – who inspired his song So Long, Marianne – kept him going back there for the next few years. His second, The Spice-Box of Earth, followed in 1961, and the provocatively titled Flowers for Hitler in 1964.īy that time, Cohen, after a brief spell at Columbia University, New York, had obtained a grant to enable him to travel, and after rambling across Europe, had settled on the Greek island of Hydra. He published his first collection of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, in 1956. At the time, this seemed like a mere sideline to a highly promising literary career. Cohen exhibited a passion for country music from an early age and formed a country and western band, the Buckskin Boys, while studying English at McGill University. He was the second child of Nathan, who owned a clothing business, and his wife, Masha (nee Klonitsky), the daughter of a rabbi. Talking about his musical legacy, Leonard Cohen jokes about his health GuardianĬohen was born in Westmount, a well-to-do suburb of Montreal.

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