Hallelujah! Leonard Norman Cohen turns 80 today. What is you favorite Leonard Cohen song and who covered it? Cohen was born on September 21, 1934 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. As a teenager, Cohen learned to play guitar, and around the same time, he began writing poetry and novels. In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he became president of the McGill Debating Union and won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition for the poems Sparrows and Thoughts of a Landsman. Cohen published his first poems in March 1954 in the magazine CIV/n. The issue also included poems by Cohens poet-professors (who were also on the editorial board), Irving Layton and Louis Dudek.Cohen graduated from McGill the following year with a B.A. degree.[10] His literary influences during this time included William Butler Yeats, Irving Layton (who taught political science at McGill and became both Cohens mentor and friend), Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Henry Miller. His first published book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was published by Dudek as the first book in the McGill Poetry Series the year after Cohens graduation. The book contained poems written largely when Cohen was between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and Cohen dedicated the book to his late father. The well-known Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye wrote a review of the book in which he gave Cohen restrained praise Not long after graduating from McGill University, in 1955, Cohen decided to move to New York City. By the mid-1960s, Cohen had become intrigued by the Greenwich Village folk scene and, with his background in music and writing, music composition was a natural step. He soon began to compose and release folk-rock and pop songs, and in 1967, made his musical debut at the Newport Folk Festival. The event spurred Cohens fame, and he continued to perform publicly, at concerts in New York City, as well as on the television program Camera Three, a cultural affairs program that aired weekly on CBS at the time. Also in the mid-1960s, Cohen began receiving praise for songs made popular by other singers. In 1966, folk singer Judy Collins released her album In My Life, which included two singles that were written by Cohen: Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag. In 1967, Noel Harrison released his own, pop rendition of Cohens Suzanne. By the end of that year, Cohen had released his first album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, which included his version of the song Suzanne. The album also included the popular songs Hey, Thats No Way to Say Goodbye and Master Song, among others. Two years later, Cohen released Songs from a Room (1969), featuring the now-famous single Bird on a Wire. That album was followed by 1971s Songs of Love and Hate, which included the singles Avalanche and Famous Blue Raincoat. Cohen produced three other albums before the end of the decade. After co-writing the soundtrack to the musical film Night Magic, with fellow songwriter Lewis Furey, Cohen released 1984s Various Positions. The album included one of Cohens most popular songs to date: Hallelujah. The song has been covered countless times, including by John Cale and Jeff Buckley, whose renditions—both considered to be smoother, vocally, than Cohens—received wide acclaim. From the late 1980s to 2012, Cohen released a handful of albums, including Im Your Man (1988), The Future (1992), Ten New Songs (2001) and Dear Heather (2004). In 2010, Sony Music released Songs from the Road, an album of songs that were performed live by Cohen in 2008 and 2009. 22 September 2014, Leonard Cohen is about to release worldwide, Popular Problems, his thirteenth studio album. (Biography Wikipedia )
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:16:38 +0000
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