The first time I met Leonard was in a hotel room in midtown Manhattan.  It was late November of 1974.  I was a fledgling reporter for Rolling Stone. He was a poet and a songwriter whose early albums had garnered him a vast audience in Europe but not so vast in the States. And he was pissed. His fourth album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony was about to be released and his record company, Columbia, had censored the cover.  Instead of the beautiful image of two naked but crowned figures in a sexual embrace taken from the alchemical text Rosarium philosophorum, an image popularized by Carl Jung, Columbia had substituted a photo of Leonard that looked like a cross between William Burroughs and Soupy Sales.  To make matters worse, in the ad copy for the album the record company called Leonard a “chronicler of despair.”

     “Every critic attacks me for being so depressing and Columbia highlights that in an ad.  Wonderful!” he said.

     Now he started pacing the room more frantically.

     “Is this the style of American business practices today? Is there any honor left? I’m appalled at the whole feminization of the scene. There’s just a collapse of manly virtue and we’re going to pay for it. As soon as America is weak, there’ll be others to carve it up, both from the interior and the exterior.”

     I’d never met Leonard before but I wanted to give him a hug, tell him it was all going to be okay.  But all I could manage was, “Isn’t it good that men are becoming more in touch with their feminine side, their emotions?”

     Leonard stopped pacing and plopped wearily on the sofa. He gazed out the window. The view was of another high-rise building.

     “Look, I don’t want to make a big point of this honor business because it puts you in a certain camp,” he began. “Every fascist that comes along makes a point of these virtues and uses them as an opportunity to inflict his power and vision on susceptible people. But you also get tired of getting kicked around by the latest guru and the latest revolutionary hero. You’re trying to get out of pain and there are various invitations all around. One says meditate. One says shoot heroin. One says sleep with a lot of girls. One says sleep with a lot of boys. There are a host of invitations, but because of the way the world is constituted, at least 99 per cent of them are hustles. Maybe I’m a little tougher. I’m in training now and the rigors of the road dictate a certain lifestyle. I’ve had my share of being taken.”

     The training Leonard was talking about was his tour. He was Field Commander Cohen and his band was his army. And he was in town to play the Bottom Line, which filled up for two nights with kindred spirits, survivors of those hustles. And they loved his songs of love and hate. As soon as the set was over, Leonard retreated to the small dressing room and collapsed on the couch.

     “My knees were shaking,” he confessed to his manager. “But this is a good place to be nervous at.”

     I remarked on the amazing reverence that the audience had shown him.

     “People are interested not just in my own experience but in the experience of anybody who has come through without committing suicide or going into a loony bin. You know, there is some interest in survival,” he said.

     By the next night, Leonard was considerably looser. Earlier that day, Columbia had compromised and agreed to issue the record with the original drawing augmented by a little modesty wrapper covering the offending genitalia. By 2 A.M. the band had finished their fourth encore and the crowd was still crying for more until the house manager turned up the lights.

     In the dressing room, Leonard wandered over to a platter of cold chicken and grabbed a wing. The sweat pouring off him mirrored the raging rain outside the club. His suit showed the stains of four sets of concert combat. Rising to wash his hands from the greasy chicken, he nearly toppled into the sink.

     “Fantastic!” he was all smiles now. “What a gig! What a compassionate audience! You know, I’m always pleased when I’m not humiliated. They wanted me to do well.”

     He sat back down on the sofa and allowed himself a victory glass of wine. His work was done for this night but his mind was racing towards the future.

     “I want to do a lot of work, really work for the next few months. I want to make songs that’ll really stand for this moment. This time I’m in now, this age of 40, this season of winter.”

     He paused and looked at his hands.

     “I think I’m getting old. My nails are crumbing under the assault of the guitar strings. My throat is going. How many years more do I have at this?”

     No one in the room said a word.

     “If one’s health holds out, then doing this forever would be marvelous. To really bring the information of the older ages – you don’t hear that on the concert stage. Maybe we’ll be able to hear John Lennon in 40 years on his experience of maturity. That’s what I’d like to hear and that’s what I’d like to be. Every man should try to become an elder.”

     Well we never did get to hear John Lennon as an elder.  But, thankfully, we did get Leonard.  Leonard paved the way for all of us, shedding light on what was to come as we took our spins around the globe.  I’ll never forget hearing Leonard’s opening lines in his great song “Tower of Song”:  Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play.”  Now 31 years later, I know exactly what he means.  And it’s been 27 years but we’re all still waiting for democracy to come to the U.S.A.

     Leonard left his mortal coil two and a half years ago but Leonard continues. He continues in our memories, in our songs, both covers and those inspired by him, and in our artwork.  Which brings us to the Jewish Museum in New York City.  They are currently exhibiting a slightly truncated version of a Leonard Cohen exhibition that opened in Montreal in November of 2017. Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything is a wonderful homage to Leonard and his work. It features videos of Leonard, Leonard reading some of his poetry, and some very nice interpretations of Leonard’s work done by artists, both visual and recorded. 

     My favorite piece of all is an amazing installation called I’m Your Man (A Portrait of Leonard Cohen) by the South African-born, Berlin based artist Candice Breitz.  The artist commissioned Leonard’s Montreal synagogue choir to do backing vocals as 18 elderly Montreal male fans of Leonard sing the songs on the “I’m Your Man” album.  You sit in a room surrounded by these fans as they perform the ultimate karaoke, belting out their heartfelt versions of the songs on the album.  It’s the ultimate affirmation of Leonard’s “manly virtue”. They are your men. They are the elders. And with each off key but heavenly performance, you realize that Leonard Cohen continues.

“Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything” can be seen at the Jewish Museum from April 12^th until September 8^th, 2019