Cohen’s son Adam has told Rolling Stone that his father died peacefully at home:
My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records.
He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humour.
His manager Robert Kory also told the magazine:
Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candour, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed.
I was blessed to call him a friend, and for me to serve that bold artistic spirit firsthand, was a privilege and great gift. He leaves behind a legacy of work that will bring insight, inspiration and healing for generations to come.
With thanks again to readers who are sharing memories and tributes on our news story:
Leonard, my dear old friend of 40 years or more, you've finally taken the plunge into The Great Unknown.
What sadness and joy this brings me, your sweet melancholy has helped me through the low points in my life, and your human understanding has shown me a way to understand how we as humanity fit together in this life's journey.
You are gone but you are here. Safe journey old friend, report on conditions over the other side, a few lines in dreams will do. Thank you.
Leonard found words for every thought and emotion possible: I can find none to express my deep sadness at the passing of a minstrel poet who surpassed all others. WE are only four years apart in age and he has been my life's solace and inspiration all down the years. There is a gap now that will not be filled.
There is something intensely good,holy about L Cohen which he would gently dismiss which pervades all that he says,writes,sings and does. Essentially a great self knowledge and humility tempered with a warm intelligent humour . Sang to me when I was young and carefree, when I was devastated by a child's accident,when I was at my happiest and at my most sad. A great human being. Go Leonard. Millions mourn your passing.
You can read the Guardian’s full obituary of Cohen here.
Here’s a snippet:
Early in his career, his novel Beautiful Losers (1966) caused the Boston Globe to declare that “James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen.” Yet Cohen was determined to establish himself as a songwriter, having been smitten as profoundly as any of his contemporaries by the emergence of rock’n’roll music.
“I always loved rock,” he said. “I remember the first time I heard Presley, how relieved and grateful I was that all this stuff he and all of us had been feeling for so long had finally found a particular kind of expression.”
His debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was released in December 1967, and while not everybody loved its funereal tone, the songs it contained, such as Suzanne, So Long, Marianne and Sisters of Mercy, would prove to be cornerstones of his repertoire for the rest of his long musical career.
In his later years he became a Zen monk and spent much of the 1990s sequestered in a monastery on Mount Baldy in California, where he was known as Jikan (the Silent One). Fans often seek spiritual guidance from their idols, but Cohen was a rare example of one who might actually have been capable of providing it.
Last month’s interview by David Remnick in the New Yorker – worth a read even before today’s news broke – dealt, among other things, with the relationship between Cohen and Bob Dylan, the artist with whom he is most often compared:
Even before three hundred other performers made Hallelujah famous with their cover versions … Dylan recognized the beauty of its marriage of the sacred and the profane. He asked Cohen how long it took him to write.
“Two years,” Cohen lied.
Actually, Hallelujah had taken him five years. He drafted dozens of verses and then it was years more before he settled on a final version. In several writing sessions, he found himself in his underwear, banging his head against a hotel-room floor.
Cohen told Dylan, “I really like I and I,” a song that appeared on Dylan’s album Infidels. “How long did it take you to write that?”
“About 15 minutes,” Dylan said.
When I asked Cohen about that exchange, he said: “That’s just the way the cards are dealt.”
Dylan also spoke to Remnick for the article, telling him:
When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius. Even the counterpoint lines – they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music …
I see no disenchantment in Leonard’s lyrics at all. There’s always a direct sentiment, as if he’s holding a conversation and telling you something, him doing all the talking, but the listener keeps listening.
At the Chelsea Hotel in New York – scene for some of Cohen’s more notorious lyrics – fans are leaving notes and memorials:
A makeshift #LeonardCohen memorial has begun at the Chelsea Hotel. Red wine, candles, handwritten notes, flowers, and album sleeves. pic.twitter.com/JdQeP3NOdN
Some readers have been contacting me via Twitter – for which thank you – to add their own tributes. I’ll add more to the live blog shortly, but first wanted to showcase these images sent by the Ensemble Scholastica in Montreal:
Grammys: 'revered pop poet and musical touchstone'
Neil Portnow, president of the Recording Academy – home of the Grammys, which gave Cohen a lifetime achievement award back in 2010 – has issued a statement on the “cherished artist”:
We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Grammy award winner and 2010 Recording Academy lifetime achievement award recipient Leonard Cohen.
During an influential career that spanned more than five decades, Leonard became one of the most revered pop poets and a musical touchstone for many songwriters.
His extraordinary talent had a profound impact on countless singers and songwriters, as well as the wider culture.
We have lost a cherished artist and our sincerest condolences go out to Leonard’s family, friends and collaborators. He will be missed terribly.
We shouldn’t forget that Cohen is as strong a poet as he is a musician. Since the publication of his first collection in 1956, Let Us Compare Mythologies, in the prestigious McGill Poetry series, Cohen has established himself as a writer with a distinctive voice in the canon of Canadian and American poetry.
Cohen would still be highly thought of if he’d never written a song in his life but had stuck to writing his wry, ironic, tender verse. His poetry often talks of love, but it is never straightforwardly romantic …
As Cohen’s musical career acquired momentum, many of his collections were either compilations of earlier poems or collections of lyrics. Nevertheless, the writing elevates Cohen into that rare pantheon where a musician’s lyrics are actually poetry.
