On Monday,
Leonard Cohen,
“The bard of the boudoir”
“The high priest of pathos”
“The Lord Byron of rock ‘n’ roll”
“The poet laureate of pessimism”
“The grocer of despair”
“The godfather of gloom” and
“The prince of bummers”
will be formally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It’s about time.
From He’s our man, by Juan Rodriguez in today’s The Gazette1
It’s The Money
Though I might quibble over the omission of other sobriquets applied to Leonard Cohen,2 the lede’s enumeration of his aliases is an effective attention grabber - at least if it is the attention of a Cohen fan one wishes to grab.
The body of the article, the primary foci of which are considerations of Leonard Cohen’s views on the creative process, his notions about money, and the connections between the two (especially earning money as a singer-songwriter and losing it by fraud), is even more impressive, although the connection between it and the introductory list of nicknames seems tenuous.
An articulate artist’s thoughts about his or her work are intrinsically interesting, but the most significant reward for reading the piece, by my lights, is Cohen’s discussion of fiscal matters and his strategies for surviving music’s commercial jungle.
Several of Leonard Cohen’s quotes from other interviews are included. My favorite is one of the least profound, primarily because it resonates with my own experience about the work I’ve often begun for no other reason the circumstantial necessity only to discover that I, in Cohen’s words, “do my job OK.”
The article is available at ~ He’s our man ~
Footnotes
_____________________- I originally used this article as a basis for a GoodCleanWholesome Fun post but after completing that note felt it deserved a bit more exposition and inclusion here. My apologies for the redundancy.↩
- “The Ladies’ Man,” “Grandson Of The Prince Of Grammarians,” and “The Master Of Erotic Despair” come to mind immediately although I’m sure there are others as worthy↩
