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Jump to navigationJump to searchI'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons (view source)
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|publisher=Vintage
|date=June 2013
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549320099549328</amazonuk>|amazonus=<amazonus>0099549320099549328</amazonus>
|website=
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In 500 pages, Sylvie Simmons has written an engrossing account of the life and times of Canada’s greatest export. From his Jewish ancestry, birth and fairly comfortable middle-class upbringing in Montreal, to a university education from which he graduated with a BA, and the publication of his first book of poems, his has been an astonishing career. I was one of those whose musical tastes were formed in the sixties and was spellbound by his first two albums, released in an era when he was one of the few if not the only singer-songwriters whose name could be mentioned in the same breath as that of Bob Dylan, another great admirer, and when everyone who knew his work either adored him or couldn’t abide him because his songs were apparently far too miserable. There was no middle way.
This weaves a steady course through his fifty years of literature, music and performance. As well as telling his life story the author analyses his work skilfully, as an author whose main themes are religion, sex and literature, as someone whose writings might often have been banned as obscene or at least relegated to the top shelves if not so subtly expressed, and as someone who has often championed the underdog, or the ‘beautiful loser’'beautiful loser'. She describes the genesis of all his major works, with considerable detail on the contents, recording and general public and media reaction to each album, and the long-running connection with Jennifer Warnes, who started as one of his backing singers and wound up having a very successful solo career partly through making an album of his songs. Throughout it all Cohen comes to life as a perfect gentleman, considerate to all, one who has had his share of romantic disappointments, success and failure. Remarkably, he has had the most faithful fan base not just in Canada but also in Britain in Europe, where record sales have always dwarfed those in a frequently unreceptive America. She also testifies to his dry wit and humour which belies the image he had in the early days of making music only fit for listeners to slit their wrists to. Those who had only a superficial acquaintance with his oeuvre were entitled to their opinion, but anyone who looked and thought about it in depth would rapidly realise that there was far more to it than that.
Nobody sustains a career lasting half a century without ups and downs. Interest in Cohen was waning around the mid-eighties, when he embraced the new technology, and more or less swapped his acoustic guitar for a basic Casio keyboard with which to write melodies on one finger – and the subsequent result proved to be one of the best-selling records of his career. At last the man was cool, even performing at a Prince’s Trust Concert in London by special invitation of the Prince of Wales, who gave a television interview saying why he was such a fan. Even stranger and even more engrossing is the account of his five-year period of seclusion when he was ordained as a Buddhist monk, and everyone thought that there would be no more new records or books.
If this book appeals, try [[Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008 by Clinton Heylin]].
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