Join us as Christophe Lebold, author of Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!
What is a quick-fire Q&A?
We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.
Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.
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How did you meet Leonard Cohen?
I was in contact with him after the PhD. I had completed the PhD, someone had given me his address and I sent him the PhD. And to my surprise, he answered
That was like 20 years ago. And then we wrote to each other for a few years. We were planning on meeting. We had this thing, like we needed to have a drink together.
But it took a few years before we were able to actually sit in the same room.
Forgive me if you think like if you feel like you maybe already answered this, in the question before last. between me.
Did you find that the figure of Cohen was consistent between the man that you met, the biography that you were writing and the music that he produced?
He was exactly the man that I thought he would be. He was exactly in real life the man you see on stage. He had this incredible charisma, but also an incredible power and presence. He’s one of the most powerful people that I’ve met. You felt that intellectual power, emotion, control, someone who is incredibly centred.
And plus, you know, the voice, his gravelly voice. That is exactly the voice that spoke to you in his living room – the room was shaking. But at the same time he had this power, but it was mitigated with an incredible love, a loving presence. I don't know, I suppose it's the type of thing that you call ‘sainthood’, to some extent. You really felt that this guy was really with you when he spoke to you. He established a sense of deep connection, there was a sense of something is incredibly warm. Plus a sharp wit and sense of humour.
I had written about a spiritual poet and I met some someone who was the spirit of a poet, and who transformed his life into poetry as well. That was that to me a teaching. There’s this saying in Jewish Hassidic tradition that if you don't understand the teaching of a master, it doesn't matter, just look at the way he ties his shoelaces and that will be the teaching.
Is there a period of his life that you think is most notable?
There’s probably 2 or 3 … let's say 2. I would say that,
1966–67 he leaves the Greek island of Hydra and he's considering a change of career and getting into songwriting. Then he will – accidentally, he says – become a singer. But he is in a transition period.
He moves to New York, lives in different hotels, including the Chelsea Hotel. And it's a very, very interesting period because he’s lost, like someone who doesn't know what's coming next, but who knows artistically he's in a fertile time period and he has to reinvent himself.
There is a singer called Nico who he falls in love with and it’s going to be very lethal for him, but also going to be a great source of inspiration. And there's a new milieu, a new scene that is penetrating.
I think that that period is really interesting to write about because he essentially invents the existentialist troubadour. Someone who tries to see what type of courtly love can be established in the post-Holocaust world and in the world of free sex and and free love of the 1960s.
In the book there was an interesting angle where we see him invent, or discover, the physical laws and the spiritual laws of the universe in his hotel room.
I think probably also the second period is the period that I was privileged to have witnessed – the last stage of his life, 2015–2016 when he's recording his last album in his living room in Los Angeles. And the way he negotiated with the coming of darkness, you know, You Want it Darker is the title of the album. The art of traveling light and still be burning 100%. That was a sight to see.
It's also when he's putting together this last album, it's like a spiritual testament, an acknowledgment that darkness and light are just the flip side of each other, like yin and yang, Death is not just something that happens to you at the end of your life, but it was a companion. And it's like the unconscious of life that has accompanied you in, somehow, a loving way.
What do you think that readers can take from the book, either in their understanding of Leonard Cohen or of the human condition as he explores it?
I think, you know, the among the metaphors that I'm using in the book, you know, Smokey lives, the fall, playing with gravity… I think they point to something that is at the core of Leonard Cohen’s, spiritual proposition. And I think what he teaches us and what I'm trying to make explicit in the book is that he's teaching us to fall with grace and travel light and enjoy the journey.
And, and I think this is something that all of us are trying to do and you can do it in an invisible way. It doesn't have to be dramatic. His life had the property of a novel, which is why you can write about it. He struggled with depression his whole life, and he was an artist in connection with the spirit of the age, and he travelled a lot. He was in various bohemian communities in Montreal, in New York and in Hydra. His life was spectacular.
But what he’s really speaking about that is something he calls a secret life. The secret life is a life that we all lead in our hearts. And this life is you and me and him and everybody else, if they're connected to their hearts they have the same inner life. So your life doesn't have to be particularly spectacular or dramatic for you to feel the necessity of traveling light and falling with grace and enjoying the journey. This is what I hope is illustrated in the book somehow.
I put a lot of effort in the book in making the analytical passages interesting. Because you have the narrative of a life, but at every book and every album you have an analytical stop. And each time I’ve tried to turn them into a little metaphysical investigation about what concepts can you use to crack the code of that particular album and how the album representative of a moment in his in emotional or spiritual journey.
So I hope people enjoy the analysis like a metaphysical thriller.