LEONARD COHEN
LEONARD COHENS LONESOME HEROES

In Leonard Cohen’s Lonesome Heroes, the scope and detail of Cohen’s artistic inspirations is put under the microscope to quite fascinating result. Cohen’s first love was poetry and in the works of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca and his fellow Canadian, Irving Layton he found the words that moved him to create his own verse. The beat writers too hit a note with Leonard and their work has lived with him throughout his career. It may not come as a surprise to find Bob Dylan and Judy Collins as part of this index, but perhaps a less acknowledged genre of interest to Cohen is Country music - however he was deeply affected by performers such as Hank Williams, Hank Snow and the country recordings of Ray Charles. And the fact Cohen’s records have always achieved greater success in Europe than in North America may partly be due to his love of the Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel. These and many others artists are here shown to have played a crucial role in the formation of Leonard Cohen’s muse. But religion and spirituality too have played an enormous role in Leonard’s life and music, particularly the faith into which he was born, Judaism, and his more recent study of Buddhism, which drove him to spend several years in a monastery meditating for hours every day.