Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Mafor his status among the 'highest and most influential echelon of songwriters'.

He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. His work often explores the themes of religion, isolation, sexuality, and complex interpersonal relationships.Ĭohen's songs and poetry have influenced many other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand renditions of his work have been recorded. Since the 1980s he has typically sung in lower registers (bass baritone, sometimes bass), with accompaniment from electronic synthesizers and female backing singers. The 1970s were a musically restless period in which his influences broadened to encompass pop, cabaret, and world music. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963.Ĭohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1968 album Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music melodies and instrumentation, sung in a high baritone. Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. In the words of Cohen’s longtime manager and friend, Robert Kory, The Flame “reveals to all the intensity of his inner fire” to the end. Readers will find in these pages the subjects that have always preoccupied Cohen: the dimensions of love, the secret code of existence, and the hope for transcendence in a broken world. In addition to new poems about war, desire, regrets, lamb chops, and hummingbirds, and lyrics from his last three albums, including the chart-topping “You Want It Darker,” The Flame includes carefully selected excerpts from Cohen’s voluminous notebooks, which he kept faithfully over the years. As noted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s citation, “For six decades, Leonard Cohen revealed his soul to the world through poetry and song-his deep and timeless humanity touching our very core.” The Flame is Cohen’s eloquent farewell, a valedictory collection of lyrics, poems, notebook sketches, and self-portraits that maps his singular creative journey.

He just wanted enough time to put his last book in order. Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen told The New Yorker that he was ready for the end to come.

The final collection of the seminal musician and poet, which he was determined to complete before his death

Cohen the flame