Leonard Cohen and 'A Broken Hallelujah'

By Ruth Rosen, TruthDig

11 May 14

“A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen”
         A book by Liel Leibovitz

here are surely some Americans who have never heard of Leonard Cohen. Then there are those who remember his early songs, like “Bird on a Wire,” popularized by Judy Collins in 1968, but who dismiss him as a poet/songwriter of despair and depression. Finally, there are the millions of fans, and I count myself among them, who experience his music and lyrics as authentic expressions of their own lives.

Liel Leibovitz, with “A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen,” has written an elegant, beautifully crafted book that Cohen’s fans will instinctively understand. It is not a biography, though he does recount Cohen’s loss of his father at age 9, his lifelong struggle with depression, decades blurred by alcohol and drugs, his life in Cuba just days before the revolution began, his efforts to sing and lift the spirits of Israeli soldiers during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the five years he spent in a Buddhist monastery, and his astonishing comeback in his mid-70s as a global troubadour whose concerts, held in huge arenas around the world, have given him a stardom he never expected.

Nor is it a discography, though Leibovitz uses newly available private letters and journals to explain the ups and downs of Cohen’s remarkable career in studio recordings and promotional tours. Rather, “A Broken Hallelujah” is more of an exploration of the literary and spiritual traditions that shaped Cohen, as well as a portrait of a person who could be cocky and arrogant, witty and ironic, angry and tender, and quite often, the unfailingly polite gentleman.

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