As if Tuesday’s election result wasn’t enough to knock out poets, artists, activists, and other sentient beings, Thursday’s announcement that singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen, 82, had died earlier in the week was simply too much bad news in an already unprecedented year of loss. Not only will Cohen obviously be missed by fans and fellow artists who relied on his wisdom, but women have rarely known an artist of Cohen’s generation who loved, admired, honored, respected, and employed them in the studio and on the road as consistently as he did.
The women in Cohen’s life were not simply ornaments, adjuncts, or names in song titles: Marianne, and Suzanne were famously real people as was Joan of Arc. But Cohen who notoriously loved the company of women, was also an advocate for working women artists and paid them (we hope equally as their male counterparts) to write with him, produce and engineer his records, and sing on the road. Even in the so-called liberal, open-minded and progressive music business, there are relatively few working female producers and engineers and too few top name recording artists who employ them. But Cohen consistently placed female collaborators in the highest levels of operation. That he should be such a hit with us is no surprise. Elevating women in song and verse is one thing but having the knowledge and humility to take our value into the workplace added a layer and depth to his own art. His actions are pretty much unprecedented in the male-dominated music business, unless I’m missing something: Jennifer Warnes, Sharon Robinson, Leanne Ungar, Perla Battala, Anjani Thomas, Julie Christensen and Rebecca De Mornay were among his most frequent collaborators; I’ve missed some, but you get the idea. Cohen’s biographer was Sylvie Simmons and Lian Lunson directed the 2005 concert film, I’m Your Man.
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Filed under: Arts and Culture, new article, Leonard Cohen, Obituary, Poetry
extremely necessary to leave city limits and seek sun. On most days, it can be found shining a few short miles from the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, known the world over for its rich hippie homes of ’60s and ’70s rock stars. Though several decades have come and gone since Marin’s hot tub, water bed and peacock-feathered days, no matter how many times I drive north, down the long stretch of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and through San Anselmo toward the beaches, my wandering mind inevitably lands on one question: How could Van Morrison stand it here?
It is within these songs—written in Morrison’s own Irish, romantic, soul code, with their carefully planned lines and studied notes and phrases, learned from jazz and classic blues and early rock ‘n’ roll—the story of Morrison’s life unfolds. Whether in the concise rock ‘n’ roll tale, “The Story of Them,” the timeless “Gloria,” “Lonely Sad Eyes,” and “Mystic Eyes,” or epics like “T.B. Sheets” and “Tore Down à la Rimbaud,” we get a glimpse into the people and places of Morrison’s heart, while every sha la la la la la la la la lala dee dah, every your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye, your eye rolls off his tongue with the same ease it does our own.
why I’ve
devoted the majority of my professional writing life to researching the lives of the heroes and sheroes of American arts and letters and where they meet the political and social issues of our own lives and times. When my last two assignments concerned two iconic men who made an imprint on the culture at large in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I must admit I paused to check if I was locked in some kind of retro-groove, reliving a past that I wasn’t quite old enough to participate in firsthand. Though very quickly, it became clear to me that both subjects made contributions to the national dialogue that remain of absolute and vital relevance to the here and now. It is precisely that reason why two very serious people, Frank Zappa and Bobby Seale, are of interest to me…
A righteous pundit, Loudon Wainwright III has been pursuing music since the late ’60s, debuting with a self-titled album in 1970. Aside from his honest and deeply felt songs on relationships and life circumstances, he’s long written satirical work, a style he calls “musical journalism,” best demonstrated over an album’s length on 1999’s Social Studies (he sticks it to O.J. Simpson, Tonya Harding, and Jesse Helms). For awhile he was the in-house songsmith for Nightline and is occasionally commissioned songs for NPR. His latest is a hilarious nightmare vision of this year’s U.S. Presidential election.
at the water’s edge. Born on an avenue named after the sea, the story goes my parents met at San Francisco’s public beach and I took some of my earliest steps there. Of my not-so-many teenage accomplishments, I took most pride in holding what I think was the land speed record of 30 minutes by Mustang, from high school parking lot to Sunny Cove in Santa Cruz. As an adult, I’ve lived life either blocks away or on a bus line to the water. I’m comfortable wearing the scars of a weather-worn Californian who knows her Coast, from Del Norte to Coronado.
It’s been 30 years since Beat poet Bob Kaufman passed on, a few months shy of his 61st birthday. The often underlooked surrealist was a contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; he lived in the North Beach and the Mission Districts of San Francisco for much of his life. In the spirit of National Poetry Month and in commemoration of what would’ve been his 91st birthday today, his work was celebrated here last week, a demonstration that it is never too late or too early to appreciate a visionary artist.
Denise Sullivan 