Footman’s eyes, they cross

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah: A New Biography by Tim Footman.
272 pages, illustrated paperback (9" x 6"), $19.95. Chrome Dreams Publishers. ISBN #978-1842404720.

Available from Chrome Dreams.

I was born like this, I had no choice.
I was born with the gift of a golden voice,
and twenty-seven angels from the great beyond,
they tied me to this table right here in the tower of song.

— Leonard Cohen
“The Tower of Song”

Several years ago I met someone who loved the song “Suzanne” but added, “Noel Harrison was so underrated.” You never hear Noel’s name these days; you rarely heard it back when he was almost famous. She played “Suzanne” from Noel’s 1967 album Collage, and my ears registered a neutered catastrophe. I played the composer’s version, to which my friend responded, “Why is this man trying to sing?”

    Whether Leonard Cohen may or may not be gifted with a golden voice depends on one’s ear and willingness to reach beyond the flat notes and monotone delivery. For a period some thought he could be ‘the new Dylan’ when such a figurehead seemed necessary. Dylan vanished from the public eye as the Sixties raged, only to reemerge after a two or three year hiatus as a country bumpkin who made impromptu appearances at other people’s concerts. (“Do you think Dylan will show up?” became the spectator’s mantra.) He left a void, making music and Pop Awareness hungry for a spokesperson, a wit, a painter of words. Someone like Leonard Cohen.

    And for a moment he appeared up for the task, or at least his agent saw an available slot for their fresh client. It’s this rise and his sleepy prominence that makes Cohen’s back story interesting, and it’s the hook that can persuade one through Leonard Cohen — Hallelujah, the new biography by Tim Footman. The author of band biographies on Blink 182, Limp Bizkit and Radiohead, Footman is also the former managing editor of the Guinness Book of World Records. At the outset he registers two Leonard Cohens, one born in 1934 to “respected pillars of Montreal’s Jewish middle class” (a living arrangement complete with servants, sailing beyond most understandings of middle class); and this other, outlined in a shade of purple the author uses too often to camouflage his wavering acumen:

“But Leonard Cohen, the Leonard Cohen we know; the Pope of Mope; the Bedsit Bard; the sometime Buckskin Boy; the composer of music that allegedly makes you want to slash your wrists; the Jewish Buddhist; the philanderer; the drinker; the smoker; the occasional opium fiend; the man who talks to Greek daisies; the poet; the novelist; the raconteur; the unlikely gun fetishist; the bad monk; the worse singer; the potential permanent advisor to the Minister of Tourism of the People’s Republic of Trinidad that never happened; the guy who wrote that song in Shrek; he only came into existence in 1949, when he a) discovered the life and works of the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, b) bought his first guitar, for $12 from a Montreal pawn shop, and c) attended his first concert, by the blues musician Josh White. It was then that the Cohen combination, intellectual and sexual, brooding bohemian and unlikely babe magnet, poet and rock star, began to coalesce.”

    Neither a scholarly tome nor a hack job, Hallelujah is crammed with dates and events and a few consciously hip critical asides that have the weight of a Ryan Seacrest monolog. And the influence of the Guinness Book is evident. As a journalist, Footman is easily readable and his enthusiasm apparent; considering Cohen’s pedigree, however, the artist is certainly worthy of a biography that’s less hurried, more introspective.

    And proofread: the author refers to Cohen’s novels The Favorite Game as “The Beautiful Game” and Beautiful Losers as “Beautiful Strangers.” He’d have us believe that, some six years before recording his first album, Cohen found fame and fortune as a poet (!); the early collections The Spice-Box of Earth and Flowers for Hitler are hailed as “bestsellers” without mentioning their undoubtedly limited print runs or sales figures. Citing other critics’ reactions to Cohen’s work, employing recycled quotes from his subject, Footman breezes through a life and career surely more interesting, if not conflicting, than he seems willing to detail.

    “As he powers through his eighth decade,” the author writes, “new generations are waking up to the peculiar charm of that deep, growly miaow; an acclimation of a special kind.” Cohen has recently recorded and toured, and there was a cacophonous ‘dedication’ concert helmed by Rufus Wainwright which somehow received the old man’s stamp of approval. I doubt the music buying public under thirty are swayed by his “deep, growly miaow,” (deep, growly miaow?!? Ouch!!) but I could be wrong. They may, in fact, find Hallelujah a splendid read, tight, economic and without that nagging aesthetic substance that makes Cohen’s work so intriguing.