THE LIFE OF LEONARD...

Leonard Cohen was born in 1934 in Montreal to a middle-class Jewish family, and he was left a considerable inheritance after his father's death when he was nine. As a teenager, he began playing the guitar and exploring his interest in folk music. He formed his first band shortly after beginning his studies at McGill University in Montreal.

Leonard Cohen wrote his first selection of poetry as he was finishing his BA at McGill in 1955. During this time, the Beat movement had begun which was centered in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angelos. 'Beatnik's, as they were often called, veered away from the conventions of mainstream society and, instead, focused on personal freedom and expression enhanced by self-realization through mediums such as music, drugs, sex, and spirituality. A lot of literature arose from the Beat Generation, and Leonard Cohen was influenced by this movement greatly. His poetry reflects a fascination and hunger to understand and expose the greater mysteries and falsities of our times. In his work, he explores mythologies, traditions, spirituality, sensuality and eroticism, and social criticism.

After attending graduate school at Columbia University in New York for a short time, he returned to Montreal and became a professional writer. His career as a writer, songwriter, and musician has spanned several decades beginning in 1956, when his first collection of poetry was published, to the present day. He has published many books of poems and novels, with the most recent being The Book of Longing, which was published in 2006.

In 1966, he spent time in New York at the debaucherous Chelsea Hotel among the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other singers and artists. Shortly after, he began setting his own poetry to music as well as writing song lyrics. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was released in 1968. His career as a musician was central to his life for the next 25 years, and he had produced 14 albums by 2002.

For the later years of the 1990's, he lived as a Zen monk studying Buddhism at the Zen Center of Mount Baldy near Los Angelos. He began to feel a reprieve from the melancholy that has plagued him the majority of his life. Since then, he has continued to release more albums, as well as toured and performed.