9780062273000
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I’m Your Man audiobook

  • By: Sylvie Simmons
  • Narrator: Joshua Pollock
  • Length: 18 hours 32 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: June 04, 2013
  • Language: English
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I’m Your Man Audiobook Summary

The New York Times-bestselling, definitive biography of lengendary artist Leonard Cohen

Singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen is one of the most important and influential musical artists of the past fifty years–and one of the most elusive. In I’m Your Man, journalist Sylvie Simmons, one of the foremost chroniclers of the world of rock ‘n’ roll and popular music, explores the extraordinary life and creative genius of Leonard Cohen.

I’m Your Man is an intimate and insightful appreciation of the man responsible for “Suzanne,” “Bird on a Wire,” “Hallelujah,” and so many other unforgettable, oft-covered ballads and songs. Based on Simmons’s unparalleled access to Cohen–and written with her hallmark blend of intelligence, integrity, and style–I’m Your Man is the definitive biography of a major musical artist widely considered in a league with the great Bob Dylan.

Readers of Life by Rolling Stone Keith Richards, and Patti Smith’s phenomenal Just Kids will be riveted by this fascinating portrait of a singular musical icon.

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I’m Your Man Audiobook Narrator

Joshua Pollock is the narrator of I’m Your Man audiobook that was written by Sylvie Simmons

Sylvie Simmons is an award-winning writer and one of the foremost music journalists working today. Born in London, she moved to Los Angeles in the late seventies and started writing about rock music for magazines such as Sounds, Creem, Kerrang! and Q. She is the author of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books, including the biography Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes and the short-story collection Too Weird for Ziggy. She has lived at various times in England, the United States, and France, and she currently lives in San Francisco, where she writes for MOJO magazine and plays the ukulele.

About the Author(s) of I’m Your Man

Sylvie Simmons is the author of I’m Your Man

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I’m Your Man Full Details

Narrator Joshua Pollock
Length 18 hours 32 minutes
Author Sylvie Simmons
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date June 04, 2013
ISBN 9780062273000

Additional info

The publisher of the I’m Your Man is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062273000.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Paul

November 11, 2016

Revived review in honour of this great singer, songwriter, poet, novelist, comedian and graceful human being. He's been with me almost every step of the way in my life, his sorrowful black humour was often a small kind glimmer in my own sometime darkness.I saw Leonard in concert in 1993 in London. After one song he thanked the audience. "I'd like to thank you for all the cards and letters you've sent over the years, they were all very welcome. But I have to say… they didn't help a bit."******A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand. – Virginia Woolf, Orlando.How Leonard became Cohen - fastforwardstyleNathan Cohen high end formalwear manufacturer, Masha Cohen, 16 years younger, recently arrived from Russia; Montreal, a thousand miles away from where they were killing all the Jews; Nathan dead at 52, Leonard aged 9; The Buckskin Boys 1952 (a country music trio); Irving Layton; 1956 (year of Elvis, year of Howl) aged 22 first book - Let Us Compare Mythologies (we pinned Jesus like a lovely butterfly against the wood) – original print run, 400; New York, back to Montreal, rejected first novel (A Ballet of Lepers, you couldn't make it up!); one year in the brass foundry, a family firm; young Len, die-casting machinist and assistant time and motion man; we have no hesitation in recommending him for any sort of employment and would like to express our regret at his departure.1960, Leonard's tour of the great ancient capitals of Europe, funded by a grant, starting at Mrs Pullman's boarding house, Hampstead, London. Beauty at Close Quarters (unpublished novel No 2); The Spice-Box of Earth; Jerusalem; Hydra : "everything you saw was beautiful, every corner, every lamp, everything you touched, everything" – including Marianne Ihlen. (We met when we were almost young).Back to Montreal with Marianne; the brightest young poet in Canada visits Cuba; back to Hydra - no electricity, no phone, no water but a lot of speed and Mandrax ("as handsome a pair of pharmaceuticals as a hard-working writer could wish to meet… providing backup harmony, hashish, opium and acid" says Sylvie). Back to London; Michael X (hanged for murder in 1975) said he would appoint Leonard Minister for Tourism when he established his revolutionary government in Trinidad. And why not? I sure would.Back to Hydra. Third novel. Is it called The Perfect jukebox? Fields of Hair ? (Ouch). No – The Favourite Game. "A sort of biography of Leonard Cohen written and at the same time ghost-written by Leonard Cohen… the contents might not stand up in court". Says Sylvie. This time published (in the UK, not Canada), and praised by many including Michael Ondaatje. Now he's 30, applying for grants, taking bits of jobs, Hydramontrealing. Next poetry book : Opium and Hitler. His publisher objects to the title. LC says it will appeal "to the diseased adolescents who compose my public." But he changed the title to Flowers for Hitler. Ah, compromise.Then Suzanne Verdal takes him down to her place by the river. Back to Hydra. Endless drugs, writing Beautiful Losers at breakneck speed on speed. Published in 1966, didn't sell. At all. Decides he needs to make some kind of living and poetry and novels are clearly not it. Thinks he'll try singing. New York – introduced to Mary Martin, a Canadian in the music management biz and she knows exactly who Leonard should meet : Judy Collins. Now it comes into focus – JC loves everything LC sings to her, immediately puts 2 songs on her new album, which is a hit, and LC finally makes some public appearances as a singer. 1967, busy year – Nico, who seems to be the only woman not to sleep with him, go Nico! – Andy Warhol and his crowd – John Hammond gets interested – then (in May) begins the torture of recording the first album, it drags on for 9 months – Hammond gives up, John Simon takes over, he gives up, LC finishes it off on his own in December – but hey, it is brilliant – Joni Mitchell – Janis Joplin – and by then, he's the Leonard we have known for all these years.ENOUGH OF THATI'm in several minds about this guy. All the way down the line he seems like he's posing as the frail, sad poet with a capital P, it's his schtick, all folorn and droopy and soulful and deep lines round the mouth, in order to get the girls, which he does because he's good at it, and handsome in a Dustin Hoffman Al Pacino kind of way, even now, and his lyrics are often pure tripe, gestures towards profundity, deliberately obscure, just a collection of Pavlovian words to tickle our godbone, and my God what a one track mind, women this, women that, did he ever write a non-sexual song? I must have missed it… And yet, he's funny, he always was, and daring, and his tunes are so very pretty, and he can write like an angel on occasion – sometimes all the hype is true, how annoying - God is Alive, Magic is Afoot, A Kite is a Victim, Stranger Song, Democracy is Coming to the USA, and the entirety of Beautiful Losers, all pure gold, I'd take them to my desert island. At the moment I'd also have Dance me to the End of Love as one of my desert island discs. The thing is, he gets you on his wavelength. You know what? He was my man. Like he said. SORRY BOB(Sorry, Bob Dylan, but Leonard is in a whole other category. I bet you flinched when you first heard him. But it's okay, there's plenty of room for the both of you, your awkward clawing and expert plagiarising has a place prepared for it at my banquet of song. I'm sitting Hank Williams between you and Leonard.) TOM JONES FOR THE BOOK GROUP LADIESAfter Leonard's first album his stuff is patchy, all the way up to the 1990s but even on poor albums there will be an amazing gobsmacker. His whole life is a bit galling, you know, he droops and sags through all this desolation (free razorblade with every album) whilst having to shoo naked 24 year olds out of the way so he can get to his front door. He's so solitary but his concerts are sellouts and he loves working those crowds. He's Tom Jones for the book groups, they throw moist first editions at him. Audiences immediately loved him and never stopped; they love him even more now he's old. What's he got to be doleful about? He always has these dead-on cool situations going – he lives with a gorgeous young woman on Hydra, he eats a bucketful of drugs and he writes Beautiful Losers – he tosses off quotes like "I'd thought of myself as a loser. I didn't like my life" – then later with the second Suzanne, another gorgeous young woman, he doesn't like that situation either; there's no pleasing this guy. He loathes himself because there's no pleasing him. He's a monster of appetite and he's a Zen monk. He's fixated on sex but he's universal and spiritual. At the same time. He has everything, he has nothing. He's self obsessed, yet always comes across as generous. In 1993 he has his most successful album ever (The Future), a successful world tour, he's engaged to blonde bombshell Rebecca de Mornay (20 years his junior, of course, you think guys like him go out with women of his own age?), the world at his feet, and that's when he retires to do the cooking and cleaning for an old Japanese guy at the top of Mount Baldy. For five years. But even that doesn't work, he falls into another dreadful depression. He comes down from the mountain and gets back into his thing again. Then someone sidles up and says sotto voce"Hey Leonard – did you check your bank account recently?"Yes, just like back in the doowop days, his trusted personal manager Kelley Lynch stole all his money, at least $10 million. So back on the road he goes, and makes all his money back, and then some. That's one to tell at the next dinner party. "What have you been up to lately?" "Oh, getting my ten million back."THIS BOOKSylvie Simmons has finally done it, written a great biography of Leonard Cohen after so many completely crap ones. She gets the complicated detailed story told, it motors right along, there are no longeurs. And she's funny too.Other than finding themselves the last two left at a key party, it is hard to picture Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector ever ending up as musical bedfellows (p295). The years Leonard has spent in the monastery had done nothing to dull his talent at sniffing out a nondescript hotel room (p419). here he stood in the spotlight in his sharp suit, fedora and shiny shoes, looking like a Rat Pack rabbi, God’s chosen mobster (p489). The room was so completely silent during the performances of the songs that you could hear the hairs stand up on people’s arms (p492).On the older deeper voice :His delivery was laconic, almost recitative, like an old French chansonnier who has mistakenly stumbled into disco. It was urbane and unhurried; as one UK critic put it, Leonard lingered on every word "like a kerb crawler". His voice was deep and dry, sly and beguiling as his songs. It was polished and mannered but very human, it was brutally honest but very accessible and his songs covered all the angles.IF I WAS A BIG SHOT PUBLISHERI would have liked to be a big shot publisher and commission a biography of Leonard Cohen by Henry James; and a close study of his complete work by Bob Dylan; and while I'm at it, a biography of Dostoyevsky by Woody Allen and one of Woody Allen by Dostoyevsky. And I'd like James Ellroy to do a rewrite of The Lord of the Rings, you know, make it relevant. And James Joyce for the 50 Shades of Grey follow up, he'd LOVE that commission. These interesting volumes would look good on the shelves of Borges' Library of Babel – where they already are!! So you can forget all the other Cohen books, here's a great one stop shop. I loved it. RECOMMENDED.

Vanessa

May 31, 2017

My earliest recollection of Leonard Cohen was when I first listened to 'Everybody Knows' in 1990 yet I had no idea who sang it and didn't think much else about the artist until a few years before his death when I was given a copy of one of his albums but I distinctly remember hearing the song back then and feeling wowed by the tone of voice. It was like something I'd never heard before.I was prompted to read this book shortly after his death as I remember having a lump in my throat at the world losing such a beautiful unique artist, I felt a deep need to learn more about this enigmatic man.This biography well researched and intricately detailed by Sylvie Simmons is a comprehensive look at the full life of a true musical magician. A man full of complex contradictions. A man of magnificent restraint. This is a man who always grappled with self doubt. He spent a lot of time soul searching and looking for answers and often sought different religious leaders, despite his Jewish ancestry he was drawn to the Buddhist teachings of Joshu Sasaki Roshi a man who became one of his most influential teachers spending a length of time at a Zen centre and becoming an ordained Zen Buddhist Monk himself, he also sought the teachings of a Advaita Master a form of Hindu philosophy and travelled to Mumbai regularly. He often had bouts of depression and needed to spend time alone away from the spotlight, when things got too hectic he craved solitude and walked away from it all, reappearing when he felt reenergised and ready to brace the music world again. Leonard was a true bohemian and a free spirit he feared commitment and shied away from marriage but he was very committed to his art, his lifelong friends, his religious studies and ultimately his music which gave him his purpose and drive. This book has a lot of content, it covers the early days of his transition from poetry and author to accidental musician he was a reluctant celebrity but also courted it, he was there during the Chelsea days and mixed with all the greats Dylan, Ginsberg, Nico, Janis, Joni and many more but he also always felt like an outcast. To me he was the epitome of a true gentleman and a voice of a generation that left a major hole in the art and music world that will never be filled. This took me awhile to read but I can say it was a privilege to get to know intimately this true humble beautiful soul that I found myself mesmerised by his sheer brilliance.

Andrea

January 20, 2023

One of my greatest regrets is not going to see Leonard Cohen play the last time he came to Portland. I thought then that the venue was too big to really enjoy him and that the tickets were too expensive. I was stupid—it would have been a priceless experience.I fully immersed myself in this biography and I came out of it loving Leonard Cohen even more than when I began. I listened to each album as it was being talked about in the book.This book seemed to be very comprehensive and it was kind of nice that it ended and was published before he died. I will be reading more of Cohen’s fiction and poetry in the future. I am fortunate that there is such a wealth to choose from.

Janet

February 25, 2013

So great to have a kid who works in a bookstore, who knows what I REALLY want. Have to keep from gulping this down at a single sitting.________________________This was a compulsive read, especially strong in informing us about the conditions and circumstances behind the recordings of the various albums, giving faces and stories to the sounds I know so well, having become a Leonard Cohen fan in high school--can still see my friend's lliving room where I first heard that compelling Spanish guitar. Now I know where he picked it up--from a suicidal Spaniard he met in a park in Montreal. I know something of his family life--there are amazing parallels to the life of Diane Arbus and her brother, the poet Howard Nemerov. I know more about the women and the life, and yet there's a restraint here, a gentlemanly (ladylike) tone which leaves the private life as simply the raw material of the work, rather than the subject and his relationship to persona. Decorous, I would call it.The story was well-paced and revealed a great deal I didn't know about the mysterious singer with the seductive, slightly menacing point of view. I can say it was was exhaustive on the subject of recordings--but it certainly took no liberties to derive larger conclusions about the artist and his work. I missed the pithiness, wit and psychological insight of Patti Smith's autobiography. Cohen's mystery was by no means violated in the making of this book, and in many ways remains as elusive as ever. I think the author was more comfortable probing the earlier years, the later material oddly seems more veiled, my guess because Cohen himself was not so forthcoming with his current life. I did appreciate that the poetry and fiction was treated, as well as the songs, and just makes me want to seek out the novels, poetry, concert videos and other biographies.

Carl

January 04, 2013

I feel cheated, and by my own self. Leonard Cohen was a major part of my life, and I didn’t even know he was there. Talk about clueless.Born in Montreal, just a few years before I was, he was raised among the well-to-do Jews of that community. As an adolescent, he became a wanderer of the nighttime streets (a habit he never discarded), then (events overlapping) a poet. Not a particularly successful one at first, though he did become part of the beat community—to the extent there was one—in Montreal. He began singing and playing the guitar more or less by accident as recreation more than an art. In fact, he valued the music more for its ability to attract women than for anything else. Start with this combination of poetic talent, a few accidents of circumstance, a lack of ability to settle into any occupation or stay with any single woman (he always had to seek another “muse.”), add drugs and wanderlust, combine them with genius, and you have one of the most remarkable men and remarkable careers in the history of the arts.I’m Your Man is not only the story of an amazing life, but a beautifully written book more than worthy of its illustrious subject. Sylvie Simmons can write like this:images He… dissolved all boundaries between word and song, and between song and the truth, and the truth and himself, and his heart and its aching. All the heavy labor, … the highs, the depths to which he had plummeted and all the women and deities, loving and wrathful, he had examined and worshipped, loved and abandoned, but never really lost, had been in the service of this. And here he was, seventy-six years old, still shipshape, still sharp at the edges, a workingman, ladies’ man, wise old monk, showman and trouper once again offering up himself and his songs: “Here I stand, I’m your man.” And she does so over and over. She plainly loves her subject, but doesn’t blink at the uglies—the relentless womanizing, the various addictions, the continuous impulse to act against his own best interests. She’s conducted prodigious interviews, mined an Everest of material, but keeps the narrative moving through all the detail. She sees to the heart of it all, and we never lose sight of the man. Right in the middle of recounting some piece of backstory, she’ll fold in a paragraph or a page of an interview with Cohen, makes it so integrally part of the narrative that the switch from third to first person flows without making a bubble on the surface of the storytelling stream. Leonard would later immortalize the horse in the song “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” …“I was pretty much a bust as a cowboy [laughs] But I did have a rifle. During winter there, there were these icicles that formed on this slate cliff… and I’d stand in the doorway and shoot icicles for a lot of the time so I got quite good.” And who is this man she’s talking to, and why do I feel cheated? Cohen is a contemporary of Bob Dylan’s, and I know quite a lot about Dylan and can quote a number of his lines and verses. He’s one of my icons. As far as I can tell, Cohen is a better poet, has certainly sustained his quality for longer. A better musician, too. Yet, the first I heard of him was when my Canadian son-in-law gave me a CD as a way of introducing me to some of Canadian culture the Christmas after he married my stepdaughter a few years back. I wish I could say I was immediately taken. The lyrics sounded interesting, but the rumbling, almost chanting voice put me off, dense fool that I was. Am. The book has inspired me to go back and listen again. Then download some more. I didn’t get it. I’m starting to.And who else is this man?One who’s written countless songs covered by countless artists of many styles: “Suzanne,” “Hallelujah,” “Bird on a wire,” “Ain’t no cure for love.” I never knew they were his. He’s also a man who lived his convictions, even as they changed. His records never sold in the U.S., popular though he was in Canada and Europe, so maybe I have a tiny excuse for my ignorance. Every time he started to experience some success as a celebrity (or as a “husband”) he walked away from it, found a bare room, and started writing again. He was, for example, nearing sixty, firmly moored in the middle of Hollywood with a gorgeous movie star fiancée, yet walked up the hill to a monastery on Mt. Baldy, where he spent years in meditation, producing almost nothing public, though he kept writing, encouraged by his favorite monk.Then there was his money—millions by this time—stolen by someone he trusted. Trusted too much. So he had to go back to work, which he did as gladly as he had left it. Somehow he had found some happiness in his dark world. And celebrity came again. Even in America, where he was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame along with Chuck Berry. Two different souls? He didn’t see it that way. “Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news”: I’d like to write a line like that."And that universality is one of his grand secrets.On the last page of I’m Your Man, we leave Leonard a successful man with two kids, grandkids, pushing 80, and working on his next album. Having no intention of retiring. I hope he waits for that long enough for me to catch up with him. I’m way behind.

Vaiva

March 08, 2022

Pažintis su Leonardu Cohenu daugelį metų apsiribojo tik keliomis kažkur ir kažkada girdėtomis jo dainomis - "Thousand Kisses Deep", "Dance Me to the End of Love", "Hallelujah" ir "In My Secret Life". Dalis jų visuomet atrodė kaip romantiškos baladės, kitos tiesiog malonios klausytis. Niekuomet nesigilinant į žodžius ar jų prasmę. Tai, kad dainą "Dance Me to the End of Love" įtakojo (nežinau, ar galima būtų rašyti "įkvėpė") Holokaustas, jos prasmę smarkiai perkeitė ir dabar nejauku tampa išgirdus ją vestuvėse. Į kitų gi Leonardo Coheno dainų žodžių reikšmę, šių dainų kilmę ir atsiradimo istorijas labai gerai palydi ši knyga, kurią nėra labai lengva skaityti ir, bent jau man, teko pasikankinti vis žiūrint - kiek dar liko, kiek tai tęsis ir pan., nes tas nuolatinis depresavimas, melancholinis susitelkimas sąvesp, tas, kartais net atrodantis hipertrofuotai, jautrumas ir tuo pačiu noras būti matomam, garbinamam, tas iš proto varantis dvejojimas ir abejojimas, nepastovumas ir blaškymasis kartais atrodydavo niekuomet nesibaigsiantis tąsymasis ir vilkimasis per puslapius. Nežinau, ar įveikiau šią knygą todėl, kad Leonardo Coheno protėviai yra iš Lietuvos ir norėjosi daugiau sužinoti apie šį litvaką, ar todėl, kad šiaip nemėgstu mesti į šalį knygų, jų nebaigusi, ar todėl, kad ji visgi puikiai parašyta ir išversta (Saulius Tomas Kondrotas), bet puikiai žinau, kad Leonardo Coheno dainos niekuomet neskambės man taip pat, kaip iki tol, kol atverčiau pirmą šios knygos puslapį. Ir tai nereiškia, kad aš jų nesiklausysiu. Bet girdėsiu kitaip.

Bruce

May 01, 2020

It would be little of an exaggeration to call this biography, definitive. Thankfully, eschewing any arty cut-and-paste techniques, it take us chronologically through the life of Leonard Cohen; from his birth on 21st September 1934 to an upper-middle class Jewish family in Montreal up until 2012, the date of the book’s publication. Even at the grand age of 77, Leonard still produced two more albums of music, a book of poetry and undertook a world tour before his death on 7th November 2016. A posthumous album of new material was also released in 2019.Thanks to a long list of interviewees, including the man himself, there is a staggering amount of fascinating detail in every chapter. As well as his musical albums, it details his novels, books of poetry and subjects of some of his best known songs. Many, of course, came from his numerous romantic relationships, including Marianne Ihlen, Suzanne Elrod ( mother of his son Adam and daughter Lorca – but not the Suzanne of the song – that was Suzanne Verdal, who did not have a relationship with Leonard) and at least two women famous in their own right: Joni Mitchell and Rebecca De Mornay.The book also deals with Leonard’s conflicting faiths: His native Judaism and his adopted Buddhism and the period he spent in retreat at a monastery on Mount Baldy.Highly recommended to all Leonard Cohen fans.

Paula

September 18, 2020

" ... é extremamente difícil ser-se Leonard Cohen. Ao mesmo tempo que vai levando a cabo a sua jornada solitária, ele está perpetuamente deitado num leito de espinhos, mas, ainda assim, consegue encontrar por todo o lado janelas para o infinito. 'Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee .../ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in.' (' Todos os corações o amor hão-de alcançar, mas como refugiados ... / Esquece a tua perfeita oferenda / Em todas as coisas há uma fenda / É assim que a luz penetra.') Está tudo dito. É uma maneira ímpar de descrever a sabedoria da compaixão. Um amigo meu que esteve num centro prestigiado de toxicodependentes contou-me que citavam estes versos nos panfletos sobre o processo de recuperação. Leonard ensinou-me muita coisa, é humilde, mas é também feroz. Há nas canções dele um subtexto que nos diz: ' Vamos lá a alcançar a verdade, vamos chegar ao osso. Nada de nos iludirmos.'Páginas 412 e 413

Nadja

March 04, 2019

I’m writing this review from a cemetery, which seems fitting. I came across Leonard’s words and melodies at the right time - I fully immersed myself in them (and in this biography) for the past four months, and have so found one of the most effective anxiety relievers as well as a major artistic influence. Finishing this book feels like a small death. Sylvie Simmons is a very gifted author and set the standards high for biography writing - I gained a lot from reading “I’m Your Man”, far more than I had expected. I’ll miss my time with it.

john

December 10, 2012

I've long been a fan of Leonard Cohen's music, even when being a fan of his was neither popular nor profitable. (Just joking about the "popular and profitable.")I read this book because although I know his songs very well, I knew very little about his life.The book addresses his life very closely, and the author interviewed a amazingly large number of people when researching the book, including Mr. Cohen himself. She even interviewed Mr. Cohen's love interests, all of whom, it seems, still feel that he is a great guy, even though they are "exes."I won't go into the details of his life, but I will point out that I never knew just how popular he was in Canada, the UK, and Europe, nor how neglected he was in the USA.I first heard of him in the late 1970s, when I was 17 or so, and I'd always thought that he had a strong following in the USA, because most people I knew also knew about him and his music. I guess we were a small minority!Of course, many people covered his songs, sometimes before he had recorded his own versions of them. Judy Collins, for example, recorded and made famous his song "Suzanne" before he even made a record.Columbia, his label, didn't even want to release some of his albums, and in the 1980s they passed on "Various Positions," the album that contained one of the most covered songs of the 1990s and 2000s, "Hallelujah," as well as the now well-known song "Dance Me to the End of Love."(I was in a Russian grocery store here in New Jersey once, and they were showing a movie on the store's TV -- from a Russian-language cable network. I was very surprised to see a scene in the movie while I was there in which an accordion player sang that very song, in English, to few people in a bar. I was taken aback!)Of course, now -- it seems since Jeff Buckley's 1994 recording of "Hallelujah" -- Mr. Cohen's music and his own recordings of it are quite famous.It was interesting to learn that for most of his life Mr. Cohen fought terrible depression. For some reason, however, around the turn of this century, it lifted. This fact explains how he has been so active in the past several years.I'd recommend this book for anyone who likes Leonard Cohen's music (or covers of his songs) enough to want to read an interesting book about him and his songs.

Amanda

February 25, 2016

reading this book, i feel like i got to be good friends with Leonard Cohen. Simmons was thorough in her research and compassionate. Leonard Cohen is the patron saint of lovers and poets. I hope he stays on this Earth for a good long time. for anyone who's even the slightest bit interested in the man, his poetry, his music, his lovers, his philosophies and his religion, this book will be unputdownable. i highly recommend it. i had the joy of reading it and stopping to search for videos to check out music that was mentioned. some beautiful memories here. i'm glad Canada can claim him as our own, but really Leonard Cohen belongs to the world. Read this book and listen to his music. Go back and read his poetry, his novels.

Phil

December 31, 2019

"Never meet your heroes" — so the saying goes. It doesn't even have to be face-to-face; be it from across the page or from beyond the grave, they will invariably disappoint. Leonard Cohen's career is unusual to say the least. Known primarily for his contributions to popular music — with his 1984 "Hallelujah" becoming something of a standard, having been covered by over 300 different artists since its release — Cohen actually got his start writing poetry and prose fiction in the 1950s and 1960s, only turning to music in 1966 at the age of 32. Having befriended the iconoclastic Canadian poet Irving Layton early in life and quickly become something of a protégé to him, Cohen soon made a name for himself within the Canadian literary world, with his second book of poetry, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) cementing his reputation as an important voice in poetry. Similarly, his two novels, The Favourite Game (1963) and the controversial Beautiful Losers, quickly established him as one of the more interesting novelists revolting against the stilted tradition of the Confederate poets. Odd as this might sound to modern ears, Cohen turned to music out of financial concern. Although his writing had earned him several prizes in Canada, it wasn't bringing in nearly enough income to provide for him, his then-partner Marianne and her child Axel Jr. So he made plans to travel to Nashville with the intention of cutting a record — apparently a viable source of income in the pre-MTV (and certainly pre-internet!) era. Instead, fate took him to New York, where he met some of the most important musicians of the day — Lou Reed, Nico, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, and of course Bob Dylan — and began his career as a songwriter. Cohen's first album, simply titled Songs of Leonard Cohen was released in 1967 just a short time after his move to New York and kicked off a long and torturous career that would last until the release of You Want it Darker month before his death in 2016.Sylvie Simmons's I'm Your Man has been hailed as the definitive account of Leonard Cohen's life. Having read no others, I am in no position to comment. What is certain is that, beyond being meticulously researched, it is expertly written. Far from playing the silent observer faithfully recording the events of Cohen's life, Simmons weaves in her own often playful and always strikingly evocative voice, with some passages nearly matching the Cohen's own work in their ability to elicit emotion. She chronicles Cohen's life from its beginnings in the upper-middle-class Westmount household where he grew up through to the English boarding-house where he wrote his novels, from to the New York hotels where he began his recording career to the mountaintop Buddhist retreat where he sought to escape it, and finally, from his isolation back out onto the road, where he was forced, in 2009 at the age of 75, to tour once more in order to recover his fortune.All of this, of course, interspersed with healthy doses of the proverbial drugs, sex & rock 'n' roll. From experiments with acid and methamphetamine abuse to frequent affairs with women and one drug-fuelled episode where he judged it appropriate to greet his audience with a Nazi salute, Cohen's life is every bit as chaotic, excessive, and self-destructive as the typical rock star's. The only difference between him and, say, Joplin, Morisson, or Hendrix, is that he lived long enough to grow out of it and, in old age, finally to acquire some semblance of peace and dignity. I suppose this shouldn't have surprised me — as a coworker of mine said to me recently, "It was the 60s! What did you expect?". But Cohen had always been a bit of an outsider in the music world, and as naive as it may have been, I suppose that I hoped to find, mirrored in Cohen's life, the wisdom and reverence, the subtly and the beauty of his words.

Pamela

October 06, 2012

Spectacular. Could not put it down. I've been an enthusiastic & grateful Leonard Cohen fan since my early teens (so, decades) but knew surprisingly little about his life. I was afraid reading the book would make me like Cohen & his work less (as biographies often do) but the effect was the opposite--my respect and awe have increased. Cohen has battled all his life to express his vision as honestly as possible, which has not always made for the happiest life (for him or for those close to him). There is a very vivid picture here, relevant to all artists, of the struggle between privacy and self-promotion, easy (or easier) success and long patience, confidence and terror, vulnerability and control. And it even has a happy ending! Simmons has a mostly light touch and stays out of the way to let her extensive interviewing & synthesis of already-published material do the talking. Can't imagine I"ll read a biography equally as good for a long, long time.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

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While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
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Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

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