Call him a dabbler, call him a dilettante, but Leonard Cohen’s worn a lot of hats throughout his artistic career. Novelist, pop star, playwright, poet, painter, Buddhist monk. In honour of the Leonard Cohen International Festival this weekend, Vue asked some of the artists involved how they first fell for Cohen’s work—and how they prefer their Cohen.

 

 

“The first time I really encountered Leonard Cohen was in the early ’90s, on a rainy day,  watching the NFB documentary, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen. That lead me to the poetry, and then the novels, and then lastly the music. So I think I came at him backwards, though as soon as I heard the songs, I knew I’d heard them before. But the first reason I got into Leonard Cohen at all was the idea that writing, or the life of the mind, could get you laid. Being kind of a nerd growing up in Leduc, I thought unless you have a wicked pick-up truck or play hockey at a very high level, you’re never going to have sex in your life. So seeing someone who’s frail, and sickly looking, and who seemed old even when he was young, stooped over and hollow-chested, I loved that. It turned everything on its head. 
 

“I remember one of the professors at the U of A saying that she’d met Leonard Cohen when he was young, in his 30s, and he said to her, ‘I’m going to be a famous poet.’ And at the time she thought, “That’s ridiculous.’ But he did it.”

 

 

 

“I had a weird childhood in a way. We weren’t allowed to watch TV, so music became increasingly important to me. My parents had a lot of old records,  and from a very early age I learned how to operate the record player, and Leonard Cohen was always a staple. It’s funny, as a kid, all the guts and angles and double entendres of his poetry didn’t really sink in like they did later, but still, I grew up thinking that was the normal way of writing songs. And I didn’t even know he was a novelist or anything until much later, when I started thinking, ‘Who is this guy that we’ve been listening to all this time?’ 

 

“As I get older, I find there’s always another layer of meaning in his songs to uncover. They just keep getting better.”

 

 

 

“I moved to Canada in 1987 from the US, to take a job as Chair of Pathology at the U of A, and I think I was more prepared for the job then the country. I didn’t know much about Canada, and I felt kind of uneasy here. That summer we took a car trip in the Okanagan, and I heard Leonard on As It Happens, him and his music, and people talking about him, and I was just fascinated. So my interest in him really corresponds to my moving here from the States 21 years ago, and trying to understand Canada better. Years later, I was at a [medical conference] in Scotland and it seemed like everybody in the country was talking about Robbie Burns Day, and I began thinking that there could be a similar worldwide phenomenon of people celebrating Leonard Cohen’s birthday. 

 

“As far as whether I’m most a fan of his music or his books, having met him over a few days in 2005, I must admit that we talked mostly about writing and words, so I guess I do regard him principally as a writer.”

 

 

 

“My dad had a big record collection when I was a kid: Neil Young and Tom Waits and Dylan and Leonard Cohen and all that. I remember that I was always struck by the cover art off of Songs From a Room, or maybe it was Songs of Love and Hate. Anyway, I was kind of struck by, ‘Who on earth is this dour-looking guy?’ and it was quite enticing and romantic. It made you want to open up that sleeve and listen to the record. I think I was just smitten from the first song.