An excerpt from David Cohen’s Book of Cohen, featuring Steve Braunias and musings on erotic salvation. “Just listen to that,” Steve Braunias says to me. It’s 1987 and we’re having lunch at the Cricketer’s Arms, a Wellington pub. Steve, a fellow music writer, rarely looks so good at this time in the day — or … Read more
The little-known New Zealand-born novelist Redmond Frankton “Bim” Wallis was on the Greek island of Hydra with the young Canadian. A thinly veiled autobiographical fiction offers an intriguing first-hand account of Cohen on the brink of the international renown that would make him one of the most significant literary and musical figures of the coming decades, write … Read more
A week after Leonard Cohen passed away in November, Bic Runga recalled memorising his songwriting advice, driving to his monastery and supporting him on tour in 2010. Originally published November 15, 2016 There aren’t too many artists I would call myself fanatical about, but Leonard Cohen is one of them. When I first started to write … Read more
Leonard Cohen has died. Sean Donnelly, Samuel Flynn Scott and Bill Manhire reflect on his music and life. I stepped into an avalanche It covered up my soul In trying to write something about ‘Avalanche’, I’m listening to it and, again, I’m just floored by it. As a songwriter, I want to ask him which … Read more
Leonard Cohen has died. Bic Runga recalls memorising his songwriting advice, driving to his monastery and supporting him on tour in 2010. There aren’t too many artists I would call myself fanatical about, but Leonard Cohen is one of them. When I first started to write songs, I memorised huge chunks of an interview he … Read more
So Leonard Cohen has died. It is, says Simon Wilson, the end of the Bacchanal. When I was a boy of 15 I was infatuated with a girl who was perfect in every way except one: she was not infatuated with me. I know. Still, she did like me and she was kind, and she did … Read more