Leonard Cohen was a joy. It's suddenly okay to say that now that the Canadian poet, song-writer and increasingly deep-throated singer has died aged 82, just three weeks after what has turned out to be his final album, You Want it Darker , was released. It wasn't always the way. Received wisdom in my assorted teenage lairs was that Laughing Lenny, as I took to calling him in gentle mockery of his deadpan funereal delivery, was the ultimate miseryguts. Growing up in the late 1970s and early 80s, existential crises were being embraced – albeit at a wilfully alienated distance – by assorted post-punk nihilists. Despair, depression and disorder were what seemed to make them tick in the urban wastelands we so self-consciously scowled our way around. Leonard Cohen, however, was as bleak as it gets. Or so we were told. Cohen was one of those names to drop. Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Arthur Lee, Scott Walker and John Cale were others. These were names picked up from music paper eulog
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.