![]() The record company was initially reluctant to release the song. Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah,” first released in 1984, attracted little attention at first except from diehard fans. I also turned to a rigorous and profound study of the religions and the philosophies, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.” ![]() Since then I’ve taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Welbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I was 60 years old at the time, just a kid with a crazy dream. “It’s a long time since I’ve stood up on the stage,” he said. ![]() ![]() Yeats is supposed to have said of a compatriot, “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” During a concert last April in Los Angeles, Cohen made a similar comment. I’ve wondered if the Canadian-born Cohen has some Irish blood. Perhaps the melancholic Irishman in me is drawn by the heartbreaking songs produced by his resonant baritone voice, at times indistinguishable from a husky growl. The Jewish singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has been mischievously dubbed “the poet laureate of pessimism” and “the godfather of gloom.” He does not write the kind of songs guaranteed to get a party off to a rousing start. ![]()
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