The word “cover” was initially used to describe the once common record-company practice of recording the hit songs of other companies in new versions, often with different audiences in mind. In the 1950s, it was especially used to name recordings by white artists of songs first recorded by African Americans. It now is used to name any recording by a different artist of a song of another artist, but we should not call Judy Collins’s recording of “Suzanne” a cover, because hers was the first recording of Cohen’s song. Cohen was a songwriter before he was a recording artist. But, late in his career, covers of his songs proliferated, and they did play a significant role in gaining Cohen new audiences. Alan Light has documented the significance of covers by John Cale and Jeff Buckley in popularizing “Hallelujah,” making it eventually Cohen’s most recorded song. Several tribute albums, including I’m Your Fan, also contributed to a resurgence of interest in Cohen after his recording career had hit bottom with Columbia’s refusal to release Various Positions. This chapter considers the role of covers in the public’s reception of Cohen’s songs, and the influence of those cover versions on Cohen’s own art.

It had been some time since the Debs had met. The collective had splintered in many different directions, growing up, moving on. TC and the author still had the band and so a gang of sorts, but school was out for most of the others. Musky had been their roadie for a few early gigs but had drifted away to a new circle of friends and acquaintances. The second new song by Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers caught the author’s attention for different reasons. ‘Wasted Life’ has become a much-loved standard in the SLF canon. Cited by many as an anthem for youth seeking to escape the suffocating attentions of paramilitaries, the simplicity of its message seemed appealing. To beat them at their own game, Ruefrex had to get better at everything – song writing, stage craft and performance.

For much of his adult life, Leonard Cohen studied Rinzai Zen Buddhism with Roshi Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, living for a number of years at his monastery on Mt. Baldy in California and eventually being ordained a Buddhist monk. Cohen also studied for a shorter period with the Hindu master Ramesh S. Balsekar in Mumbai, learning the discipline of Vedanta. While these Asian religious teachings were very important in his life, there is little explicit reference to them in his songs. Yet there is a general asceticism that Cohen’s songs often express that is consistent with these disciplines and Cohen’s interest in them. They therefore form an important context for understanding Cohen’s work, which this chapter will explore.

Dave Robinson, who had continued to hold out the prospect of an American adventure for Ruefrex, citing their enduring popularity on the US college radio circuit, believed that the forthcoming Pogues tour there was an ideal vehicle for this. The big news the Stiff offices had to impart was that Ruefrex were to perform live on The Tube, a popular TV music show that served as a showcase for many emerging 80s bands, as part of a politics-themed edition around the Red Wedge initiative. They had been allocated a PR minder, an indefatigable woman called Sonnie Rae, ostensibly there to keep the band and Clarkey, out of trouble. As soon as they started the show, Clarkey deviated from his agreed stage routine, climbed on the drum riser and launched himself into the air. On the train journey back to London, the author felt lonelier than ever before.

During the Twelfth of July celebrations in Belfast, when the town was almost exclusively full of partying uber-prods, the author would somehow manage to meet, and leave with, the only Catholic girl amongst the red, white and blue throng. Around this time, the author and his punk band Ruefrex were working with a film crew from BBC Northern Ireland on Cross the Line, a documentary about the band that featured live performances in the now notorious Tyndale Community Centre. It was the first of many cross-community ventures that Ruefrex was to play around the province. But it was Turf Lodge that steeled their resolve not to dilute or shy away from their mission to challenge the scourge of sectarianism.

All of the evidence seems to suggest that Leonard Cohen’s fan base had more women than men. Perhaps Leonard’s focus on desire, on wanting rather than having, enhanced his appeal to women. Women featured prominently in Cohen’s life and music – as objects of desire, as muses, as torturers, as partners, bandmates, audiences, and as fans. Cohen’s representations of women’s desire make his songs so appealing to female listeners. Arnet’s title comes from something Cohen said in 1968: “I wish the women would hurry up and take over … I really am for the matriarchy.” His songs express this point by giving us female characters who have agency. Numerous great women artists, from Judy Collins to Nina Simone to Tori Amos, have recorded Cohen’s songs and in various ways made them their own.

In this chapter, Thomas Paul Burgess relates how he met Tom Coulter – ‘TC’ – who was, by some distance, the best street fighter in Loyalist North Belfast. TC was the leader of the ‘Debs’, short for Debonairs. TC was the author’s best mate, even though he was a year older and a few classes academically higher than him at Belfast Boys Model School in the north of the city. TC boasted family links with the working-class Shankill Road. At that time, the Shankill was increasingly suffering from the violence of street riots, bombs and a brutal redevelopment scheme that ripped the heart out of the community. So his mother sought to secure a better future by applying to the recently established Northern Ireland Housing Executive to be rehoused elsewhere.

Leonard Cohen came of age in the 1950s, prior to the youth rebellions of the 1960s. Nevertheless, his emergence as a songwriter and recording artist in the later 1960s occurred in the midst of the counterculture of the period. If Cohen always dressed like a visitor to that scene from an earlier time, he often behaved in a way that was very much in keeping with the youth culture of the time. His relationships and representations of them are an expression of what was called the “sexual revolution.” His use of drugs, while not a major subject of his songs, was consistent with the habits of the rock stars of that moment. His search for spiritual and personal fulfillment over and above traditional markers of success illustrates another dimension of the counterculture. This chapter explores Cohen’s complicated relationship to this cultural phenomenon, which involves mutual influence and a certain distance.

Sean O’Hagan, Microdisney co-founder and the author’s new flatmate, was an unlikely member of an ostensibly (post) punk rock band, for his influences were The Beach Boys, The Band and Van Dyke Parks. Sean made the author realise that other musicians like Sean were trying to cultivate a public profile themselves. In essence, there was an unspoken resentment, a belief that they had paid their dues and deserved the author’s new-found success more than he did. The author and his band depended on their fellow housemates for the backline - amps, PA, drums, and so on. Cuthbertson fronted the money required and Jonty, the bass player from Kissed Air, made the phone calls and did the legwork. Neil, Jonty and the author became the Ruefrex management team. There was mounting interest from several major labels but they were all reserving judgement, until they could catch the live act for themselves.

The poet who seems to have had the largest role in determining Cohen’s decision to practice that art was the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, whom Cohen first read as teenager. Cohen’s song “Take This Waltz” is a translation of one of Lorca’s poems, and Cohen named his daughter Lorca. Another influence was the thirteenth-century Persian poet, Rumi, whom Cohen called “probably the greatest ascetic religious poet – in the same league as King David.” When Cohen studied briefly at Columbia University, he encountered the Beat movement, which influenced him in a number of ways, though it had little impact on the form of his poems. His writing always had a broad range of reference, from the Bible and ancient mythologies to modernism and postmodernism. His novel Beautiful Losers is reckoned a manifestation of international postmodernism, and, if Cohen’s first literary contexts were Montreal and Canada, his songs and records have had a large international audience. This chapter moves Cohen from a Canadian to a more global context, exploring the cosmopolitan origins of his work.

Leonard Cohen was born into a prominent and observant Jewish family. His maternal grandfather was a rabbi who lived with the family in his retirement and at whose knee Cohen studied. Cohen felt some estrangement from the Jewish community in which he was raised, as The Favourite Game suggests when it describes its protagonist as “suspect” among certain commercial Jews, and yet with Gentiles he “often broke into little Hasidic dances around the tea table.” Despite his unwillingness to be the good Jewish son who follows his father into the family business and temple, Cohen always identified as Jewish. He was reluctant to talk about the religious aspects of his work, but it is hard to think of another popular songwriter who drew so explicitly on the Jewish tradition. The use he made of tradition was often not explicitly religious, transforming Biblical stories and images for secular purposes, while religious concerns often are expressed in modern, seemingly secular contexts. Several of Cohen’s songs, such as “If It Be Your Will” and “Who by Fire,” draw extensively from Jewish prayers. This chapter explores the influence of Judaism on Cohen’s work, and the expression that work gives to the experience of Judaism.

Leonard Cohen has been the subject of at least five video documentaries about his life and work, beginning as early as 1965, with Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, and continuing up to the present with Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love (2019). These different narratives of Cohen’s life give us conflicting perspectives, and this chapter explores how they respond to different cultural moments and how they construct differing images of Cohen’s life and work.

Unlike with Judaism and Buddhism, Cohen did not participate in the Christian religion, but he was raised in a predominantly Christian city and nation. Just as Cohen found no conflict between his Zen and his Judaism, he does not experience his Judaism as an obstacle to his appreciation of Christianity. His work frequently draws on Christian imagery, especially the figure of Jesus, and texts, especially the book of Revelation. “Suzanne,” the first song of his to be recorded, has an entire verse built around the story of Jesus walking on the water. “The Butcher” is about Jesus’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God, while “Last Year’s Man” refers to Revelation in the line, “Babylon the bride.” And since Christianity is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, Cohen’s references to these texts are also relevant to Christianity. This chapter explores Cohen’s use of Christianity in his work and discuss the ways in which it reflects on this religious tradition.