Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Michael Posner on Leonard Cohen: Toronto Mike'd #744

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Mike speaks with Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years author Michael Posner about Leonard Cohen.

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from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is author of Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, The Early Years, Michael Posner. that she's half crazy but that's why you wanna be there and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from

China and just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her then she gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him he said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open

Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom Like a stone And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you'll trust him For he's touched your perfect body with his mind Now Suzanne takes your hand

And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our Lady of the harbor And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning

They are leaning out for love they will lean that way forever while Suzanne holds the mirror and you want to travel with her and you want to travel

blind and you know you can trust her for she's touched your perfect body with her mind. Welcome, Michael. Thank you. Nice to be here. Now, from one Michael to another, were you always Michael or have you ever gone by Mike? Yeah, I went by Mike from the age of about 8 to 20.

Then I graduated to Michael. So is it just to, you know, you felt Michael was an adult name and Mike was a kid name? Was that the... More or less, yeah, more or less. I've been asking that question since I had Michael Landsberg on and I was always curious because I've always been Mike. And Michael Landsberg said, Mike, that's the guy who fixes your car.

Yeah, or in my case, the plumbing. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Michael, your new book is titled Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, the Early Years. What sparked your interest in Leonard Cohen? Well, you know, listen, he was so obviously a major cultural figure on the landscape. I had done an earlier book on Mordecai Richler, which was also oral biography. I was sort of looking around for who else I might do. Leonard was still around in 2005. And so I thought I would approach him and see if he might cooperate. When I did Mordecai, he had just passed away. So he wasn't around. But I thought if Leonard were around around he could open a lot of

doors for me and make contributions on his own and so i approached him and he was very kind and he said not a good time interesting idea but not a good time and so um so i just let it pass and uh and then many years went by uh he went back on the road, as you know, for about five years and made a lot of, did a lot of concerts, made a lot of money. And I was busy with other things. And then when he died in November 2016, I thought, hey, maybe I can resurrect that idea. idea. So I did. I just thought, here's a really interesting guy who lived a very interesting, complicated, multifaceted life in various dimensions and knew a lot of people and met a lot of people. And I thought there's got to be some interesting stories out there. So that's why. Now, it's the early years. So how many books are going to be in this complete set when it's all said and done well at least three uh Simon and Schuster has committed to three uh I'm a little concerned that I have a lot of material uh I've spent, you know, I'm in my fourth year on this and I've talked to, you know, I'm north of 520 people now. So there's a lot of material. They've committed to three. I think it'll probably be three. It may be more. So tell me, so we know this first book is out, The Early Years,. By the way, what does it take us to?

How old is Leonard when the first book kind of concludes? Early years is a bit of a cheat, I must say, since he's 36 when it ends. So it's a little more than the early years. But you needed enough material to make it interesting for the reader. And it ends at the end of 1970 when he's just completed his first tour as a professional singer. So we thought that was a timely moment to end it. So that's out now. People can literally buy that right now at fine bookstores everywhere.

But I'm just curious, the scheduling calendar, like when does the second book drop and then the third book drop? Well, in a perfect world, the second book will drop next October, a year from now, or November, right around this time at least. And the third book will drop the following year.

So it's just, you know, they don't want to overload the market too soon with each book. And that's the schedule for the moment. Now, on this show, we speak often about Anne Murray, because when I was a kid, I was in love with her children's album, Hippo in My Bathtub. Now, I know you wrote an autobiography on Anne Murray, and I know she's actually in the book. I noticed she wrote a little something in here. Would Anne-Marie take your call?

And if you suggested to Anne-Marie that she appear on Toronto Mic'd, do you think she might do it? Well, that's a self-interested question. I would say possibly. I mean, she is retired. She doesn't perform anymore. She's happily retired. But if you just wanted to shoot the breeze and go over some old stories with her and, you know, what was it like to work with Kenny Loggins, etc.

You know, maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm happy to ask on your behalf. All right. Yeah. Self-interest. You're right. Of course. I had to sneak that in now and early because how often do I. It's fine. yeah maybe I'm happy to ask on your behalf alright yeah self interest you're right of course

I had to sneak that in now and early because how often do I it's fine we'll see we'll talk about that one offline so you mentioned 500 plus conversations and I like like I read this book and I liked how it was you know

his family his friends contemporaries even Leonard himself it's just simply their words collected to kind of tell the story. So is it basically the 500 plus conversations since Leonard passed, so over the last four years or so? Well, for the most part, except for Leonard's words himself, which are drawn from other interviews on radio or television or in print, there's a few from his Norwegian lover and muse and girlfriend, Marianne Illin, who I've taken from her, a biography of her, with the permission of the autobiographer. There's a few from Irving Leighton that I took with permission from the journalist

who did an interview with Leighton. So, you know, here and there I've taken from other material, but 90 or 95% of the material is based on interviews conducted between January 2017 and today. Okay, we will very shortly we'll get into Irving Leighton and also, of course, Marianne. But recently, I was witness to a great conversation between you and my friend Ralph Ben-Murgy, and that was for Ben-Murgy's podcast, Not That Kind of Rabbi. And naturally, with Ralph, there was a great deal of focus on the role of Judaism in Leonard's life, so in his young life especially. But maybe, can we start there? What was the role of Judaism in young Leonard Cohen's life? You know, he grew up in this sort of conservative, leaning to orthodox family, very prominent,

affluent family, the royalty of Montreal, of Jewish Montreal, if there were such a thing at the time in the 30s and 40s. His mother's father was a distinguished rabbinic scholar. His grandfather was a, one great-grandfather was the chief rabbi of Montreal. His father's father was an extraordinarily successful entrepreneurial businessman who had interests in various walks of life, but who was also very actively involved in the Jewish community, helped build the shul, the synagogue that Leonard attended as a child. The family had a block of three rows near the front of the synagogue that they would go to regularly on high holidays and other festive occasions. He was, when his grandfather, when his mother's father was quite old, he came to live with him for a period, a year or more.

And he would take Leonard and read from the book of Isaiah and other books with him. You know, it was a conventional Jewish upbringing. They observed the holidays. He was drawn to the liturgy. He was drawn to the music, particularly, I think, the cantor's music and the choir's music in the synagogue. I think it, and he was drawn to the biblical stories, the stories, you know, the King David story, the Samson and Delilah story, whatever it was, there are some great stories, as you know, in the Bible. He was drawn to all of that. And it's, you know, you kind of, you absorb it osmotically when you're a child. And I think he did.

Now, Irving Leighton, you mentioned. Tell us, tell us firstly, I think there might be some listeners who are like, who's Irving Leighton? So firstly, tell us maybe to begin with, who is Irving Leighton? And what was his influence on young Leonard Cohen, especially in those early years? So Leonard was interested in poetry from the time he was 15 or 16, or if not earlier. He started to read, and Irving Leighton was an older, like probably 20 years older than Leonard, if not more, a major Canadian poet, Jewish, of Romanian extraction,

came out of the Jewish ghetto in Montreal, of Romanian extraction, came out of the Jewish ghetto in Montreal, a very feisty, combative, boastful, larger-than-life figure, kind of Canadian version of Norman Mailer, if you will, if you know that analogy. Very, very self-confident or outward outwardly so who a guy who believed in you know seizing life by the throat and squeezing hard you know living living life you know whatever it was and he had a profound effect on his he taught he never taught it at mcgill he later taught i think at sir george williams university but he never but he had a profound effect on his students who were captivated by him and mesmerized by him. And Leonard loved this guy because they would, they would get together. Leonard would go over there on a Friday night and he and Irving would sit with a book of poems by Keats or by Shelley or by John Donne, and they would basically go line by line analyzing a poem. Why this word and not that word? And so I don't know that he technically taught Leonard much.

I think Leonard may have learned a fair bit about the technical stuff from him. But I think more importantly, Irving taught him the importance of living life with gusto. And in his discreet, self-effacing way, Leonard did exactly that. Now, we think of Leonard Cohen as a singer-songwriter. But in these early years, and I guess, are we in what, with the early 60s here? Is that about where we are, just to give it a little context here? But he was a writer. He's a writer until basically 65, 66, yeah. Gotcha, right. And I'm going to get Leonard to Greece, and he spends his years in Hydra.

Am I saying that right, Hydra? Hydra, like with a Y, Hydra. Okay, so the H is silent. Right. Hydra. And this is where his muse, Marianne, enters the fray. Please tell me everything you can about Leonard's relationship with the aforementioned Marianne at this time.

So she's a young Norwegian beauty with a young child. When Leonard meets her in the spring of 1960 on the island of Idra, she is separated. He's a young guy who's interested in women, and he approaches her one day in a grocery store on the island in the port and invites her to join his table for a cup of coffee or a drink and bingo, they begin to have a relationship pretty quickly thereafter. And their relationship continues through most of the 60s in a very on-again, off-again fashion. There are times when he comes back to Canada to make a little money freelancing. She goes back to Norway with the baby to see her family. He is not particularly faithful to her in terms of the domestic bed,

and she is not particularly faithful to him in terms of the domestic bed. And this provokes jealousy and frustration and anger and resentment and ultimately leads to their complete separation, but it takes several years. In the meantime, the positive side of the relationship is that she was very nurturing, very supportive, very encouraging, made for him a lovely kind of home that was very orderly and neat and functioned on routine that he seemed to like and abetted his writing. And they were closely connected, even at the hip. I mean, even after he meets and starts to live with the second major woman in his adult life, Suzanne Elrod, he's still connected viscerally, emotionally to Marianne and remains so in a fashion throughout his life.

Is it fair to, I mean, we've seen this term applied to Marianne often, but Marianne is a muse of sorts for Leonard? very creative period through the mid-1960s. She was there when he was writing the first novel, The Favorite Game. She was there when he was writing the second novel, Beautiful Losers, a period during which, as you may know, he went on a kind of frenetic binge, driven by speed or mandrax and LSD and other drugs, and would be awake for days at a time and basically crashed after he finished the novel and had to be hospitalized and nurtured back to care. She was the one who helped nurture him and bring him back to health. Very much amused to him. And they stayed in touch, as you know, right? Basically until their dying days. Well, I'm going to quote something.

You'll go there. Yeah, I'm going to. Well, I know your book is about the early years. And I was thinking we're going to have to have you back once a year until we finish this thing. How about twice a year? Yeah, maybe we'll need twice a year, actually. There's a lot of like he's a very complex guy and fascinating we'll need twice a year, actually.

He's a very complex guy and fascinating character. And of course, he's Canadian, so there's that natural gravitation to learn more. But a couple of things here before I kind of quote something Leonard said when Marianne passed just shortly before Leonard himself passed. But the song, So Long, Marianne, and we're going to talk about Suzanne shortly, but such a fantastic appearing on Leonard's first album. Still a classic, great standard, wonderful song that sort of comes out of this relationship.

Yes, it is. As you may know know the song was originally titled come on marianne um and and i think at some point in the in the creation of that song or the recording of that song it became clear that in fact uh it it wasn't it wasn't an injunction to to restart the relationship uh or reinigorate it in any sense. It was actually a goodbye song. And so it became So Long, Marianne, instead. But yes, it's one of his classic songs.

Loved the world around. And when Marianne passes, and I believe it's 2016, I want to say, but I'm doing this from memory. I don't know. It's very shortly before Leonard himself passes. So it's either 20. She dies in July and he dies in November. Yeah.

Right. And then Leonard writes that note. And just one line from that note is, uh, I'm just a little behind you close enough to take your hand. So it's really quite, quite moving to hear those words from him at that point that, that this Marianne sounds like the love of his life, in a sense. Yeah, I don't want to overdo it.

There's a kind of little story attached to all of this. There was a guy who was helping to, I guess, shepherd Marianne through the final days of her life in Oslo. He reached out to Leonard on her behalf to see if he might have a final message for her. He sent the final message. The gentleman was then interviewed on CBC Radio, in fact, about the message, and he didn't have it in front of him, so he kind of embellished it. And so the message that went out to the world was the rather more embellished version. And it can certainly contain the essence of what Leonard wanted to communicate, but it was a little more flowery or ornate than Leonard might have originally intended.

He certainly, you know, he would stand by every word of the original message. And it is very touching and very poignant, I agree. And you can't let the facts get in the way of a good story here, right, Michael? No, exactly, exactly. As Leonard said, my pen never lies, but then again, I write fiction. Fantastic. All right, let's do a little bit of real talk here, because as you're reading, you know, he's a legendary. I guess the kind word would be Casanova. I think that's the kind term.

The term you might hear applied might all you could also use the word horndog. That's my term for it. But he's definitely love the ladies. And in your opinion, Michael, like would would Leonard have survived the Me Too era? It's a fair question. Mostly yes, I think, because he was almost infallibly charming and seductive. There was nothing... I mean, there are a couple of stories, not in this particular book, but there are a couple of stories where he's a little less than charming and

seductive where he's a little too direct and blunt about it. But you'll have to wait for book two for that one or those. But most of the time he, he, he had a gift, I think, which was to be able to read the mood of the woman he was with and to determine what his tactic or strategy would be in terms of seduction. And he was very good at it. And he was able to focus entirely on the woman in a way. There's a picture you'll see in a later book where he meets a woman at a dinner, an author's dinner. And she's a married woman.

She's happily married and there's no possibility of seduction. But the picture shows him, you know, it would almost be a candidate for Seinfeld's close talker, you know, episode where he's literally in her face and has an entire attention is is centered on her yeah he was a horndog he was a Casanova his former personal manager who the one who's accused of stealing all his money claims that he told her I think this was she claims that he told her, I think this was, she claims that he told her that he slept with 4,000 women. But I think if you do the math, you're going to say that's almost impossible. But who knows? Yeah, those, I get, you know, in the back of his baseball card or whatever, those are some, you know, intimidating statistics there. I don't even, there. I can't even do the math on that one. But it is interesting how, looking back at Leonard Cohen's era, he's a charismatic

ladies' man. And in 2020, you kind of interpret it through a different lens. Yeah, you definitely would. Although I you know, I've interviewed maybe 20 women who have never previously been interviewed who had relationships with Leonard. Some of them are in book one, some in later books. And almost all of them, even if they somehow were emotionally scarred or hurt by him, only emerged from that experience with positive things to say. It's extraordinary, really. You know, they don't want to speak ill of him because he gave them so much, even if it was a weekend or a month or six months or whatever it was.

He had a certain magic with women. There was humor, there was tenderness, solicitousness, and I can't pronounce that word. Join the club. He was very giving, a very giving guy. So, yes, I think the mood of the current moment, the Me Too era, would tarnish his reputation somewhat,

but not entirely. Yeah, right, and there is something to be said about good old-fashioned adult consensual relations, right? Absolutely, absolutely. All right, let's now, and also he might write a song about you, so there's always that possibility. I know we talked about So Long, Marianne, and then, of course, Suzanne, which I played at the top of this conversation. Can you tell us about Suzanne and Leonard meeting Suzanne and that relationship?

Yeah, just a parenthetical remark in response to what you just said, which is that there are many women who will claim that that song, whatever that song was, was written for me. Right. Anyway, Suzanne. Suzanne Elrod remains to me, and maybe I'll have a chance to solve it as I go forward in this process, but she remains to me a little bit of a mystery. What we do know is that she comes out of a kind of a Jewish family who was connected to the mafia in some way in New York and Florida. Early life in New York City, raised in her teenage years in Florida. in her teenage years in Florida. Maybe Jewish, maybe not. It's actually not clear.

She ends up at a Scientology convention in New York City at the age of 19 and bends over the table to register, and Leonard is positioned behind her and likes the shape of her figure. And, and, and invites and lo and behold, they are soon together. And so that's the spring of 1969. You know, by the fall they're, they're living together. He brings her to Montreal, introduces her around, and they essentially start their life together, except that Leonard is, as I may have said elsewhere, a bit of a wanderer, both literally and figuratively. And so there are many other women in his life, and he's on the move to Idra or or London or Paris or New York and so it's a strained

relationship. It's a strained relationship. In 72, Suzanne and Leonard give birth to their son Adam and in 1974 to their daughter Lorca and raise them as best they can. But it's a tempestuous relationship. piano plays softly I loved you in the morning Our kisses deep and warm Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm There's many love before us, I know that we are not new

In city and in forest they smiled like me and you But now it's come to distances and both of us must pry Your eyes are soft with sorrow Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. We're not saying goodbye here. We're saying hello to a new sponsor. This is very exciting. Welcome, Joanne Glutish. And I'm going to let a longtime FOTM, if you've ever been to a TMLX, you've likely met her, but I'll let Sheila introduce us to Joanne. Hi, Mike.

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Thanks Sheila And now back to my conversation with Michael Posner. Your eyes are soft with sorrow Hey, that's no way to say goodbye You mentioned, you know,ard was at a scientology convention and you know famously we know about his uh flirtation if you will with uh buddhism and we open this conversation talking about the role of judaism in leonard's life uh before i get back to suzanne uh is Suzanne, he's a wanderer when it comes to relationships and his, you know, etc. But also it seems to be with religions, he seems to be a bit of a philanderer. That's a fair comment. Yeah, I don't know philandering. I think it was more a searching.

Like, I think that was an authentic search. And maybe to some extent, the womanizing and Casanova and maybe to some extent the womanizing and Casanova behavior was also a bit of a search. But in terms of religion, the Scientology period is not long. It's, you know, a year later, he's done with it. I think they wanted to exploit his name, and as soon as they indicated they wanted to exploit his name, he was gone. But he did meet L. Ron Hubbard, apparently, and he actually never spoke badly about the basic core principles of Scientology. Even later in life, he said, there is something there, you know. there is something there, you know. And so he turned away, but he didn't denigrate it. The Zen Buddhism thing begins to happen in the early 1970s. That'll form part of the second book. And he's completely smitten by the guru who leads the Rinzai-ji Zen Buddhism movement,

Rinzai-ji Zen Buddhism movement, a guy named Yoshu Sasaki Roshi. And he's not particularly drawn, Zen isn't a religion to begin with, it's more a way of life. And he's not particularly drawn to its principles or even its rituals, although he obeys those rituals very, very completely. rituals, you know, very, very completely, he's drawn to Sasaki Roshi, who he regards as something of a genius and a life force who is able to penetrate your inner soul in a way that few men are, and so he worships at his feet. He becomes Leighton, you might have said, Irving Leighton, the poet, might have been kind of substitute father figure for Leonard, who lost his own father at the age of nine. And Sasaki Roshi becomes a bit of a father figure for him. Now, just a quick return to Scientology, of course, in Famous Blue Raincoat, he's asking aloud,

did you ever go clear? That's right. Yeah, that's a famous line from famous blue raincoat uh so that you know that's written i guess he's finished with with scientology by the time he writes that or no he's he's right in the midst of it actually when he writes that it's four in the morning the end of december i'm writing you now just to see if you're better. New York is cold, but I like where I'm living. There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert you're living for nothing now I hope you're keeping some kind of record Yes And Jane came By with a lock of your hair She said that you gave it to her That night that you planned to go clear Did you ever go clear? Oh, the last time we saw you You looked so much older Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the

shoulder. You'd been to the station to meet every train. I hope you're enjoying my conversation with Michael Posner. We're talking about Leonard Cohen. His book is called Untold Stories, The Early Years.

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So you see, if you date or spend a weekend with Leonard, you might make it into a song, but the religions have a chance to get in there as well, if you call it. Well, there's a lot of Judaism in some of those songs, and a lot of Christianity as well, actually. All right, Mike, I'm going to play a little song, and we're not going to hear Leonard Cohen's voice, but I think this will be a good way to segue into singer-songwriter Leonard

Cohen, but here, bear with me here, a little bit of Judy Collins. Oh, great. piano plays Susanne takes you down To a place by the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night forever And you know that she's half crazy

That's why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China. And just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her, she gets you on her wavelength and lets the river answer that you've always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you think you'll maybe trust her for she's touched your perfect body with her mind

that of course is some judy collins suzanne and i thought this sort of this seems to be a sort of the gateway to uh leonard as musician uh So tell us all, please, a little bit about Judy Collins and how she influences the songs of Leonard Cohen, if you will. Judy is really, it deserves a lot of credit. You kind of wonder what would have happened if Judy Collins had not recorded three of his songs very early on. He was a guy trying to make an impact on the music world and not doing terribly well, although he was gaining a bit of a following in Canada, but he was trying to crack New York. He had a manager.

That manager, Mary Martin, by chance was a friend of Judy Collins. And she said, look, you've got to meet this guy. He's a poet, but he's also a songwriter and he's written some songs. Will you listen to them? And she said, sure. And as it happened, Judy was in the midst of finishing an album and needed some material, new material for the album to complete it and and so leonard came over one day they had had dinner i think it was the next day that he actually played these songs for her stranger song uh masters the master the master it is and and of course the suzanne song and she loved them all and and she played them for her producer and he loved them them, and Leonard was a way to the races. And then she would invite him to appear.

She got him onto a gig at the famous Folk Festival, the Newport Folk Festival. She got him onto a stage at a benefit concert in New York City at the Fillmore East, I think, or what became the Fillmore East. She catalyzed his career. Now, maybe somebody else might have done that, arguably, but she's the one who did it. And because of her prior fame, that song, Suzanne, became his calling card, essentially. And people knew that song, and they didn't know who Leonard Cohen was, but they knew that song you know and and they didn't know who leonard

cohen was but they knew that song because of judy cohen so she's she's an enormous figure in his life and there's a part of your book where you know leonard correctly so wonders like who is he to be singing with that voice like like he doesn't sound like a singer. He's not your typical singer. And Judy sort of gives him sort of some encouragement there. She does. You know, Leonard took the view, and I think this is an interesting point, really, because, you know, Joe Cocker wasn't arguably much of a singer. Tom Waits is arguably not much of a singer. There's a lot of people who aren't great singers qua singer.

But, you know, there's a joke somewhere in the book where his former manager said, Les, you know, I want to, you know, he's a New York lawyer. If I want to hear singers, I'll go to the Metropolitan Opera. You know, but Leonard would say what's important about the singer is the authenticity in the voice. And he had that song, which is the singer must die for the lie in his voice. And what he's basically saying is that if you're just standing up there singing, well, that's great, but let's deal with real things. Let's get to the heart of the matter and be honest and authentic and legitimate and genuine.

And so the voice isn't technically great his guitar skills are middling at best but the voice is authentic right and and he and he delivers that authenticity and he delivered it night after night after night and and you could see it in the response of the audience they loved him well people said dylan couldn't sing too right so it's like a lot right exactly yeah yeah i mean for my money you know and i mean i've heard the same thing about neil young like people are like and i'm like it's just something the authentic voice is really what you know you you said it what what what we're craving how about getty lee yeah you're right it's what a polarizing voice that is it's like some people say it's like nails on the chalkboard i'm'm like, really? Okay.

I know that that band is huge. I mean, they're enormously successful. I have trouble listening to it, but that's just me. But it's very subjective. Yeah, there's lots of people, but it's a totally authentic voice. Yes, and Michael, tell us when you first saw Leonard Cohen perform live. I saw him at the University of Manitoba in January 1967, when he was just starting as a singer. The guy who booked the act, he booked him, thought he was coming to

read poetry. And Leonard said, no, no, I'm going to actually sing. And he did, and he was completely mesmerizing well um and and then i didn't see him for years and years and years i mean i heard his record i heard his music um i saw him again late in life in toronto at the what was then the air canada center one of the best concerts i've ever seen, I think, frankly. Wow. Yeah. But that first time you saw Leonard, I mean, that's very early in Leonard Cohen's career. So you said 66, is that what you said?

67, January 67. Like when does songs of Leonard Cohen come out? What year is that? Basically that year, the end of that year, December 67. Now, does any part of you, and you're a young man, you're seeing Leonard Cohen perform live. Do you have any inkling of what you're witnessing? Is there any clue of what a legend he would become? None.

None, really. That night, there was a National Film Board documentary called Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. film board documentary called Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, shot by a couple of NFB directors, and they played it that night. And, you know, you could see this guy had a certain, a certain is, I shouldn't even qualify it, you could see he had charisma and a certain magic, but no, you couldn't have. I would never have guessed. You know, we talked about Judy Collins, but I just want to add an additional note here about Dylan, because I think it's actually Bob Dylan's success that inspires Leonard

to take the guitar, which had pretty much been a hobby for him, and try to make it into something, into a career. Because he heard Dylan, he said, you know, plays the guitar well, can't really sing, but he's a genuine poet, and he's turning that poetry into an enormous musical success. I can do that. Right. I have the chops, the poetic chops.

And so I think Dylan is a huge influence too. Oh, no, that makes complete sense here. Okay, so I was getting kind of into Leonard Cohen mode and I was on YouTube and I started watching his performance from the Isle of Wight Festival. This is back in 1970 and then Suzanne and some others. from the Isle of Wight Festival. This is back in 1970, and then Suzanne and some others.

And I guess in a nutshell, obviously people need to read the book. So I hold it up for no one but yourself, because I realize I'm not actually live on Periscope right now, but Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, the early years, it's very dense and rich. And again, it's one of three, but you might need, who knows, you might need four or five volumes to tell the story. We'll see. Looks like a great book. I might buy it.

I bet you you could get a discount, I bet you. I can, actually. It's in the contract. That's right, a writer's discount. So how do we get from, you know, Judy Collins kind of recording some Leonard Cohen songs, having some success and kind of encouraging Leonard to actually sing his own music to that appearance I watched at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Like, in a nutshell, how does this evolve? Well, I mean, he didn't really want to tour. I mean, he kind of initially balked at the whole idea of touring because it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about authenticity. He thought, how do you, you know, you can convey the emotion of a moment, but can you repeat that emotion every night, you know, from one city to another?

And doesn't that cheapen the whole process and the whole exercise? I think he was worried about that. So he kind of toured reluctantly in the beginning, but he switched managers. Mary Martin, who basically put him on the map through Judy Collins, she was trying to help him, but she was involved in a negotiation that led to a deal in which Leonard essentially ended up signing away the royalties for three songs, including Suzanne. And Leonard kind of was unhappy about that.

And he had met Bob Johnson, this Nashville producer who had worked with Bob Dylan at CBS Records. And Johnson was a friend of a New York lawyer named Marty Machat, who managed other musical acts. And he said, talk to Marty. And so Leonard ended up leaving Mary Martin's agency and joining up with Marty Machat. And Marty said, you've got a tour. You know, we're going to tour this record and let's do a limited tour. And so in 1970, they did a limited tour. And there was less than a dozen cities.

They opened in Amsterdam and ended up, I think they came back to North America for a couple of gigs and then went back to Europe and they ended up at the Isle of Wight, August 31st, 1970. It's a historic asterisk in the history of rock music because there's estimates of half a million or 600,000 people, young people, drunk and rowdy, obstreperous, throwing beer bottles and lighting little fires and making life miserable for the performers. Cone, deeply drugged on mandrax or acid or both, comes on stage at 4 a.m. And he does this more than once in his career. And he could do it. Again, it's his gift, really. This ability to be very calm and still and focused and to harness attention on himself in a way that calms people down.

And he somehow quieted the crowd and had this enormously successful performance at the Isle of Wight. Yeah, it's a historic moment for him. Absolutely. There's a couple, if there's ever a soft cover revised version, since the book has been published, a number of people have come out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, they have stories that should belong in the first book. So I found this guy. Can I take another minute to tell oh my god yes of course yes uh i found this guy who who

marty machat had hired to collect the money for that first 1970 tour because marty wasn't on it physically so uh so he told me a couple stories he said said Leonard was just, he said he was a great guy, genuine, self-deprecating, funny, you know, a magnet for women, of course. He said, I've never seen anything like it in terms of women. But he said he was deeply drugged a lot of the time. And he said on one one occasion it must have been Hamburg he said the audience was there there the the auditorium the theater was full and Leonard was simply in no condition he was so out of it so ripped I guess on drugs that he could not perform so they had to physically walk him around the

block outside for a few times until he until he recovered um anyway that'll go in in the revised edition you know better and there's the speaking of you know his you know use of lsd there's that story from a concert in israel where uh i guess i the way i understand it is that the, it wasn't, he didn't think it was going well, his performance. And he, he walks off the stage and he goes to the dressing room and he drops some acid basically,

but he can hear the audience kind of calling for him in Hebrew or singing to him in Hebrew. And then he's, he goes and finishes the show completely like under the influence of, yeah. First he has a shave, first he shaves. And then it's,

it's in the film 1972 film by tony palmer it's a really good film um yeah it's it's a again a really extraordinary moment um and he goes back and and uh and finishes the concert yeah it yeah that's that's a famous one as well what a uh complex complex uh artist here And again, lots in the book. But let me just, if you don't mind, Michael, before we wrap up, let's talk about you for a moment here. Firstly. Yeah, high time. I'll edit this and put it at the beginning.

How's that? How's your health? I was reading what you wrote about your triple cardiac bypass surgery, which I guess was several years ago now, but how are you feeling? How are you doing? Narcon would, you know, as, as good as could be expected for a 73 year old guy. I'm very fortunate. You know,

COVID has, has been a little bit of a, thrown a little bit of a wrench into my rigorous physical regimen. I can't go to the gym. But anyway, I recently bought a rowing machine to try to compensate. How's that going? So, you know, I hate it, but I do it. You know, it's not, it's not a lot of amusement, the rowing machine. What about a bicycle?

I considered the bicycle, but I thought that the, the rower would give me a little more upper body work and some legs at the same time. So I spent a little extra money for the rower, but anyway, that's neither here nor there. I'd much rather be on a tennis court, but it's hard to do that in the winter. But I'm good. Thank you for asking. But your story, it was in the Globe and Mail. How many years were you at the Globe? 15 or 16, somewhere in that vicinity. Well, it's a very cautionary tale, if you will, because when you describe yourself,

it sounds like me. You're physically fit. You don't have any warning signs that you're about to need a triple cardiac bypass surgery. You seem like you were not overweight. You were physically active. You're playing your tennis and doing everything. So it's frightening to think that there could be any of this.

It's true. I did have what would classically be known as angina, angina pectoris. And I was walking to the Globe every morning and I was getting these little pains and it kind of concerned me. And I mentioned it to a doctor friend who, who intervened very quickly. And, and within two weeks I was on the, in the OR. So I,

I, I've been very, very lucky in life. I've actually had nine close encounters. You know, I live a very modest, conservative, unexciting life. Basically. I'm a writer, you know, I live a very modest, conservative, unexciting life, basically.

I'm a writer, you know, I sit behind a desk. I've had nine close calls with death. Wow. And I can enumerate them from childhood on. And it's too boring for your listeners, but literally I have had nine. Could you do like the, you know, the 120 second run through the nine? Like, otherwise I'll just be up at night trying to wonder what they were. Well, let's see.

I was hit by a bus when I was two. Oh, wow. I had a pneumonia with a 108-degree temperature when I was eight. I had to be life-saved from drowning when I was 17. I totaled a car on the 401 uh it was it the back end was like an accordion and i walked away with a scratch on my thumb that's four that's four i had another incident on black ice on the 401 with three kids in the back seat. The car turned around facing oncoming traffic at 100 or 110 kilometers an hour. And I had three seconds to get off the road and managed to do

that. I took a boat, a rowboat, well, a rowboat with a motor from St saint kitts to grenada on an eight-hour journey during the october 1983 war in grenada and and where the americans were shooting at reporters in boats and and managed to escape from that what else how? How many are we up to? I think that's six. Okay. So then I had a heart attack in 2007. I had triple bypass in 2013. That's eight. Is there one more? Maybe it's only eight.

Well, you only get nine of these things from what I understand. I know. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, I think you could edit all of that out of your broadcast. No, I think you could edit all of that out of your broadcast. No, I might just edit everything else.

This might be The Nine Lives of Michael Posner. I think that might be the new title here. There might be another one somewhere in there, but I can't remember what it is. Well, as Neil Young said, long may you run. I know that was about a car, but I'm going to apply that to you if that's okay. Great song.

Yeah, great song. Since we're talking about great Canadian singer-songwriters. The book is called Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, The Early Years. Michael, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting, and I really mean it. Every time you drop a new volume, you should come back on Toronto Mic. And maybe, like, if they have a vaccine and who knows, maybe in a year we could get together in person

like the good old days and that would be kind of special. Listen, first of all, thank you for doing this. I really, I'm grateful because it's wonderful to be able to talk about Leonard whose appeal just continues to astound me, global appeal. So thank you for

orchestrating this. B, vis-a-vis your quest to put Anne Murray on the radio, send me an email and give me a little capsule bio, attach a capsule bio, and I will be happy to let Anne adjudicate whether she wants to come out of retirement exclusively for you. That would be amazing. So I'll do exactly that. So thanks so much.

She's a class act. I won't be surprised if she agrees. I'm a big fan. So at least if I can get the invitation in front of her, I can handle the rejection from Anne Murray. It may be kind of neat, but I just need to get

that invitation in front of her. So I will do that. So thanks again for your time. Thanks for talking about Leonard Cohen, and you'll be back on this show in a year to talk about... Do you have a title yet? This is called

Untold Stories, The Early Years. What do you call the second volume? I was going to think about the middling years, but that doesn't sound so odd. No, I'm kidding. We have no title. Untitled. The future is unwritten.

Feel free to suggest. Okay. Feel free to suggest. Thanks so much for this. Thank you. See you in a year. Bye. Bye.

And that brings us to the end of our 744th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. You can find Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, The Early Years, at fine bookstores everywhere. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery, they're on Twitter,

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