Leonard Cohen's final public appearance, speaking at the Canadian consulate in Los Angeles, on October 13, 2016, the day Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Giving Dylan The Nobel Prize is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being highest mountain" -Leonard Cohen Freaking Leonard always had a way with words. It's also clear how much Dylan loved him.
@@hank1519 I think Mr. Cohen was referring to the muse writing the songs and sending them through the vehicle of the songwriter. He says "and Bob knows this better than anyone, that you don't write the songs anyway', and Bob in his interview with Ed Bradley says "I have no idea how I wrote those songs" referring to his prolific writing periods in the 60's and 70's and I think he says something to the effect of "They just came through me. I don't know where they came from." So, I think Mr. Cohen is saying that giving a medal to the vehicle that the muse chose to send the songs through (Bob) is like giving a mountain a medal for just being there among all the mountains and just happening to be the biggest one; i.e. Bob is the most prolific song writer because the muses chose him to be the most prolific writer as the glaciers 'chose" Mount Everest to be the biggest mountain. The could, of course, all be my own novice Bee - Ess, but that's my take on what I think Mr. Cohen meant. I give all the credit to Bob himself though, not his muse, but I'm a medical equipment salesman and not an artist familiar with inspiration or the creative process. I love both these men, with Bob and Mr. John Prine being my Two. Main. Guys. Happy Holidays!
"pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain" brilliant metaphors are one gift of brilliant songs that quote was a brilliant song writer @play
What a wonderful humble human being Leonard Cohen was - the way he kept the spotlight on Bob Dylan when questioned is testament to that. A true musical genius and legend. I miss him 😢
I have loved Cohen and Dylan since I was 12, and now I’m 63. Leonard is so beautifully, and painfully honest. He’s got the soul of a monk in an Armani suit, sculpted in timeless elegance and song. He agonizes over a word for weeks, and its purity shows. Creations like these are constantly evolving. Dylan seems to be a mystical conduit of ever-flowing ideas from another time and world. He’s always so intense and passionate. Both of these masters have deep, passionate souls. We won’t know the radiance of their work in our generation alone. “Teach your children well.”
Leonard played 3 hour long shows in his later years and seemed so appreciative of his legions of fans who came to see him. Dylan, around the same time seemed disinterested and was just there to play the music and leave. I haven't got extensive experience of watching Dylan gigs, I can only speak from personal experience.
Ah, seeing Cohen so old... I was touched by his sincerity and wise words. I still can`t believe he`s gone. I wanted him and Dylan to live forever.........
Dylan always knew who to respect the most. Cohen, Harrison, Prine, Mcguinn.. lot of underrated people in my book. Cohen just breathes poetry in every word he speaks though, it's all just so well thought out when he talks
The New Yorker article, and the quotes from Dylan are amazing. Bob breaks down Leonard’s songs in a way very few could, and gives real insight into their shared craft.
I adore Leonard Cohen. One of my great regrets is never seeing this wonderful musician live. Bob and Leonard are exceptional artists. Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize. His lyrics, especially the early works, are remarkable. No one comes close today. Unfortunately it's all about money and celebrity now.
Years ago I lived in the same neighbourhood as Leonard Cohen in Montreal. I’d seen him several times at ‘The Main’, a great smoked meat deli, (great rib steaks too). His house faced a tiny urban park, and as I walked by, he was eating a sandwich in the open front door. I said ‘Good day Mr. Cohen’, and he responded with a smile. My only contact with him. The legend was a gentleman. By the way, the street on the opposite side fo the park is Marianne st.
Dear Leonard Cohen. He is right up there with Bob Dylan, as far as how significant and important his music is/was. He is a monolithic figure and will always be fondly remembered. Rest in Peace, Mr. Cohen. ❤
His last two albums include some of my favourite Cohen songs. This man has never disappointed me (although I do not hold "Dear Heather" in high regard). I'm glad he reached the blessed age of 82. Such an articulate man.
Bob Dylan has indeed said exactly that about his most prodigious period: he didn't make it happen and he doesn't know how to make it happen again. I don't know where we would be if the gift hadn't come to Dylan and Cohen (and Simon and Young).
if you listen carefully to what Cohen says at the beginning, you will understand that he is talking about the devil and the contract. He knows it very well, as does Dylan ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jNn72qnp6kI.html Jesus is truth!
Believe it or not, I´m properly discovering Leonard Cohen at age 61. A beautiful injection of oxygen in today´s desolate musical panorama. Never too late, right?
They both deserve the love of mankind for many centuries to come. If there is ever a future human civilization and they will ask, what were humans back in the 20th and 21st century, they will learn that from listening to the music of Bob and Leonard and their music will lead the future audience to so many great musicians in the same era.
There are 10 singer songwriters I could think of to compare. Neil Young, Mickey Newbury, Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Kris Kristofferson, Hank Williams, woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard, Tom Waits, Bernie Taupin.
I am not as familiar with Leonard’s catalog but what I do know is on par with Dylan. Regarding Cohens comments, there is an interview with Dylan himself who actually admits the same situation where he feels he isn’t as much of a muse as when he was younger. He doesn’t even know how he wrote the early songs he did. They just came to him in a flash of inspiration.
Bob and Leonard are incredibly gifted and their music helps millions of people. I bought both of their music over the decades. I'm glad that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize because he definitely changed music and people for the better.
I love them both , but even my mom loved listening to Cohen. Yet she also laughed when she heard It Ain't Me Babe and she didn't laugh often. I thank you for that Bob.
There’s a podcast about Cohen’s long long journey to finish writing Hallelujah, and it featured letters written to Dylan asking for advice. I think it took over 15 years to finish…
@@koustubhsharma4963 I think I found it...Adam, this the right one? I haven't listened to it yet but after doodling around this is what. I came up with. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S2U1R-kVFx4.html
I love both Dylan and Cohen, both have changed my life. As we know, Dylan said of himself - in that cryptic half-joking way of his - that he is a song and dance man - but really he is. But Cohen is a poet. The world lost something precious when it lost Leonard Cohen.
Godard is to the movies like Dylan is to the music, the fact of winning a Nobel prize made his figure as a musician bigger. I'm not saying that he's greater than The Beatles, but he's influenced over The Beatles or even, The Rolling Stones. I think Dylan must've felt flattered by what Leonard said.
I don't know if you can get the Nobel prize posthumously, if you can, leonard cohen, is your man, and an apology, for not giving him it, when he was with us, r i p leonard ❤
Thank you SO much for sharing this interview. Just subscribed today after finding you on Mr.Woolhall’s channel. Wow! Came for a visit, but subscribed automatically upon seeing the pic of Leonard. GBU. CKCO ~
Thank you for the kind words. I assume everybody who has subscribed to my channel has done so because I post about Bob Dylan, so I'm usually hesitant to share material on here that isn't related to Dylan. I love Leonard Cohen, though, and I post about him all the time in other places. For instance, I don't know if you're on Twitter, but last yr I did a 21-day video series on Leonard: twitter.com/harryhew/status/1311687411114573826 I've been thinking about sharing more Leonard stuff on this channel, so I appreciate the encouragement. Thanks again for the kind words. :)
@@paintedpassport I would sure enjoy anything on Leonard here, but haven’t been on Twitter in around ten years. This is the closest I get to Social Media now due to my distaste for drama, but I’ll always love music. I understand that it’s difficult to get too many irons in the fire though. It’s a common problem many share now, so I appreciate people who specialize on one or two things and master them instead of trying to be jacks of all while mastering none. Thank you for all of your professional work btw :)
@@jacobdejong3200 mine either. Mine is actually the plaque hanging on my door of my favorite old poem. When I was young and the Internet was too, my pic was on my page everywhere. In the late nineties I removed it encouraging youth to do the same, and obtain anonymous names for public use for their security. At that time, Internet was free but more dangerous than it is now. Have a nice weekend. :)
I'm feelin it too. Time to get the young people hip to what's hip, in a single word: Dylan. Sad to think this great poet is there alive and our chance to get a piece of him in real time, what I'd give to shake his hand, to meet him, I'd probably fall to pieces and cry and almost embarrass him if he wasn't flattered by that. I'm a musician, I got a song, one song, that can rival at least one title of his: It takes a Lot to Laugh, a Train to Cry. Not gonna reveal my title, but let me say this, if I got a title that captured the Freight Train Experience it's only because I paid dearly for it: ten years of riding the rails. My soul is in that song. And when young people hear it they'll love me and think I'm something, but I'll use that attention just to let them know something Emerson wrote, society is always a little ahead of itself, and needs to turn back the clock just a few decades... Just a bad paraphrase, but you get it. I got one song, Dylan has a zillion! Hey that rhymes, am I a poet but don't know it?
Hometown boy made good! I lived about a mile from him when he lived in Westmount. Love his mural on Crescent St.! Though my favourite band, by far, is The Beatles, I think Dylan, Joni, and Leonard were the best lyric writers of my generation.
The press conference ran for about 22 minutes. The complete audio can be found here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-T7rr4IBjY7k.html The Leonard Cohen Facebook page released five video clips from the press conference, which together run a little over 9 minutes. You can find them compiled here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RciOCn_Nmh0.html I would presume there is video for the remainder of the press conference, but those 9 minutes are all that has been released to date.
bob felt the same way. how many of us know full well that what people think about us has NOTHING to do with WHO we ARE. *don't follow leaders. pay the parking meters*
Leonard Cohen was brilliant, but Dylan was genius, they would never have thought of giving a Nobel Prize to any singer it was only because he was that good they didn’t have a choice.
What many musicians know is that the notes and the cords and the rules which make them go together exist already in nature . Musicians ‘discover’ them rather than invent them. That’s why many feel like they are not really writing the song.
Yes true but Dylan read many award winning books to form the words in his songs so you have to know the words before they can be written but I definitely agree it’s like a lightness witch comes over him and other writers and they are only holding the pencil or pushing the typewriter. I is a bit odd how Bob Dylan wrote more than most ⭐️
Cohen and many others, and I include genius scientists, and the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. They receive these gifts of knowledge and music like a radio picking up a frequency. Nikola Tesla also acknowledged this as did Albert Einstein. If you are able to tune into this knowledge the most amazing music and scientific knowledge will be gifted. We all love Leonards music and it's Cleary very deep.
Yes, the subtitles are part of the video itself. RU-vid's auto-generated subtitles are good but not always on the mark, so I sometimes add captions manually. Particularly if an upload is short and partly composed of still imagery
I think Mount Everest SHOULD get a medal. All those other mountains suck. But its true, not enough attention gets paid to the music in Cohens songs, even as far back as his first album the acoustic guitar work is just incredibly melodic and unique. On his nineties stuff its both current and yet also historical with traces of all kinds of world music. I could go into detail but readers mostly know this.
The moment they decided to give the Nobel to a poet who "also" sang his poems, the prize should have gone to Cohen, hands down. The richness and constantly high quality of his oeuvre (including the novels and poetry books) are peerless. At least the Spaniards saw that, awarding him their highest literary prize in 2011.
I would love to see the song lyrics of John Squire and Ian George Brown added to the next Oxford Book of English Verse or of Lyric Poetry. Look up "Waterfall" for instance (or any song's lyrics from among the earliest songs before The Stone Roses' first disbanding) and read, then listen; wonder what they mean and marvel at the open inconclusivity of their mysteries-so much in so little. Real magic there, not mere verse but poetry. So much more jouissance there than in the profduce of our withering academic vineyards.
This is why the middle East tradition is to give the tribe leadership to the poet. Even in old England the King kept them very close sometimes under house arrest
I wish Cohen had stuck to comedy as well as singing. Watch his 1965 special before one album was released and he was doing jokes. He was working on his debut album.
In reality Cohen must have laughed when Dylan got the prize. One of his favorite poets Cavafy was never considered for it and Tolstoy, Ezra Pound, Borges, and Nabokov didn’t get it either. The Scandinavian judges wanted to freshen up their image by giving it to Dylan.
Telling us you're an ignorant nancyboycakeboy friendof Dorothy ignoring the well-known fact that Leonard considers Dylan the gold standard revealing yourself to be so ignorant by calling Leonard a liar and that Leonard would bear false witness against himself
@@badmen1550 Knut Hamsun got it in 1920 and Pound emerged as a literary figure in that same decade. Plus T.S. Eliot got it later and he also held anti-Semitic views.
Story goes Dylan and John Lennon smoked a funny cigarette and Dylan told Lennon the Beatles Song had great melodies but they had nothing To Say , and that is when started writing so of the deepest most meaningful Songs ever Written, Check out Mind Games for Instance 🥁
I don't idolize talented people but I am certainly inspired by many of them while also nurturing my own gifts and talents. It is very possible to do both!
