Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1934, into a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in the Westmount neighborhood, he lost his father when he was just nine years old. His formative years were shaped by the tension between his religious upbringing and the secular world around him. He studied at McGill University and later at Columbia, but he never quite fit the mold of a traditional academic or a conventional literary figure.
In his twenties, Cohen published poetry collections and two novels — *The Favourite Game* (1963) and *Beautiful Losers* (1966) — which established his literary reputation in Canada. However, those books didn’t pay the bills, and by the mid-1960s, he made a surprising move: he switched to music. He moved to New York, immersed himself in the folk scene of Greenwich Village, and began recording. His debut album was released in 1967 when he was already 33 — quite old by pop standards.
“What followed was one of the more unusual careers in 20th-century art.”
Cohen never became a mainstream pop star, but he cultivated a loyal audience over the decades, partly because his songs had the depth and precision of genuine poetry. He spent years living on the Greek island of Hydra, had a long relationship with Norwegian-American singer Marianne Ihlen (who inspired "So Long, Marianne"), and spent time at a Zen Buddhist monastery on Mount Baldy in California during the 1990s — a period that intensified the spiritual exploration already evident in his work.
His personal life was complex and often painful. He spoke openly about struggles with long-term depression. In his seventies, he learned that his former manager had wiped out his retirement savings, forcing him back on the road for a world tour that unexpectedly became one of the most celebrated concert runs of his time.
