Leonard Cohen's Legacy with Adam Cohen: Thanks for the Dance

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. I first discovered Leonard Cohen, like most people, through a song Hallelujah, a beautiful and complex song with a ton of verses. But I grew to love him after discovering his early albums, full of nylon string guitars and songs much more succinct than Hallelujah. The Leonard never got quite the amount of attention that his peers did, Like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, he was every bit the poet they are. Cohen died in twenty sixteen, less than a month after the release of his last album. It was a project recorded in his modest duplex in the mid Wiltshire neighborhood of Los Angeles. Leonard made the album with his son, Adam Cohen. It wasn't meant to be his last work, but it felt like a fitting end until this turned up. While morning his father's death, Adam took some of the poetry Lenard had recorded and set it to music, And now, very unexpectedly, we have a brand new album from Leonard co called Thanks for the Dance. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right. Enjoyed the episode. Rick Reuben knew Leonard Cohen for about a decade before it is passing. Afterwards, Leonard's son Adam reached out to Rick wanted to tell him a story about his father, the one you're about to hear. When's the last time we saw each other? I was trying to remember. It feels like so long, ill go all of it. I was trying to remember. I mean, I know the feeling that I was left with in that story that my dad always used to tell about you, and you became the brunt of a of almost like a punchline. But now the whole thing's dissipated into a general tapestry and feeling of you know, I guess a mix, a cocktail, a blend of maybe inaccuracies and feelings mixed together. But I want to try to summon if it's appropriate, Yes, the story about you. Hey, tell me the story as you remember it. It has something to do with his general feeling about himself not being a stallion in the race of show business. And by that I mean he would refer to other guys he came up with, whether it's Christopherson or Bayez or Janie or Dylan or all the cats that are coming up in his era as knowing what to do. He would say, these guys know what to do. All I've ever known is that a black in a page. You would say, that's where you have to understand that context before it. Rick Rubin enters into the conversation. So then then the question is two guys sitting at a table and some music industry related question emerges, and he says, I don't know, Adam. I mean they are like we should ask Rick, you know, like Rick Rubin would know this, And so very quickly that morphs into any question that we have ask Rick, ask Rick. You know, I come to him with a genuine question, Dad, you know, what should I do about this if it's music related? And then it turns a new punchline. He said, you know, Adam, you know what I'm about to say, ask Rick Rubin, And of course you know I hadn't met you know, It's so funny. I get and as I said, I didn't know any of this till you told me this after your dad passed. Yeah, And so I felt like I had to track you down on the off chance he was right. You know, I have to ask Rick, and I have subsequently asked you on many occasions, and you've proven right every time. Wow. So thank you pretty good in my pleasure. It's an amazing story. It makes me laugh every time to tell me about the new your dad's newest project. I know it's not incredible, it's so cool. I suppose that the most gratifying part, other than the fact that it wasn't a humiliating disaster, and the fact that it's resonant and that I think it's beautiful and people are responding to it so favorably, I think the headline is the person after person who hears it. One of the most gratifying things that is said of it time and time again is that they feel like, oh my god, Leonard Cohen is is still here. He's speaking to us still and with this message in tow with this beautiful offering and this command of language, this inimitable gift that he's always had, still having it. Of course, I could go into detail because I have to tell me about the specifics of the making of it, like how did it how did the idea come start? From the beginning, Well, the first thing that happened was my old man passed away, and I live about seven hundred and fifty meters down the same street where you visited. And I'm left with this notion that one of the ways in which I can visit with him so palpably as opposed to so many other people who lose a parent or someone. I've got all these recordings and they are the sum of his being in many instances. They are this some of what he practiced to be in this world, and they are literally his words, his voice, and recordings. And at one point I had of desperation and a tiny pinch of courage. I dared to open up two sessions in my backyard and I just wanted to sit with him. I missed him, and it was a way of of conversing, of remaining in dialogue with the guy. That was the beginning. And then something really unexpected and magical happened. A record is not a fete complete, you know. Even good songs do not result in good recordings. Even in your hands. It doesn't matter if the artist and the song and the producer and the musicians. It is not a guarantee of any anything. And so the fact that that a record actually emerged, that's finished, and that's resonant, and that's emotional, and that's truthful, it's not in my hands. I don't have the qualifications to do that. It emerged and it's it's out of our control. Yeah, And so I have two strikes against me for this record in terms of my actual true participation. You know, One is that I neither have great and esteemed credentials. And two, this wasn't my record. You know, I wasn't trying to make my choices. I was trying to at all times because of this conversation that I was in, I say, like, Dad, would do you like this? Is this what you would do? Is this truthful? And so it eliminated this tragic layer that we often impose on ourselves of doubt. It was I don't have to consult myself. All I have to do is consult him. He was very clear about what he didn't didn't like. And that's the great advantage that I had over people who are like you for example, I knew what he hated, of course, you know, you know what's interesting. Never thought about this before. But for any other artist this would be a more difficult process. But because Leonard's music always essentially started with the poetry and that was the basis of the greatness of the songs, the heavy lifting was already done. So this is the best example of being able to make something really truthful to him, where the participation that he already did really is the key. Yeah, I was thinking that on the drive up here. Know, there's a there's a song called the Goal, which is it's literally no more than a minute long. And his reading, which had no music, it was just a reading. His reading sounds like a Thesbian from the other side of the world. The command of language, the cinematic transport of quality. And then to end, you know, by saying, and no one to follow, nothing to teach except that the goal falls short of the reach. So beautiful, amazing, it's amazing. I wholeheartedly agree. It's so wonderful that that exists, and it's so true. What a truthful position that he had. I can see him sitting in his little fedor and in his suit, staring at his window, returning a neighbor's smile with that sense of defeat. But at the same time, the word defeat to people has this binary quality. To most people, it's measured against winning, for example. But to him, it was part of this thesis that he had that his whole life was about, which is brokenness, broken hallelujah, the crack and everything, the whole notion that defeat and imperfection and brokenness was the fabric of the experience. And then instead of just you know, having a plaintiff assertion that the real generosity was to write about it in a way that you hadn't considered with generosity, with voluptuousness, with inventiveness, and then you know, you could, on top of it said, it's to a melody, you know, like a like what nicotine is in a cigarette, Like it's a nicotine delivery system. He was giving you, like a transcendent delivery system. That's what he was trying to do. Every time he would hate that I said that, But that's what I think he was trying to do. What was it like growing up with him, I'm trying to spend with him in through childhood. Yeah, I don't know that that's a question that I can answer in a complete manner, you know. I mean the immediate answer is I don't know, because I've only had that, so I have nothing else to measure it against. That it was incredible now that he's gone, and that I consult him more as a man than a parent, and I see him as a as a lifetime of choices, fantastic, altruistic, amazing, bizarre, eccentric, devoted religious seeker like choices, I find him ever more remarkable. And the fact that he was able to, you know, remain in his children's lives despite it not really being an appetite of his at the beginning. But for me, there was this torture of what he called the family business. Now he could call it the family business, and he would say all the Cohen boys and the family business, and you know, but if I dared say the family business, you know, he would say, like, what do you mean family business? You know, you're you know. It was it was this endless geyser of support and understanding. I mean, he would lean over my he would lean over my notebook and give me suggestions. He would, you know, he would say, this is what you got to do. You know, although you gotta ask Rick because I don't know. But and at the same time, you know, I remember I when in Instagram came around and I my handle was his commander Cohen and he found out about it. So you're stealing my identity, I said, Dad, what are you talking about? You know, like you were saying it laughingly? That's the thing. No, you know, he was. He was like, for example, there wasn't there was an article in which, you know, I had said like kind of something like, look, there's no one like Leonard Cohen, but I'm like a certainly on the mainland, but I'm the closest thing to it, if you know, we're talking about way off shore, distant little you know, distant little eyelets. And he said, what are you talking about? Your the closest thing to Leonard Cohen? You know, this is the kind of I don't know. I don't know whether he was as irritated as the tone indicated, but again it was also accompanied by this, you know, Dad, I quit, I don't want to be your producer. This is ridiculous, said Dad. He says, Adam, where are you going? I can't do this without you, you know. So there was this wonderful and constant contradiction. You know, like I referred to his music one time in a magazine as mytho romantic, and I thought, oh my god, this is so perfect. It really is mytho romantic. I mean, you know, the idea that that woman is God and God is woman, and and and you know, the be the the cathedral that his words are echoing in of, and that he built stone by stone, word by word. And he says, he says, remind me to reduce your uh to a couple of words, kid, you know, and I'm like, Dad, what are you talking about it? You know, mytho romantic. It's good. And then you know, two Sabbath dinners later, he's like my son who coined the term mytho romantic, putting his arm around me. This is this is crazy and exactly. And of course none of it was malicious, and I didn't. I never felt like it was in an episode of succession where I was gonna, you know, like he was gonna try to kill me. But given the modesty, it goes back to your original question, which was, like, what was it like living with him? He was so modest, he was so down on earth, I mean, this is a guy who lived in a an apartment and I drove a nineteen eighty four Nissan Pathfinder whose battery need to be jumped every morning, you know. I mean, yes, he did go through a five thousand dollar can of caviar, you know, and in the same afternoon, and he did have a propensity for Hebrew national kosher salami. But it was this elegant old world man who I think the reason I stumbled in answering you earlier was because it provoked such a feeling. And the feeling is this, he had so many distinguishing characteristics that I wished I could find in myself that it was never oppressive, but it was unachievable, unachievable for most anybody, for sure. But he liked you, though, and often said things of that nature about you. To me incredible, Yeah, but you know what I mean. I mean, we're talking about a kind of larger than lifeness. And at the same time, he was this little jew who wrote the Bible, you know. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about his spirituality? Not in a way he would approve of as you saw it your perspective. I think he was a seeker. I think he just had an appetite. You know, if I was to two cent psychoanalyze him, i'd i'd say, a guy who loses his father at the age of nine years old is always looking for something, and in this case it was the archetypal man, the source of strength and wisdom. And although he found pillars of that strength and wisdom within certain segments of Judaism, he also found it in Christianity and Catherine Tata and in several masters that he followed along the way, and in wine, and in women, and in song and in listen. He met my mother while he was in scientology for a brief moment with el Ron Hubbard, I mean, anything, anything goes if it's got a little bit of a buzz speed, absinthe, medical marijuana, whatever. Yeah. I remember him always offering absinthe whenever I would see him. Yeah, he liked I Yeah, he loved it and didn't have to be with a substance. He just loved to let go of that fascining, that oppressive fascinating that we that we do almost involuntarily to the center of ourselves, which is not even a very pleasant place to be. Remember asking him if he if he read any of the newer poets, and he said that he only reads spiritual texts. Now, he doesn't look at anything. He's not interested in anything beyond spiritual texts. That was interesting. Yeah, I didn't follow too closely what he was reading other than what he would tell me, and there was a I think he's again, these are all admissions that I'm having trouble making, because you know, I sort of feel like he would say, Jesus Adam, you're incorrigible. I mean, I don't demystify me. I've spent my whole life putting veils up. But I think he had forfeited reading for the irresistible ease of online publications of lectures online. And I know that he was following some pretty wacky folks, you know, from from rabbis and seeks to Hindu gurus, and you know, he was deep, deep into listening to people speaking. Yeah, he invited me to see Rabbi Findley with him several times. I've still have not yet done it. Still, let's go, let's go, let's go one of these days. He's He's a beautiful, robust, interesting, charismatic character. Ex marine from Irish descent who became incredibly versed and and all things Jewish, but with a with a really modern and moderate bent. Very cool that after the break will debut a song from Lennon Cohen's new album, Thanks for the Dance. We're back with Adam Cohen. Should we talk a little bit about the the album before this one, the last one he was present for. Well, that was beautiful for me, and not just because the record turned out beautifully and all that my father passed away only three weeks after it came out. He did get to, you know, when he played it for you came over to the house, or when he played it for people whose opinion he was seeking, or with whom he just wanted to share the music, and then eventually the world that that a collect you know, this is where it's He was such an unset, intimental guy that I almost feel like I'm trespassing. But for me, it was sentimental to be summoned to work with my father in whose footsteps I tried with clumsiness to follow, to go from basically glorified coffee boy, you know, in the basement of the building, to ending up in the penthouse making boardroom decisions with the boss except the Boss was in a medical chair, you know, in his living room in mid Wilshire. To to actually having this resonant music, to to wrestling with the Master and and not getting creamed. And in fact, you know, when another thing that when you came up in conversation, you know, and and and pardon me for the oversimplified, but when when he would say, you know, Rick or or Don Was or Dan Lan, they want they want me to go back, They want me to they want me to literally regress to making you know, an old Leonard Cohen album with just nylon string guitars and stuff like. I don't want to do that, you know, like I'm not a museum piece. I'm not even particularly nostalgic. But of course I believe that you were right, and and that that desire for Leonard Cohen to tickle that and evoke that sense that we have in our mind's eye of what Leonard Cohen is not just not just spiritually, not just lyrically, but also sonically in terms of the architecture that accompanies him was such a strong desire. And when he finally was weak enough to relent and allow that just for a second, especially with this his son to have that nylon string guitar come back to quiet the background vocals and excavate enough space for him in the verses so that the narratorship was unchallenged and they could go back to that other union that he had created, which is at Yin and Yang, where he has this masculine baritone narrator narratorship and then there's this incredible generous complicitness from the female backgrounds. So there's this union and this is an architecture that he helped excavate, so to restore that. But at the end of his life, with that gravity, with that somberness, with that sharpness, with that courage to go into the darkness and come back with a little, a little parcel of truth that he had, it was incredibly outifying, you know, and touching for me. And you mentioned his medical chair. When I came to visit him, he literally looked like a king in the throne. It was unbelievable. He was so elegantly dressed as always, yes, but so beautiful and sitting in this grand chair in this small space. Yeah, it really took my breath away. Every time I visited him, it was always, it was always thrilling for me, but maybe even more so than and none of us. I mean, I certainly didn't know that he was going anytime soon, because we were already talking about what he was going to do next. It's like he already told me he was excited. He was writing for the next album, which is which is now happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, he was living you know. I often said to my friend here Michael again mixed and recorded both that record and this one. You know, I said, like, you know, he's staying alive for this. This is the only thing he's living for. And often, unfortunately that statement was made, or that declaration was was uttered when we were going nowhere, and it just felt like he was stalling. And it was like, Dad, we get it. When you finished this record, you're gonna you're gonna let go, But only when you finished the work. He was a pit bull at the sleeve of this mission, whether it was blackening pages or finishing a lyric and then refinishing it, you know. But it was this indelible and very clear sense that he was living for the work. That's all he was living, and that was that was why when he played me the new finished work, The first thing I said was, so, what's the next song going to be? Like? What the you know, have you started on the next album? Yet knowing that he needed that, Yeah, and knowing that we want to hear that it's good for everybody. Did he did he do that thing that he did he sometimes we do almost like a magician with a card trick. Did he dispense on you lyrics that he was working on? Yeah? Wasn't that just magical? Yeah? I mean one of the things I missed the most is, you know, dropping by and having him without a tell a prompter. I mean, we're talking about a man who is literally swimming in Tom's and Tom's and Tom's of not just words, but like heavy con dentse and delicious language, and for him to pull him out, you know, and it doesn't matter whether it's pulling out Blake or Shakespeare or his own work, the lucidity and the sharpness right to the end. But then to hear the deliciousness of a concoction that he was, you know, in the in the throes of you know, wasn't that it? Isn't that just a delicious number? Believably unbelievably thrilling and I'm sure over the years there were many that you got to hear that maybe never came to Well, you know, it's funny you say that, because on this record I had to beg him. I said, Dad, you know that song Puppets, just just speak it. I know you, I've known you are not co signing. You don't believe that there's music that exists for this, or Night of Santiago, or there's several others where I said, just just read it, read it to a to a metronome. Yes, we'll figure that out later, but don't not speak this into a microphone. Yes, And that's how delicious some of those moments were. You know, Yeah, there's some unfortunately I didn't get. In fact, the last song on this album, it's called Listen to the Hummingbird. And we were done with a record and Michael and I were in Berlin at a festival called People Festival, which is organized by justin Vernon, Bonniver and the Desners from the National and Bonnie Beer's music was We were sharing a studio and they were We had a shared wall and all of these incredible moving evocketive sonics were coming through the wall and instead of hating him and resenting him for interrupting what would otherwise have been our session. We were inspired and and we said our so oh my goodness. The very last time this man spoke in public, he impromptu did what we're talking about. He said, hey, do you want to hear something I'm working on? And he read into a fifty eight in a halligen lit conference room a press event, he read out loud this poem, and we remember it. Contacted, Sony said, is there any way you could locate that one moment in that Prince conference, turn it into a wave file, send it to us, and with this stuff coming through the shared wall, we compose this, uh, this track. Yeah, it's such a pleasure hearing him speak. It was delicious. Yeah, Yeah, I miss it, I really, I really miss it. You know. On the last the last album was that recorded with his band. Nothing was recorded with his band. No with the sort of sonic defining characteristic of the last record. Not this new one was a men's choir that's also on this on this album. In fact, on this album there's a song called Puppets, where it boldly starts with German puppets, burnt the Jews, Jewish puppets did not choose. I mean, this is an arresting and bold beginning to any lyric that arguably should maybe not even be in a song. But that men's choir, the Jewish men's choir, and this Berlin based German choir are both on the song, and they're both singing, let's listen to that. That's pretty it's a pretty wacky one. Okay. He seems to be saying, we're all puppets, Yes, sir. Yeah. He was studying with this guy called Balsakar in India where he would he would go after Roshi, his zen teacher, passed away, and the thesis of Balsakar, which he was really taken by at the end and became his sort of central spiritual backbone, was there is no doer. There is no doer whatsoever. It's a kind of fatalistic, but without the oppressiveness of the word fatalist, This idea that it's all written by some program. So puppets for sure, but even but even smaller than puppets. You know, he would often say, you can read every word on the page, you just can't change any of them in the script of your life. And also speaks to the resignment in the lyric that you quoted earlier of waving to the neighbor, and yeah, the resignation of I sit in my chair, I look at the street. The neighbor returns my smile of defeat. I move with the leaves, I shine with the chrome. I'm almost alive. I'm almost at home. Yeah. And also it relates to the we were talking about in the in the in the making of art process, the fact that it's out of our control. It all, it's it's all, it's all one thing. Do you know what I'm saying? Again, I go back to being infuriated by his contradictions. I just have another another story again. You know. I finished a record at one point, and I met him at Starbucks on will Sharon Lebrea, and I had this big declaration to him for which I was, I think, seeking validation and maybe even a compliment. I said, Dad. Once we were sat with coffees in the sun, I said, Dad, I'm I'm scrapping the entire record. I'm gonna start over. And I thought he would put his hand on my shoulder and say, like my son, you know, like the Kipling poem, you know, he says, what an amateur move. He says to me, I said, Dad, what are you talking about? He says? He says, it's show business man. It's not how you feel about the work. It's about how you make us feel about the work. Has nothing to do with all truistic you know, like that the writing is that, yes, you know, like be truthful while you're writing, seek, you know, to be stirred by the muses. But once you're recording, I mean that isn't that is an act of pandering you have You have to go the whole hog, he says. You think I mean it every night when I'm on my knees singing Hallelujah. You think Mick means it every night when he's singing. You know, I can't get no, he says, in like, the true generosity is to not care whether you do or don't mean it, you know. And then I'm thinking, like, wait a minute, that whole I've been in the studio with you now, and I see how many times you have trashed and begun again and not accepted and stalled, and so wait a minute, you know again, these infuriating, diametrically opposed and battling notions. Remember that Michael, publish your parish, publish your parish. He said. He just kept on repeating that, get off the get off the pot. I'd say, well, what about you, dad, You know, like twelve years to finish a song. You know, I'd say, oh, yeah, well I was getting it right. I think he was telling you what he wanted to tell himself. I also think that they're is a is it. I'm not much of a sports fan, but it's a there's a there's a thing that boxers say to each other. They say, there's levels to this. You know, just because Ali can do it doesn't mean you can. Just because Floyd Mayweather can do it, doesn't mean you can. And I don't mean to suggest that he was as callous and conceded as to imply that that as clearly as I'm indicating, but I think he was saying, look, when you're writing psalms of King David like I am, you know you can afford to take your time. I don't think he's saying that, okay, I know. I don't think thank you for assuaging my concern. No, no, no, I think he's saying he's telling you what he needs to hear. That's what I think was happening. He was giving you his best advice that he was not able to take for himself. I don't know, Rick, I don't. That doesn't resonate as true, and I'm not I think you might be too close. Yeah, it might be too close. I don't feel like myself bucking you know, or or tangling antlers with you, because that's that's I don't have the stature to win it that there's no winning. There's no by the way, there's no competition but sharing ideas. But I do, But I do believe that that's not true. And I'll tell you why. I myself, I don't believe in the idea of all things equal. And in fact, I believe that you know what, the definition of the word miracle is a breach in the law of nature. Yes, he was a breach in the law of nature. Yes, he can allow himself exception. That's what he was. And to go to another sort of analogous for the sisterhood of that idea would be the words scarcity. You know, the idea that that something is is something's value is directly measured by how little of it there is. And he was not a prolific man, and unlike Dylan, who was you know, who just spat them out. You know, he was chiseling at marble, and he would always refer to himself as slow, but it was never disparagingly. Yes, there was a methodical conscious. There was a notion from a young man. If you go back to his journals, and which I have, unfortunately you know, or fortunately had to do. I'm so buried in all things learned going these days. But there was this sense that he had this mandate from Geez dash d to go into the darkness, and we don't all have that. That would be that would be presumptuous and arrogant. Do you do you think he included himself in the puppets in the song that we just absolutely yes, okay, yes, yes, you're but but again there's puppet mountains and there's puppet mole hills, yes, okay, okay, we have yes, Okay, yes, yes, I'm not I'm not thinking that he thought less of himself in any way, and I'm not thinking that, and I'm I will tell you, I don't think he looked down on your work versus his work. I don't believe that. Well, that would be crazy, Rick, I don't believe that. I just don't believe that I promised that on the drive home. I'll think more about this, Yeah, because I think for as, I think he clearly knew he was great, but he also saw all of the downsides. I don't think that he saw anything as perfect. No, so, and I'm that's why I'm thinking. I don't think he thought about things by rank. I don't think, but I don't know. Yeah, No, I in general I got that from it. Yeah, Well, he wasn't in the position of he was one of the least judgmental characters I've ever met. So for that I agree. But understanding things place and resonance, and understanding that some things were whispers and some things were seismic tremors. For example, he would say, I'm not one of the big guys, but I do understand that I have you know, I think he would say, my little toe in the door jam of the annals of history. Yes, and so this was a sense of modesty, but a sense of place. Yes, I think it's realistic. You know, he was realistic. But boy, the exception that he was that as his contemporary aged out or are aging out that their offerings, their little wild bouquets that they're still holding, have less and less pertinence and have more and more of that sense of like being a nostalgia act, and that he as opposed to them, remained so vital. And it was I think it was because he was really clawing his way up, you know, with his deteriorating, little frail body, even clawing his way and really speaking from the rank at which he found himself. Yes, you know he was. Really. He wasn't trying to say baby, baby, baby. He was trying to say, we kill the flame, if that's what you want, my lord. You know he was, he was really, he wasn't revisiting anything. That's why he took offense to some notions that he'd go backwards. You know, he was trying to remain vital. Yeah. I don't think I ever got to explain it well to him, but my version of him going backwards tell me so I can tell him later. Okay, had more to do with his songwriting changed in a way that became more punchline based over time, and his earlier songs didn't have that, And I missed the songs without the punchlines and that would have been my one request, if to think about writing songs that didn't rely on the punchline, because I think once he fell into that, I think it made it easier to write the songs for him. It was a it was an organizing principle that made the having that structure was easier to work work towards. Yeah, he would refer to it as you would often talk about Arthur Miller and how the plays got short and shorter, but the impact didn't. And you know how his life energy was different and anything that allowed for the juice to keep flowing was was more vital than anything. So you know, however you got there, you just got to keep on getting there. So I do also see the economy. But you know, the funny thing is what error are you speaking? Of Course, his earlier work had this kind of languid, you know, such deep voluptuousness, and then you know, by the time even he was doing Hallelujah, that was a lot more terse, a lot more economic. And then by the time he was doing There's a Crack and everything, that's how the light gets and that he had found that voice that he remained with to the end. In otherwids. It wasn't a forfeiture of poetry, but it was an economy. I love your term punchline, because he did look for them, I know, but never succumbing to what he would call slogan earring. He would he would always want it. He would try to raise above, rise above slogans. Yes, you know, and he would always say to me, you know, like I take the inner life really seriously. Yes, And I think that's why it resonates so much to us, because you know, this man is not slogan earring. He is tapping into something. He's mining where you dare not go for sure. How many albums did he make I don't gosh, I don't know in total, at twelve, thirteen, fourteen. And that's interesting too, because if we were to compare him to any of his contemporaries, there were fewer, much fewer, oh yeah, much much much fewer. Yeah, you know, one probably one fifth, yes, yes, yeah. That reminds me of the I think it's the Cummings quote. It says every artist has an embarrassingly slim cartridge of good work. I think he was very aware of that and kind of eschewed some of the pitfalls of what my friend reminded me here of publisher Parish. You know, he almost did perish a few times waiting to publish. But the good thing is that he emerged with these diamonds and his gems coming up after the break, one more gem from Leonard Cohen and his son Adam. We're back with more. Rick Ruman's conversation with Adam Cohen. Okay, it happens to the heart. Is is the Alma Mata. It's the thing he was obsessively working on. If you came over, there would be no pads and scraps of paper everywhere, and it was the thing he was the most consumed with. We didn't get it, he didn't get it on you want it Darker, and he kept on working on it. And it was one of the first songs, one of the first two songs that uh we pulled up when we were in my backyard. And it does sort of surmise the perch from which he was looking at life, the strange modesty and yet captain hood of his own life that he was claiming. I guess we could play that one. Still incredible, beautiful. I'm so glad you made it. I'm so glad we did it. I can't believe he's he's still speaking to us. Yeah, it's so beautiful. Lenda Cohen's new album, Thinks for the Dances out everywhere on November twenty seven. And check out a list of some of our favorite Lennon Cohen's songs by visiting Broken Record podcasts dot com, subscribing to our playlist for this episode, and when the album's out, we'll put it up there for you too. You can also sign up for a behind the scenes newsletter, Why You're There. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrell and Miil Lobell. Our theme music is by the great Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Norah Jones. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.