Leonard Cohen through the Years

Posted on Leonard’s Facebook page by Paul-Gerhard Zimmermann.

Leonard Cohen and his paternal grandfather Rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline,   Brooklyn, New York, in 1953.

Leonard in an interview with Arthur Kurzweil from The Leonard Cohen Files:

Lyon Cohen, father of Nathan B. Cohen and Leonard Cohen’s paternal grandfather.

“Lyon Cohen (1868–1937), business tycoon and community leader, was born in Poland. As a child, he moved with his family to Ontario and later to Montreal, where Lyon and his father, Lazarus, entered the coal business together. Cohen went on to establish himself as owner of one of Montreal’s largest clothing corporations, the Freedman Company (in whose factory Lyon’s grandson, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen, briefly worked in the 1950s), and as the leading figure of the more affluent, West End-based uptowner contingent of the Jewish community. Lyon Cohen served at one time or another as president of the Baron de Hirsch Institute, the Clothing Manufacturers Association of Montreal, the Montefiore Club, the first meeting of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1919, and Congregation Shaar Hashomayim... In 1897, Cohen and Samuel W. Jacobs founded the Jewish Times, the first English-language Jewish-interest newspaper in Canada. It was the newspaper of the establishment, promoting speedy Canadianization of recent East European arrivals and the acceptance of British customs.”

Read more about Lyon Cohen at the Museum of Jewish Montreal.

About the name Leonard, Ira B. Nadel, in his biography of Leonard, Various Position (1996), writes:

Nathan B. Cohen, Leonard’s father, (1891 - 1944). 

Thanksgiving with Leo. My favorite feast included caviar and champagne, nothing else!

Leonard Cohen On The Back Cover: Das Lieblingsspiel (The Favorite Game) 1983, Rowohlt (Editor), Germany: 1983

1974 University Of Rome Performance

Part of the answer comes from the Ondarock website:

"...someone at the State University had heard that Leonard was in Rome, and he agreed to improvise a concert in the Great Hall of Law, all organized in twenty-four hours. He didn’t have a manager with him... he showed up with that guitar at the University, and began to sing with the microphone that was on the counter of the classroom in a very spontaneous way..."

Glorieuze Verliezers [Beautiful Losers] by Leonard Cohen Publisher: Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij (Amsterdam) 1971 Language: Dutch Photo by Maya Pejic

Photos by Pete Purnell.

Leonard performed at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands on May 31, 1976.