Tim Footman

The book is described as a biography-- don't believe it. This is NOT what I would call a biography. In my opinion, this book is best described as a descriptive anthology, interspersed with a few tidbits of biographical information.

For the most part, the book describes the works of Leonard Cohen in chronological order. First the book of poems, then another book of poems, the novel, the album, the next novel, the second album, etc. It is a chronological catalogue of everything Leonard Cohen has created. While it does now let me know about some books I may want to read, it does little more than that through most of the book.

The author describes everything in painstaking detail. Cohen released such and such album in such and such year. The cover of the album merely consisted of..., the songs on the album are..., the first track sounds like this, the second song on the album also sounds like this, the third track sounds different, the fourth and sixth tracks...

Hopefully, you get the point. A description of the cover of every album and every song and every book of poems or novel is NOT a biography.

It is also pretty obvious that the author is not a fan of Leonard Cohen. It is a project he was given, and only listened to the albums before writing. It is mentioned at the beginning that the same author wrote a book on Radiohead and the album OK Computer. Although the two musical styles are nothing alike (though both great in their own ways), the author makes comparisons between Leonard Cohen and Radiohead two or three times. There really is no comparison, and the analogies seem forced to say the least. But it was probably the only thing the author knew.

Towards the end, a bit more of the biographical information comes out. The loss of his funds comes up, and for the first time it seems, you get through about two full pages about an event in his life without the additional mention of a book or an album. Not that his books and albums are unimportant. Quite the contrary, no one would read his "biography" if that stuff didn't exist. But everything is so focused on the anthology that the actual biography part of the book just seems to quietly observe from the sidelines.… (plus d'informations)

http://www.recordcollectormag.com/reviews/review-detail/5468

When Leonard Cohen returned to the world stage after 15 years’ absence, he might have been replenishing coffers mercilessly drained by a past manager, but also found himself embraced as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th Century; a revered legend in his 70s.

Cohen’s life and work seems to have escaped the kind of literary overkill associated with Dylan, the only other singersongwriter of his generation to enjoy such wide acclaim so late in life. But whereas Dylan’s mysterious ways have ensured his every move being chronicled since the 60s, Cohen’s ascension to his 21st-century mega-status followed years in the doldrums after his initial breakthrough, some spent secluded in a monastery. After Footman himself points out that the definitive epic remains to be written (preferably by Cohen himself, who’s said to be sitting on an archival “mountain”), his upbeat account skims through the years of sex, drugs, poetry and variable music with frequent jollity, mixing cut-and-paste technique with academic analysis and often harsh criticism, finishing with in-depth essays on the Hallelujah phenomenon and Dylan angle. Apart from the unforgivably cursory treatment given to Cohen’s first early champion, DJ John Peel, the book should keep the new Cohen army poring pages for a weekend.

http://driftwoodmagazine.com/2010/09/24/book-review-tim-footman-leonard-cohen%E2...

Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s five-decade career has long been a source of fascination for music journalists. Footman’s erudite biography, Hallelujah, traces Cohen from his early days in Montreal, through his initial career as a wunderkind poet and novelist who didn’t take up music as a vocation until his early 30s. Footman portrays Cohen as a study in contradictions—the gentleman who used hard drugs for years, the literate balladeer who gained mass popularity with rock audiences and recorded his most definitive work with Nashville session musicians. Footman pays equal attention to Cohen the man, whose most enduring and tempestuous relationships were described in his songs, and Cohen the musician, whose checkered career included a number of recording experiments, including an ill-fated collaboration with legendary producer Phil Spector for Death of a Ladies’ Man, and whose already ungainly voice deepened to a velvety growl as he moved past his middle years.

Footman also deals with Cohen’s long involvement with Zen Buddhist teacher Roshi, which included five years largely spent in the monk’s Southern California retreat. The book concludes with a description of Cohen’s triumphant return to performing in his mid-seventies, which found him playing nearly three-hour sets for months on end to some of the biggest and most adulatory crowds in his career. Footman does not appear to have interviewed Cohen directly, but the book is built on extensive research, and Footman does not lionize or fawn over his subject. Hallelujah is a perfectly satisfactory and comprehensive portrait of one of popular music’s most enigmatic and enduring figures.

http://www.ink19.com/issues/july2010/printReviews/leonardCohen.html

I've said it a million times, Leonard Cohen is the epitome of everything great. The sexual, intellectual, depressing romanticism that makes up Cohen is the greatest thing I've come across in perhaps my entire life. Tim Footman's biography on Leonard Cohen, respectfully called Hallelujah, breaks down Cohen's life one chapter at a time. From Montreal, to London, to Hydra and Cuba, over to New York and back to Canada, Cohen finds himself surrounded by beautiful and interesting women, different cultures, other artists, drugs, and all those "things" that make an artist's life worth putting down on paper. Footman does an excellent job of breaking down each of Cohen's books and records, relationships, and dips and dives into different religions with facts, personal opinions, and brilliant quotes that are more poetic musings, almost, from Leonard himself. The pictures in the book are superb, of course, and show Cohen in different stages of life up to a recent picture of the aging playboy.

The two chapters in this book that I was ecstatic to see were one on the song "Halleljuah," where it's discussed and pulled apart for our reading pleasure, and the other chapter comparing Cohen to Bob Dylan. First off -- finally! Someone who understands that "Hallelujah" is about sex. Did the contestant on American Idol know this, or Justin Timberlake when he sang it on the Haiti benefit special on television? Probably not. It amazes me that people no longer listen to the lyrics in songs anymore, or maybe they do and can't put two and two together. And how many times have I had to introduce Cohen's music to people who are Dylan fans but have never heard any of Cohen's music? Too many! Dylan is cool and all, but I think he's overrated, and way too many young train-hopping kids are into him for facile reasons. Fellow music snobs (and idiots), please read these two chapters. I like how Footman also references Nick Hornby's book High Fidelity at the end of his own book and gives us his Top 10 Leonard Cohen songs. Don't worry, I won't bore you with mine... although "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" is definitely #1.

Leonard Cohen was born in 1934. In 1944, Nathan Cohen, Leonard's father, passed away. A nine-year old Leonard wrote some lines down on a piece of paper, tucked it in his father's tie, and buried it in the family's yard -- to me, in a symbolic sense, this is when the true poet and romantic was born. In Footman's Hallelujah, he tells us that Cohen wasn't actually born until 1949 when he discovered Frederico Garcia Lorca, bought his first guitar, and attended his first concert. Read this book, get acquainted with the man, and then we can compare mythologies.

http://www.examiner.com/article/book-review-leonard-cohen-hallelujah

Footman’s examination of the Canadian singer-songwriter’s life and career is fairly short (the main text is 166 pages), possibly because he didn’t score an interview with the man himself. It’s a highly analytic look at the subject that at times exudes the same cool detachment as Cohen’s work, though Footman has no hesitation in passing critical judgment on songs he doesn’t think rank among Cohen’s best. He also covers Cohen’s literary endeavors, which are lesser known, even to his followers. Due to its length, it’s more an overview than an in depth critique, but as the first Cohen biography in more than a decade, it’s useful in its updating of the story.… (plus d'informations)

There are still four months left of the 2000s at the time of writing, but Tim Footman, author of this excellent overview, believes that symbolically speaking, the decade is already over. It was a 'decade' that lasted a little over seven years, sandwiched between the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 2001 and the collapse of Lehman Bros on September 15 2008.

Those two catastrophic events evoke many of the grand themes of the decade, at least as it was experienced in the West: runaway capitalism, the War on Terror, the foreign and domestic policy of the Bush administration, and the increasingly confusing commingling of the physical and real with the virtual and 'unreal'.

Between those two bookends, it was a short decade characterised mainly, Footman says, by two things: fear and technology. From identity cards to illegal MP3s, from Osama bin Laden's grainy videos to the army of blogs that rose to challenge the established media, technology seemed to spread fear among everyone from industry moguls to the man/woman in the CCTV-surveilled street.

But this isn't a heavyweight history book. Tim Footman's specialism is pop culture, and you're more likely to find him pondering the significance of Lily Allen, or the BBC remake of Survivors, or the Glastonbury festival. And if all those things sound particularly British, that's because the book describes the Noughties primarily as they were experienced in Britain, with relevant nods to the US, China and Thailand (where the author currently lives).

If you've been watching television, reading blogs and following the news for the last ten years, this book may not tell you much you don't already know (although I did learn that the hip-hop producer Danger Mouse's real name is Brian). But for anyone seeking to put the confusing and often distressing events of the past decade into some sort of context, it's an excellent first port of call.

DISCLOSURE: I was surprised and pleased to learn that I apparently had a small hand in the creation of this book, according to the acknowledgments. I should disclose that Tim is a friend of mine, in an appropriately Noughties sense of the word: we've only met once, but we read each other's blogs and have exchanged many thoughts and ideas over the past few years, especially on the blurring of boundaries between the virtual and the real; the subject of the book's Chapter 5.… (plus d'informations)