Acclaimed singer, songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen has died at age 82. His death was announced in a statement posted on his Facebook page. "It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist Leonard Cohen has passed away. We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries," the post said. It said a memorial was being planned in Los Angeles, where Cohen had lived for many years, but did not provide further details. Representatives of the singer could not be reached immediately for comment. Cohen was born in 1934 in Westmount, Quebec, to a middle-class Jewish family. He was already a celebrated poet and novelist when he moved to New York in 1966, at age 31, to break into the music business. Before long, critics were comparing him to Bob Dylan for the lyrical force of his songwriting. His songs fused religious imagery with themes of redemption and sexual desire and earned him critical and popular acclaim. But although he influenced many musicians and won many honors, including induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada, Cohen rarely made the pop music charts with his sometimes moody folk-rock. Cohen's most famous song, "Hallelujah," in which he invoked the biblical King David and drew parallels between physical love and a desire for spiritual connection, has been covered hundreds of times since he released it in 1984. Writing the song was a painstaking process for Cohen, who spent five years penning drafts, at one point banging his head on the floor of a hotel room in frustration. Many of Cohen's songs became hits for other artists, including Judy Collins, who helped Cohen gain fame by recording some of his early compositions in the 1960s. Cohen's most ardent admirers compared his works to spiritual prophesy. He sang about religion, with references to Jesus Christ and Jewish traditions, as well as love and sex, political upheaval, regret and what he once called the search for "a kind of balance in the chaos of existence." His lyrics were deeply personal and at times took on an element of prayer, as in 1969's "Bird on the Wire" in which he sang: "I swear by this song / And by all that I have done wrong / I will make it all up to thee." Cohen's other well-known songs include "Suzanne," "So Long, Marianne," "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "The Future," an apocalyptic 1992 recording in which he darkly intoned: "I've seen the future, brother / It is murder." The inspiration for "So Long, Marianne" was Cohen's longtime romantic partner and muse Marianne Ihlen, a Norwegian woman he met while living on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s. Cohen released his last album, "You Want It Darker," just last month. But The New Yorker described him as ailing, quoting him as saying he was more or less "confined to barracks" in his Los Angeles residence. His hoarse voice and deep bass, conversational vocals were criticized by some as being monotone. British musician Paul Weller once called his melancholy style "music to slit your wrists to." But his work was also suffused with irony and self-deprecating humor, often touching on his relationship with fame and his reputation for romantic entanglements. "I got this rap as a kind of ladies' man," Cohen told Canada's Globe and Mail in 2007. "And as I say in one of the poems, it has caused me to laugh, when I think of all the lonely nights." Cohen toured widely but also sought solace in meditation, far from the public eye. For part of the 1990s, Cohen lived in a Zen Buddhist monastery in the San Gabriel Mountains just outside Los Angeles, where he handled tasks as menial as cleaning toilets. Cohen, who never married, is survived by his daughter, Lorca, and his son, Adam.
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