Original subtitles

The woman who inspired the songwriter and poet, Leonard Cohen

to write some of his best-known work has died.

So Long Marianne” and "Bird on a Wire were written decades ago

for Cohen’s then lover and muse, Marianne Ihlen.

They split up, but when Marianne grew ill and near death with leukaemia,

her close friend Jan Christian Mollestad contacted Leonard Cohen.

Less than two hours later a message came back which Jan read to her

"Dearest Marianne,

l’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand.

l’ve never forgotten your love and your beauty,

but you know that. l don’t have to say more.

Well safe travels old friend.

See you down the road.

Endless love and gratitude, Your Leonard. ”

I wrote this for Marianne

I hope she's here. Maybe she's here

I hope she's here. Marianne

This song is called "So Long, Marianne'

And... a girl called Marianne that l know very well,

she came to me after l sang it for her first, and she said...

She's a Norwegian

She said, "l'm certainly glad that song wasn't written for me

l said, "Oh, yeah?'

And she said, "Yeah. Because my name is Mariann-ne

# Come over to the window my little darlin’

# l’d like to try to read your palm

# l used to think l was some kind of gypsy boy

# Before l let you take me home

This is Marianne, filmed on the island of Hydra in the SBTW ’60s.

She said the song "So Long Marianne

was originally called Come On, Marianne”

and was not her favourite song

She said it was not originally intended as a goodbye,

but came in actually to foreshadow the end

of Marianne and Leonard’s relationship as lovers.

This is Little Axel Marianne ‘s seven-year-old son

Film it

lt looks like some kind of a lobster.

lt has all kinds of openers

lt was the ’60s, the time of free love and open marriage,

including Leonard and Marianne’s

l was a rather lost 20-year-old visiting the island of Hydra

when Marianne befriended me

For a short while, l became one of her lovers.

She encouraged me to follow my dreams

and she played me Leonard’s songs under the Greek moon and stars.

Her smile and enthusiasm were one of a kind

And l felt completely intoxicated by the beauty of their relationship

l just left one day.

And, uh, l won a prize for a book that l wrote.

And they gave me some money and l got on a plane and...

l came, eventually, to... to Greece and got on a boat

And l just saw this island that was so beautiful, you know?

l come from a country that's covered with snow half the year.

And l saw this island, you know, completely shining.

l just got off, met a girl there and l stayed.

LEONARD: There were just a few foreigners in those days

And the Johnston’s were central figures.

They were older, they were doing what we all wanted to do,

which was to write and make a living out of writing

And they were there and they were very wonderful

colourful, hospitable people and they helped me settle in

They really helped me out

That was first what made him an outcast in Montreal

lt was the journey into the dark

Because nobody wanted to go there

And l remember my mother writing me

some horrible things about him

He knew the dark, he knew the struggle from moment to moment.

You were supposed to find a mate and get married and live in Westmount

They all stayed in Westmount

So, we... we left

We had our own way of being

We found our own lives, but they turned out to be synchronistic

Can I have a sip?

LITTLE AXEL: |'ll have to even all of them.

The days were very, very ordinary.

We'd get up early and have breakfast and l'd go to work.

And a sandwich would be brought to me

I think I was on speed, too, so, I wasn't eating very much

And, uh, that's... The day would proceed like that

I had a quota. I think it was three pages a day.

She was beautiful

but she didn't really enjoy being beautiful before she met Leonard

and he made her love living.

She felt that not only did Leonard see her, but he really loved her.

And... And he really made her feel beautiful

I think if you should really understand Marianne

you have to understand her first husband Axel.

Axel could get so angry.

So, he would throw out the furniture from the window and out in the street

I don't think he ever hit her, but he was violent.

Leonard was the one who came into Marianne's life

who had watched the relationship breaking down.

Leonard saved her life

and he went into a kind of role as a kind of helping hand.

He helped with Little Axel

and he helped her with talking and practical things.

He was the father, in a real sense

And Little Axel still is talking about Leonard as a very good force.

He's a very smart kid

He was very quiet, maybe a bit shy, even

Axel and I would just... we would roam the hills

We would find fossils and

I lived therefrom the time that I was three months old.

We used to run around barefoot

The slightly powdery feeling Of the dried seawater on the stones

Every part of it is beautiful in every season.

At any time of the day or night

The freshly baked bread and things like that.

I mean, l've never experienced those things anywhere else.

Even the air has a kind of.

You can feel the air, especially in the evening

It feels like silk. You're wrapped in something silky and velvety.

There was so much freedom there that people just went too far with it.

So, there was always that danger hanging over people.

l was mesmerised by the island ‘s beauty

and had never before met so many golden, sun-kissed people of either sex,

having so much fun together

lt felt like anything was possible.

Marianne gave me my first acid trip,

which she said had come from a friend of Leonard’s in London called Malcolm,

and she took these pictures of me the morning after

l had no intention of leaving, but then one of Marianne's other lovers

unexpectedly showed up on the island

and l found myself hastily boarding the next boat back to Athens.

My enthusiasm for Hydra, however remained undiminished.

l suggested to Rick my best friend from school

that he’d go there as a break from a hectic career as a journalist

Rick intended to go for two weeks but ended up staying for 14 years.

I came to Hydra, which you recommended

and suddenly, the enormous sense of relief,

Because it was a combination I think, of beauty,

the beauty of the place, the simplicity of the place

and the genuineness of the environment there

It was just a small group of artists

who were either refugees of some kind or another...

You could live so cheaply, then

Leonard didn't have much money back then.

There was a sort of unwritten rule, certainly, when I was first on Hydra

that if you saw someone like Leonard at a table,

you didn't assume you could go and sit with him.

They were there to be alone and remain alone.

And they were doing their writing

MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN)

A large part of my life was escaping whatever it was.

Even if the situation looked good I had to escape,

because it didn't look good to me

So, it was a selfish life and, uh

But it didn't seem so at the time, it just seemed a matter of survival

I guess the kids suffered, and

people close to me suffered, because I was always leaving

I was always trying to get away.

I was very much encouraged by a friend Of mine by the name of Irving Layton,

influenced by his manner.

After he'd ask me what l'm doing he'd always say,

Leonard, are you sure you're doing the wrong thing?"

And that really struck home That really sounded right.

LAYTON: Cohen's concern is my renunciation of the Canadian public

HOST: ls this true, or have you some other concern, Mr Cohen

you'd like to get off your chest?

LEONARD: When I get up in the morning

my real concern is to discover whether or not l'm in a state of grace

NICK: What do you think Leonard loved so much about Irving?

AVIVA LAYTON: He loved his intellect he loved his imagination,

and he felt that Irving was the real thing, in terms of poetry.

And the very first time I saw Leonard Irving said,

"l'm gonna ask this man to come around, this boy-man

L think he was 19, 20

And I said, "Who is he?" And he said, "He's the real thing

They each thought of each other as "the real thing".

They also had a very strong Jewish connection.

That was a very strong thing in Irving's life.

Avery strong thing in Leonard's life

Leonard was an aristocratic Jew.

Leonard came from a wealthy family.

Very well rooted in Canadian culture

He came from an educated family. Highly educated family.

I never knew Leonard's father, of course,

who died when Leonard was young

But his mother, Masha was mad as a hatter.

Really mad. She had a thing about Irving

I wouldn't be at all surprised

Leonard and I would laugh about it

whether Irving and Masha ever went to bed together.

He went to bed with

Irving went to bed with everybody, why not Leonard's mother?

And she was... She was very attracted to Irving

And Irving might have... She was very beautiful

But mad!

I think really great writers have to have mad, Oedipal-y mad mothers

And if that's the case, then that's what he had

LEONARD: l mean, I know that a lot of my love of music

comes from my mother who had a lovely voice.

She was Russian, and she sang songs around the house.

And I know that those, those changes, those melodies, touched me very much

And that's certainly an influence

She would sing with us

l'd take my guitar to a restaurant with my friends,

and my mother would come and we'd often sing all night

We're having fun!

We're winning. We're winning

We're winning the eternal battle! We're keeping the party going.

# We're keeping the party going!

NANCY: He loved women. No question about it

But he needed to be his own person in his own way.

So, he could love women from a distance

And love them when they came through and make them...

He could make women feel good about themselves.

And that's how he loved them

That's how he loved them

But he couldn't give himself to them

because he couldn't give himself away.

MARIANNE: I was not satisfied with my life at all.

L didn't know what to do

I was the only one who didn't paint, write, sculpt

So, everybody was artists

Lots of people came off the boat to Hydra

Jacqueline Kennedy was there

Princess Margret was there

So, what could I say?

So, finally, I would say, "l am an artist.

Life is an art. l'm living

Not very original

I was looking at myself and saying, Everything is wrong with me," you know?

So..., lt's a pity.

NICK: Marianne had been the one to support Leonard

through the nightmare of writing his last novel "Beautiful Losers",

on Hydra

LEONARD: I wrote a lot of books there and a lot of songs.

I published the novel Beautiful Losers, but I really couldn't pay the rent.

AVIVA: Oh, yeah, he went quite crazy.

I mean, you'd have to be crazy to write Beautiful Losers it's like.

lt's like a hallucinogenic madness

He used to stay out there under that hot Greek sun.

And Marianne would make him little baskets of food and water

and drop them over to him

I mean, he wrote that book in a fever.

So, he would never have been able to do that anywhere else, except that island.

Leonard had always used acid. It just gave you that extra whoosh

It was never just like taking it to get out of oneself.

It was very much to do with part of the spiritual search.

It allowed him to go into his madness, I think

which he probably couldn't have done anywhere else

It allowed him to sit on his terrace in the sun, take acid and speed.

Marianne, I mean, she used to say, I mean, you know...

She was there to sort Of not pick up the pieces

but to sort of hold the man

that had driven himself to the Beautiful Losers

and writing those extraordinary pages day after day,

in the sun, lunatic, that he was

LEONARD: To find something that really addresses my attention

I have to do a lot of endless versions

Anything I can bring to it I try everything.

Try to ignore it. Try to address it

Try to get high

Try to get intoxicated

Try to get sober. You know?

All the versions of myself that I can summon are summoned

to participate in this workforce

So, I try everything. l'll do anything

But listen to what some of the critics said about his latest book.

After I finished "Beautiful Losers", L thought that l would go into music

I wasn't really making a living as a writer.

It was very hard to support and feed

the hungry mouths that I was obliged to do

So, I came back to America

and I didn't know what had been happening in New York in folk music

I was completely unaware of people like Phil Ochs or Dylan or Joan Baez

JUDY COLLINS: Leonard found me And he came to my apartment.

And he came in and we had some coffee

I said, "So?". And he said 'Well, I can't sing.

And I can't play the guitar. And I don't know if this is a song

And then he played me

# Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river...

So, I said, "Leonard, that is a song!

That's a song, and I have to record that immediately!"

So, he and I... Of course, I recorded it right away.

We became friends

He was quite clear that he never, ever wanted to sing in public, so...

about a year went by and "Suzanne" was a big song by then

And I was doing a big fundraiser in New York

and I said, "You have to come with me

L wanna put you on stage, and I want you to sing "Suzanne

Everybody is dying to hear you sing this song."

He said, "l can't sing. I have a horrible voice

I said, "You don't have a horrible voice."

So, he came out and he stood in the middle there

and began singing the song

And I knew that he was shaking like a leaf because I had seen him

seen his hands, on the guitar.

In the middle of "Suzanne" he broke down and began to sob

and walked off the stage. (CHUCKLES)

He was dying of fear.

He was having what we know as a great, massive attack

of stage fright

So, he came off the stage and I said "Leonard this just will not do.

You have to go back l'll go back with you.

And we can do the song together. He said, finally, he said, "OK."

So, meantime, the whole audience is continuing to clap and scream

and carry on, because they'd gotten a taste

They could hear him sing. They knew.

So, we went out together. He finished the song.

And by the time we finished he was a convert,

a total convert, to his own magical impression

I would like to introduce to you Mr Leonard Cohen.

# Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

# You can hear the boats go by

# You can spend the night beside her

# And you know she’s half crazy

# But that's why you wanna be there

#And she feeds you tea and oranges

# That come all the way from China

JUDY: It was one of the most important moments of his life and mine

And, of course, then he was off to the races

Columbia signed him up, and that was his label for ever.

MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN)

LEONARD: I remember her arriving at the airport.

She had two heavy valises in each hand.

She couldn't wave to me, because she couldn't lift the suitcases up

and she didn't wanna drop them She was moving.

So, she waved to me with her foot

I remember that very, very clearly. (LAUGHS)

AVIVA: Yeah, boy. That was a mistake

And said famously.

The famous thing, "l want my woman! That was Leonard, yeah?

I want my woman and my child to come to Montreal."

And that was this wonderful thing

And, of course, the minute he said it he didn't...

He, he wouldn't have... He didn't need it any more

He needed to say it, but

And Marianne, who was deeply in love with him

did come and brought Little Axel

We always used to call him Little Axel

And, um, it was a disaster.

It was very unhappy.

Avery unhappy time. Axel would come and stay with us

He used to take a pencil

and pencil his name over every wall in our apartment

He'd write, "Axel, Axel, Axel

That was a very unhappy time

Poets do not make great husbands do they?

Do you know of a poet who's ever made an absolutely splendid husband?

Or a filmmaker?

Or an artist?

No, you can't own them

You can't even own a bit of them

They're... They're just elusive creatures

who are married to their muse.

That sounds so pretentious to say that, but it's true.

But the irony is, a man like that

is a man that every woman wants to have

And can't have

Marianne came up to me and she said 'We were very happy living in Hydra,

and we were walking on the beach

and we were swimming in the nude

and drinking a lot of retsina and we were very happy.

And then one day he came to me and he said,

'Marianne, l'm going to New York to play my songs for Judy Collins.

And you recorded all of his songs

And I just wanted to tell you that you ruined my life."

Certainly, their dream life in Hydra had a big interruption,

which was that Leonard discovered himself as a singer.

NICK: l took this picture of Marianne in the autumn of 1968,

when she came to the UK and contacted me.

She’d come to bring Little Axel to boarding school and needed a lift

We drove down to Suffolk to Summerhill

the AS Neill School where children didn't have to attend class

if they didn‘t want to.

Axel was eight, and l remember how upset he was when we drove away

Axel would write to Marianne nearly every day

Marianne was in tears tod

but believed it was the best thing for him because she was always travelling.

Marianne came and stayed for a while in my less-than-chic squat

in Kentish Town where she took this photo

She introduced me to the world of protest movements

and artists using their art to achieve incredible things

She was close to Julie Felix the singer

an old friend of hers and Leonard's and working with Julie as her muse,

encouraging her to write her own songs for the very first time.

Julie had originally met Leonard on Hydra

before either of them was singers

Well, l'm very happy and proud to have him here on the show

and introduce him to the English public

Here is the writer, the poet the songwriter.

He's a friend, but he says he's a stranger in this song

Ladies and gentleman, Leonard Cohen

(APPLAUSE)

# lt's true that all the men you knew

# Were dealers who said they were through with dealing

# Every time you gave them shelter

# l know that kind of man

# lt's hard to hold the hand of anyone

# Who is reaching for the sky just to

JULIE: Leonard was always searching

And this feeling of never belonging anywhere.

And even in a relationship, you know, eventually, with Marianne,

I think that was the longest one

But after that, he went from relationship to relationship

And at the end of the song there was a tear in his eye.

He's an emotional man

JULIE: Yeah, well, at that time they were already having a few problems

Marianne and I hung out together for quite a while,

and we became very close

And we went on a couple of trips together,

and she was the muse and said, you know, "Why don't you write?

And the first song I wrote was "Windy Morning",

which is a song that she, kind of, guided me through

NICK: She was a great muse, wasn't she?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And, uh...And l think... I think Leonard honoured that

You know, he said that she was you know?

When... When, um

When he was speaking of her.

NICK: She was so encouraging

Yeah. And she was so nurturing you know. lt's... lt's a...

Yeah, it's that... You know, the... woman power.

The ability to nurture and love

and, uh, encourage, you know?

lt's something the world needs

That's why I think it's good that we're getting to women's time finally.

With all the Time's Up

And Leonard was a great

He was a feminist, you know? He really...

He said to me once... Because l was talking about something

He said, I can't wait till women take over.

So that was kind of nice to hear from him.

(PLAYS ACOUSTIC GUITAR)

JOHN SIMON: Leonard's imagery came from the poets.

From Shakespeare, from Keats, from Marlowe

So, l found certain lines in his guitar playing that I could enrich

And I decided not to do it with instruments,

but to do it with female voices

since so much of his writing was about his relationships with women.

There was a very female presence in all of his songs,

even though he was a man

So, my girlfriend at the time had a very nice, pure soprano voice

So, I started, you know, fooling around asking her, "Sing this. Sing this."

You know, over Leonard's song 'What do you think?"

Some of it sounded really great

NICK: Could you imitate it slightly?

(LAUGHS) l'm not a singer, and l'm not a girl either.

She was singing... # So long Maria-a-anne

She added a little "a-a-anne at the top.

# lt's time that we began to laugh

#And cry

#And laugh

#And cry

# About it all again

So, she sort of aped what he was doing

but it gave it a little harder.

Put a little harder edge on it you know?

# So long Marianne

# lt's time that we began

# To laugh

#And cry

#And cry

#And laugh

# About it all again

# So long Marianne

The very first time I met Leonard Cohen

he opened the door and he's absolutely naked as a jay bird

Right? So, me, coming out of where I come out of,

I go, "This is pretty damn weird you know? This is...

Later, of course, throughout the time I spent with Leonard,

the years that we worked together,

when I looked back on all that

and if l'd have been evolved enough at that moment,

it wouldn't have been weird to me at all.

All the time I knew Leonard, he was very, very conscious of his body.

Leonard used to say that when we're on tour

and we're at the hotel, take all your clothes off.

You're going to be passing by these things called mirrors, right?

And when you pass by a mirror, you're gonna notice that little...

'Hey, I need to be doing a few more sit-ups."

Leonard swam, like, all the time

Any hotel we were in, you would find if they had a pool, he was in it.

And he would get up early in the morning so, he didn't have to run into anybody.

He'd be down there at five o'clock in the morning.

And he'd be doing laps

And if they would let him swim nude he would swim nude.

I don't know why. That was just him

NICK: Didn't you write a song with him?

RON: I did. Yeah. I wrote "Chelsea Hotel" with him

We boarded an airplane in LaGuardia

and me and Leonard sat there and worked on this song.

I had no idea who he was talking to in his writing at the time.

It came out later that it was to Janis Joplin

And, you know, it's like

"l remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel

talking so brave and so sweet

giving me head on the unmade bed

while the limousines wait in the street."

That's all still there

Nobody knows that the second verse was

"l remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel

in the winter of 1967

My friends of that year, they were all turning queer

And me, l was just getting even

# l remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

# You were talking so brave and so sweet

# Giving me head on an unmade bed

# While the limousines wait in the street...

JAN: At that time, Leonard had some experiences with Janis Joplin

all these things

And Marianne was living separately in her apartment with Little Axel.

That must have been .... very strange

But she was still the muse

And the interesting thing is that, she has read for me the telegrams

from Leonard

First telegrams to

Marianne Cohen

It was just like they had been married

Telegrams going to Hydra, and then to London, and then to New York.

First, it's in the period when they are together as a couple

But the beautiful thing is, when they're not a couple any more

he's still sending money.

He's still asking how Axel is doing

And so he continues to send his

small, uh

love messages, even if they're not together.

RON: Leonard said he was suffering from depression

that he fought for so many years

So, Leonard decided, he thought it'd be a nice thing for us to do

is that, say, we blew into London to play the Royal Albert Hall.

Well, we got three or four days here Why don't we, one evening,

go out and play at a mental institution, right?

OK, so, of course, that went over like a fart in a diver's helmet with me,

cause I wasn't about to go out to any...

I was not going. No way.

He said, you know, "Just go one time

He said, "lf you go one time, and don't wanna play any more of these

then you don't have to do it." Right?

So, I said, "OK." So, l went

Well, l'm gonna tell you this

By the time that night was over,

you couldn't drive me away from that idea.

And we ended up playing a lot of 'em

He had a grandfather or something like that,

that I think died in one of those institutions

There are a number of reasons why I play mental hospitals.

You know, when you play for somebody who has really been defeated,

and it was my feeling that the elements of this defeat

corresponded with certain elements that produced my song,

and that there would be an empathy.

I mean, I feel that I also have an empathy with this experience

(LAUGHTER)

# I loved you in the morning our kisses deep and warm

# Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm

# Yes, many loved before us.

RON: That was a moment in my life that I would never forget

And this guy, he stands up and starts screaming, you know,

'Hey, shut it down. Stop. Shut it

Well, we, you know, being musicians

and having played a million shows we steam right on, right?

We're not gonna let that... Well, no. This guy shut it down

He shut it down

And then, Leonard finally said "OK, you talk, then." Right?

So, this guy said, Look, you come in here

and you got all these shiny guitars and you got all...

and you got the pretty girls there

singing background stuff and everything."

He said, "l wanna know, what do you think about me?

That's what I wanna know about

I wanna know what you think about me

You could hear a pin drop in that place

And Leonard just walked past me and Charlie, walked down the stairs

walked right out in the crowd

and just hugged him like you wouldn't have believed

He almost broke his ribs he hugged him that hard

Oh, you don't sing any more? - Pardon?

- Go somewhere. Well, we go to Geneva

No, I mean now.

Now, no. Why? Are you… -Tonight.

Would you like to listen? -Yes!

I don't have any plans, but... - You don't have any place?

No, I don't have any place. Do you have somewhere for me?

Yes I (LAUGHS)A lot!

lt's hard to come on to a girl in front of the camera.

What?

LEONARD: I was obsessed by gaining women's favours

at a certain point in my life, and um

Way beyond any reasonable

activity.

It became the most important thing in my life

and it led me into very obsessive behaviour

and some very interesting things

And probably most of the things I learned about myself

and about other people, were gained from this period of obsessive...

this blue movie, that I threw myself into

But we know that blue movies are not romantic.

BILLY DONOVAN: It was a show. It was more women than men.

It was like, you'd look out there and there were some couples,

and it was mostly just women

They'd read his poetry, right?

And then they see him sing these songs

and they're all just down there crying and all that, watching him.

There was no problem with women!

You know, l'll tell you a funny story.

One day, l'm down in the lobby of the Mayfair Hotel,

and he comes walking in from a cab with this really nice-looking woman.

And they disappear, come down a couple hours later

and they're having drinks in the lobby. There's a bar there

And she leaves

And then he makes a phone call

About a half-hour later, he comes back with a different woman

(LAUGHS) And they go up. They're gone This is in one afternoon!

LEONARD: Hello. How are you?

BILLY: He had to have a woman all the time.

This guy travelled the world

He knew women and people in Paris, in London, in...

All those places, right? He'd go, "Let me just call so-and-so

Uh... Yeah, there was no problem there

In fact, everybody was doing pretty good. Even me

Oh, yeah!

I had a great appetite for the company of women

And I was very fortunate because it was the '60s.

And that possibility was very, very present

And for a tiny moment in social history,

there was a tremendous cooperation between men and women

about that particular item

And so, I was very lucky that my appetite

coincided with this very rare

what, religious, social, I don't know what you'd call it

some kind of phenomenon

you know, that allowed men and women boys and girls we were,

to come together in that kind of union that satisfied both the appetites.

#Like a bird on the wire

# Like a drunk in some old midnight choir

# I have tried in my way

# To be free

I felt much more that "Bird on a Wire' had something to do with me,

because I was there

When you see it in the light of how it began,

it was when the new electricity came to Hydra.

I gave him the guitar.

We looked out of the window, we saw the birds landing on the wires,

and he had not been able to create or write or sing

or do anything for weeks

And he was in a very, very deep, deep depression.

And it also was a period in my life where I had to...

make a decision that was pretty hard

and that was following my intuition

and decide that Leonard and I was not going to have any children together.

Yea

NICK: Marianne came and visited me in Cardiff

where I was a student living down by the docks

I was concerned she might get bored

but Marianne was naturally interested in everyone.

She regarded being receptive and open as the highest of qualities.

Marianne made friends with all the kids in the street

who followed her around all day.

And she encouraged me to make my very first film on slum clearance

as the whole community was being torn down.

Marianne liked to throw the I Ching every day and get stoned.

She talked abort Leonard a lot,

his favourite salt beef sandwich shop in Piccadilly

his spiritual search, even dabbling in Scientology and EST

Marianne, too, was on her own spiritual search.

And Leonard was in many ways her teacher.

One day she asked me to drive her to Bath.

She said she was pregnant with Leonard's child.

I think she was pregnant... She was pregnant to Cohen

but she knew that Leonard didn't want children

and she had abortions even though she would've

She... If anyone should've had Leonard's children

she deserved to have them

But she didn't, for Leonard's sake

But, you know, she wanted what I wanted

She wanted to

She wanted to be with him

And you cannot be with Leonard

In that sense

Although you could say that l'd rather have one day

or one night with Leonard than a lifetime with somebody else

That would be easy to say, but it's not...

lt's not so easy, you know?

I could've said that with Irving just to be...

I was with Irving for over 20 years

Whatever the ups and downs, how wonderful it was, and it was

but most of that time was anguish

NICK: Anguish? - Well...

You know, it was the days of open marriage,

whatever the hell that was!

And I don't think it ever was successful with anybody.

One of the partners was always jealous and angry and hurt and confused.

I don't know any child who came out not damaged by that period.

We just wanted to do it all

Take drugs and fuck around and do whatever we...

And the children were just... They came along on the ride

They didn't wanna come along on that ride.

There are a lot of us who grew up very quickly on the island.

There was also a lot of acid on the island.

People were actually dropping acid into people's drinks.

And I remember hearing reports of people having donkeys ....

They were riding donkeys that, like, started tripping,

and getting into all kinds of trouble you know, and accidents.

NICK: They gave acid to the donkeys?

JEFFREY: Yeah. As well as to people

I got... Someone put acid in one of my drinks when l was about 13

And I had no idea what was happening

Also, a lot of casualties happened

L think Marianne and a lot of other women

were not as nurturing to their children, perhaps

or as present with them as they could have been

Axel was really a casualty of that

Marianne was going from one love to another, to another,

and often he wasn't with her.

You know, so who was he with?

And Leonard... You know, he wasn't Leonard's kid

He started wearing long, you know, flowing Moroccan robes.

And he was silent for years

And then later he became institutionalised

But l've always felt very sad that he's been institutionalised

for most of his adult life

Those who could work with Hydra did really well.

And there weren't many, quite frankly.

I saw so many artists who came

and either just found their creativity wasn't strong enough to sustain them

or the booze, the sex

the beauty of the landscape was all too much, and they just gave up

But Leonard was one of those who somehow...

The whole environment, I think, sort of coalesced and worked for him

And he worked with it

# I got a home in glory land

#That outshines the sun

# I got a home in glory land

# That outshines the sun

# I got a home in glory land

# That outshines the sun

# Way

# Must be the hand of the Lord

# Do, Lord oh, do, Lord.

HELLE: He was a real success story. He really was.

He wasn't damaged by that place I think, at all.

Many other people seemed to come away from that place

sort of, irreparably... damaged

And it was terrible on marriages

Very few marriages outlasted that place including my parents'.

NICK: I remember Marianne telling me of the tragedy of the Johnston’s

the family that Leonard had originally stayed with in 1960,

who left the island after nine years.

HELLE: This family of such amazing talent and promise

and they just kind of all fell to bits shortly after leaving the island.

lt's my birthday today and this is a wonderful homecoming

And that was a photograph, a family one

taken on my birthday last year on the island.

They always speak Greek among themselves.

I think it comes more naturally to them

They've done all their schooling in Greek, ten years...

HELLE: When they left, almost penniless

she killed herself, like a couple years later.

He died a year after that of tuberculosis, probably,

greatly compounded by cigarettes and alcohol

And then the children that had seemed so, you know,

glorious and beautiful and bright and wonderful on the island,

they, one by one, died early of alcoholism, suicide, drugs.

There's only one that's alive

Numerous other children from families that had lived on Hydra

have had a hard time re-entering the real world

I think there is a depression that sets in if you've spent any time there

l've certainly felt it

There's not a day that goes by that I don't wake up

and wish that I were there. Literally.

I never wanted to be any other place In the world, you know?

lt's just the place

lt's just the place, you know? You

It gets in your bones

I don't know how to describe it but it's just the place.

Just stepping off the boat every time it's... coming home.

(ELECTRICALCRACKLING)

That was a very weird, weird night. There were 660,000 people out there

It was a disturbing night

They even caught the stage on fire

Had to put the stage out before we went on.

Maybe we ought to get outta here someone's gonna get hurt.

Leonard embraced it. He got into it

Like I was saying before, you either get 'em or you don't.

He got it

Well, I was on Mandrax at the time

They used to call me Captain Mandrax

I think it had... It was like a Quaalude, right?

I was relaxed beyond any reasonable state.

I hope she's here, Marianne

I hope she's here. Maybe she's here

I hope she's here

Marianne

#An old woman gave us shelter

# Kept us hidden in the garret

# Then the soldiers came

RON: Marianne was one woman

that didn't seem to me all starstruck over Leonard

Kind of held her own, put it that way, you know?

She would join us sometimes for a week at a time,

or maybe ten days at a time and be gone.

There were other ladies that Leonard had on tour.

But when Marianne was in town he was out of the picture.

She carried with her a different feel

than any woman that I ever saw around Leonard

RON: There was a... a need for such a connection

between Leonard and his audience

that would actually have blown your mind

One night he had so many people come up on stage with him

that it was like this big love-in, right in the middle of our concert!

Like a pile of people, making love without taking their clothes off.

But if we could have stuck around a while longer,

who knows what would have happened?

Can you imagine, we're playing Amsterdam

and he invites the entire audience to come home with us to his hotel.

And they did it

We took a lot of acid on those trips A lot.

Leonard had a buddy in London and he had a thing called Desert Dust.

And if you took a needle

and touched it to your tongue

and the tiniest little speck that you could pick up with that needle

on your tongue... Gone!

I mean, gone for 14 hours with no re-entry. None.

One time we took that damn Desert Dust 23 nights in a row,

playing the Royal Albert Hall and the Vienna Opera House

and all the line places on the... We were... I mean, I gotta tell you

there's no way I could ever even survive one of those nights, at this point.

Gotta see my text here

ONLOOKERS: He-eey!

I love to count on you, baby!

This is the way it's gotta be done

Think that stuff still works? - I don't know.

We'll be in serious trouble if it works or if it doesn't work!

Leonard used to say you have to be in the zone.

Well, we stayed in the zone

A lot of people would think, well, if you burn it down strong tonight

tomorrow morning, you got that hangover and all that...

Nuh-uh. We stayed in the zone

Day after day after day.

There was only one night, we were playing in Jerusalem

when he wasn't gettin' them

Now, look, if it doesn't get any better, uh...

we'll just end the concert and l'll refund your money.

Some nights

one is raised off the ground

And some nights, you just can't get off the ground

And there's no point in lying about it

And tonight, we just haven't been getting off the ground.

BILLY: So, anyway, we're backstage and we're going

'What's gonna happen?" And Marty Machat, his manager,

is trying to talk to him

And Leonard's just singing, right? I knew that and...

How do you mean "zinging"? - I mean, like, on LSD.

Like his eyes are blacked out like they get, right?

And, uh

He's just feeling... And so, all of a sudden, he says to me

he goes, "Billy, can you get me a razor?"

I said, "Leonard, what are you gonna do cut your throat?"

And he says, "No. I think ifl shave I might be able to go back out."

You got... This is the last concert

This is something you have to do, then, bang, I know, I have to shave

What a life!

What a life

Oh, this is wonderful. Why didn't you tell me about this?

BILLY: So that's what he did. He shaved

Dry-shaved almost

With just some water.

And then he went back out there with a big rash on his face

and finished the show.

You gotta try it, man. lt's wonderful

Oh, yeah. Amazing.

Oh, this is really great

# And I saw Jesus on the cross

# On a hill called Calvary

# Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?

# He said "Talk of love, not hate”

Everybody was shooting from the hip right? Not welded to anything.

The idea was that tonight we will play this song

better than we did last night

And tomorrow night we're gonna play it better than we did tonight.

# Sometimes happy sometimes blue

# Glad that I ran into you

RON: There was only one night one night,

that I felt that I let things get away from me

And I actually went for this beautiful chord...

It was an F-sharp minor seventh, in, I think the song called "Suzanne”

And as I went for that chord

I actually landed on my face, on the ground on stage, right there

And Leonard turned around and looked at me, like, "OK. All right.

We need to now start backing off the Mandrax, right?"

Marianne and l kept in touch during the '70s and '80s

with the occasional postcard and letter

I was delighted when she suggested we might work together

And we talked about various ideas.

Marianne was increasingly concerned about Axel.

He'd been on a trip to India and taken too many drugs.

She was upset with Little Axel’s father Who’d encouraged him.

Axel was now living in an institution in Oslo

and Marianne was spending more and more time with him.

Marianne had still been following Leonard on his travels

and very infrequently they still shared the house together on Hydra.

Apparently, Leonard was now living part of the year in Montreal

with a woman called Suzanne

l've read three of his biographies

and l've always been surprised that they sort of partition it

as, like, "OK, here was Marianne” And then that was over.

And then we took up with Suzanne

But, in fact, there was a considerable overlap of time

where he supported both families

He said that when he was with her and Axel

in that house on Hydra, he felt that's where he belonged

But when he was with Suzanne and the baby in Montreal,

he felt that's where he belonged

And so, he was confused.

Suzanne, she was much more visceral in a way.

And 14 years younger than him

So, I guess there was a whole bunch of different things

that conspired to make it come to an end

You needed somebody like Suzanne who was..

Well, the word "ruthless" is just the word that com es to mind.

And she did what she wanted to do

to bind Leonard to her by any means

To use the Black Panther theme by any means necessary.

And, boy, did she do

She knew exactly what to do and when to do it.

It was like falling into a spider's web And there was something...

There's always something terribly fascinating about the spider.

Very fascinating

And I think Leonard just fell into that because it was so fascinating.

I don't even know what drove that whole thing, but he knew..

He knew he was... As Irving would say,

“Make sure you're doing the wrong thing."

Boy, did he make sure he did the wrong thing with Suzanne

I think Leonard's quest in life

overrode the normal, you know, settling down and having a home

and a family and all that stuff.

Leonard always had that feeling that he was after something

that he couldn't get his hands around

The only thing about it is I don't know...

I don't think he knew what he was chasing, you know?

I don't think he... I don't think he really knew.

And that made it be probably a darker.

You know, he lived in a He lived in darkness.

He'd disappear for six weeks sometimes

I wouldn't know how to find him or nothing. Nobody would, you know?

And I was all a deep, deep depression

(CHEERING)

When we toured Europe, and when we toured Germany,

l've never seen so many blondes in one audience.

He was the poet for the quasi-depressed women of his era

People who were going through issues they'd come up sobbing,

"You saved my life. I was in such a dark place

And your darkness led me out of it

Thank you so much

He had his thing that he projected.

He had his black suit

He had his look of seriousness

And you never saw his humour. He was a really funny guy.

But when he was on stage, it was dark

and it was lonely and it was desperate

Those who would sacrifice one generation on behalf of another.

# Well the door it opened slowly

# My father he came in

# I was nine years old

# And he stood so tall above me

# And his blue eyes they were shining

# And his voice was very cold.

I wanted to frame each of the songs

like a little Vignette

They all had these places of mind

So, I was giving them... At the college we were using unusual instruments.

A couple of muted trombones to take it somewhere,

or very icy strings and dark shimmering things

to make it... these little movies

And we came back and we were ready to do another couple of weeks in the studio

and he said, l'm gonna go to Hydra for I little bit

but as soon as I get back we'll finish it."

And I didn't hear from him for.

SSVSII y93I'S

JOHN: It turns out, Marty Machat who was Leonard's manager

also managed Phil Spector.

And he'd made a deal for Phil with Warner Brothers

that got them both a huge advance

A really huge advance. For the '70s, it was unheard of.

So, what had happened, Marty had called up Leonard and just said

"Forget the record with John. We'll put that on the back burner.

I want you to do a record with Phil Spector.

He's really famous lt'll make you a hit.

And, of course, he made "Death of A Ladies Man”

which, you know... is not his best work

That happened at a curious time in my life,

because I was at a very low point

My family was breaking up

L was living in Los Angeles, which was a foreign city to me

And l'd lost control of, as I say, of my family,

and my work and my life

And it was a very, very dark period

And when he got into the studio

it was clear that he was eccentric

but I didn't know that he was mad

The atmosphere was one of guns

I mean, that's really what was going on, were guns.

The music was a subsidiary. They were armed to the teeth

All of his friends, his bodyguards you know?

And everybody was drunk

So, you know, I mean, you were slipping over bullets!

You know, you were biting into revolvers in your hamburger.

I mean, Phil was beyond control

I remember, Phil, you know, shoved a revolver into my neck

and said, you know, Leonard, I love you.

I said, "l hope you do, Phil!

I think that if anybody, you know, disappointed the project, it was me

I didn't have the chops to sing those songs.

I think a song like "Memories' is a really dynamite tune.

L think the tune is great the lyric is touching.

I think it really does come out of that high school gymnasium

# So, won’t you let me see

# Won’t you let me see

# I said won’t you let me see

# Your naked body?

One day, Suzanne with Little Adam,

the same age as my son when I came back to Hydra, was standing on the doorway

wondering when I was moving out so, she could move in.

I remember that

seeing her, I somehow felt

a little bit taller, a little bit stronger,

a little bit older, and a little bit wiser. (CHUCKLES)

I got hold of something when I saw her there with the baby.

And then I very calmly packed up, took Axel, and moved out.

Yeah, so Marianne finally decided that enough was enough

and she did have to go back to Oslo.

And her mother had always wanted her to come here and have a normal life.

Become a secretary, receptionist or something like that,

and be normal

So, Marianne finally decided, 'Yeah, that's what l'm gonna do

So, she came back up here, became a secretary, married a Norwegian man

and became the stepmother to his children,

had a very average, ordinary life.

And every once in a while, she would go back to Hydra, visit her friends.

JOHN: Out of the blue

Now, l told you that l'd done Rebecca and never heard from Leonard again.

I thought, "Well, I did something What did l...? I did something."

He calls up and, Hey, man. How you doing?

Wanna make a record?

l'm saying, "Yeah, l've been... l've been waitin' for this phone call!

So, we went in the studio and we did "Hallelujah" fairly early.

And he played it for me and it went

(PLAYS ON SIMPLE KEYBOARD)

He had just bought a little Casio synthesiser

on 7th Avenue and 49th Street

One of these... dinky, dinky, dinky, dink... One-linger things.

And he fell in love with it

He said, "l wanna record this Use it for the track."

So, we put it down that way.

We're saying, "Holy crap, man This is really good.

We... We've done something here

Leonard was just grinning

Even Marty, who was reluctant to like anything I was involved in

just said, "This is... This is it

We bring him up to Columbia

There's a new guy named Walter Yetnikoff.

This was his first big thing

He hears it, and he says 'No, I don't like this at all.

And there's a famous quote

"Leonard, I know you're great, but I don't know if you're any good

Something like that. And he says 'We're not gonna release it."

And Marty then later says

"John, I knew it! You've ruined Leonard's career.

You have ruined... lt's an unreleasable record

lt's the biggest disappointment in our lives.

I can't believe you did this to Leonard."

And he had loved it earlier in the day.

And l'm saying, W-Well, what do you mean? lt's a

He said, "No, they hate it. They're not gonna release it

At which point he ceremoniously threw my contract in the garbage

I never got to sign it

And he said, "And you're not gonna be working for Columbia anymore."

There was a couple of other artists I was supposed to work with.

That was... That was it. I was done

In the morning we thought we had this greatest of all Leonard Cohen records,

and by the afternoon l was out of the business

It was the end of the world

That's when the whole Mt Baldy thing happened.

That's a huge phase in Leonard's life

I didn't see him. I got out of the record business, essentially,

because of how this record went down.

# Yes, and I 'll see your Hag on the marble arch

# Bit love is not a victory march

# lt's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah...

This record was monumentally important.

It was the anthem of anthems

But to this day, l've yet to see any royalties

I think that through all of this searching and searching for herself

and for her identity, through all those years on Hydra and other places,

and having had, you know, the first husband who was the writer

and the second husband who was the writer and singer,

and never really knowing who she was except in comparison to them,

somehow in relation to them

I think it took coming back here for her to really find herself.

She was a really nice person

Very kind and very generous

She really listened to you when you talked.

Not a lot of people do that

Most people when they're talking to you

are just kind of waiting until they can say their next line, you know?

But she was really interested

and she really listened and really thought about it

She was a very generous and kind person

I hadn't visited Hydra for 40 years.

It had changed from the wondrous place you could live on $ 1,000 a year

to the playground of the very rich

One of the only survivors of the old Hydra is Don Lowe,

who lives up this path in this house without electricity or running water

Don prefers candles and has a well.

Marianne introduced me to Don in 1968

He has since self-published over 30 books.

Oh, there you are!

Better come out

Don has lived on Hydra for 60 years

The last time he left the island was 25 years ago.

I made this for my…

anyone that gets stuck and ain't got nowhere to live, you see

Wow, it's beautiful. lt's nice, you see? Dug it out

Did one of your children do that?

No, I did that. NICK: You did that? lt's beautiful!

That's my idea of paradise

You can cook here, and you can write a book here

if you're that way inclined

lt's got a view of the sea and next door.

This is where Marianne was gonna stay, in the house there

Marianne was gonna stay where?

Just there. You can see it Through there.

She was very nice at the end, Marianne

She mellowed and you know.

Because it was never easy after Leonard

Every time he gave a concert or something, she'd get caught up in it

NICK: Every time he gave...?

Every time he gave a concert she had an invitation.

And she was interviewed in Norway, and the things like that.

So, she couldn't really... She married a lovely guy afterwards.

Divorced him, and married him again

And... Jan. A very sweet man. Norwegian.

Uh, but

Yeah, I got quite fond of her at the end, Marianne.

Never had... When we were younger, we lived our own way.

But at the end, she... She became very close

mm

I had some wonderful moments on the road, you know,

travelling with musicians and playing with musicians

But, by and large, I didn't have what it took to really enjoy

my success or my celebrity. I was never able to locate it

I was never able to use it.

Well, that's beautiful, hm?

Doing what he did up there came natural to him

because of his discipline

He became a servant for years and years there

He had to get up at three In the morning.

Some of the things he told me that they did up there,

I don't know If l could have hung with that

Your small...? -Yeah.

Your black bag? - Yeah.

Brown bag. What did I do with it? Oh, in here, Roshi. In here. In here

My handbag

Your handbag? - Yeah.

lt's still in the car? - Yeah.

Do you want to eat something? - Eh?

You want to eat something?

Yeah, no. Wait. Walk OK. OK.

Roshi was his spiritual advisory, his Buddhist monk leader.

He centred him

It was like having Mom and Dad watching you,

if you think that you're likely to be tempted to stray.

I think it was his crutch

And it also probably increased his focus and concentration.

l'm trying to learn some things about love

Well, love is that activity that makes the power of man and woman...

that incorporates it into your own heart

Where you can embody man and woman

When you can embody Hell and Heaven

When you can reconcile and contain

when man and woman becomes your content.

In other words, when your woman becomes your own content.

And you become her content, that's love.

And... And you recognise the full equality of that exchange

because if she's smaller than you she can't fill you.

And if you're larger than her, you can't fill her.

So, there has to be an understanding

that there really is an absolute equality of power.

Different kinds of power, obviously, different kinds of magic

Different kinds of strength, different kinds of... of movement

that's as different as night and day.

And it is night and day. And it is the moon and the sun

And it is the land and the sea

And it is the plus and minus

It is Heaven and Hell

It is all those antinomies

But they're all equal

I have experienced it I have experienced it

You don't have to change the world

There's not gonna be any revolutions

l'm sure that everybody already knows

about all that transpired along the way when he came back down off the mountain

He had no money. You know?

Because this person that he had trusted...

A person that he would have taken a bullet for, so to speak.

That's what he told me

That he spent holidays with, with her children and his children

had absolutely sold him out

And it turned out that a friendship that he thought was the real deal

ended up being a really bad thing

Well, the money seems to be gone.

As far as the manager, you know, who was my dear friend...

l'm still rather fond of her.

But, uh... she, um

There's been a judgement of... of several million dollars against her.

But, uh, you know, it's... She doesn't seem to have any money to

lt's impossible to collect it

I don't know. I guess I should be more worried than I am, but l'm not.

So, what can I say? You know?

All of a sudden, here he is

he's now in his 70s

but he has no money now.

He said to me, "All I can do is get out there and tour,

and try to make some money.

He said, "l don't know If l can do it or not."

lt's, uh... lt's been a long time since I stood on the stage in London

It was about, uh... About 14 or 15 years ago

I was... 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream

Suddenly, Leonard was the hottest ticket in town

and he went from our little tour bus

with two sound engineers and three roadies,

to an entourage of 59 people on his own jet.

# Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

#And dance me to the end of love

And he was making upwards of $15 million every year.

One of the top ten grossing acts

He went from literally being wiped out to incredible stardom.

# So long.

# Marianne

# lt's time that we began

# To laugh

# And cry

# And cry

# And laugh

# About it all again

It was a love story, which had 50 chapters

without being together.

She had a compartment of her heart

which was always married to Leonard

That's the beauty of Marianne's and Leonard's history,

that they had this place for each other

till the very end

And it's not the bitter end, it was a lovely end.

lt's a very beautiful end

Suddenly, one evening I got an SMS saying,

l'm at hospital. l'm going to die

Please take care of Little Axel and Jan, my husband."

She asked me, "Could you, could you tell Leonard?"

And another thing she said was "Could you bring a camera?

Because I still feel I have something to say.

And in the morning, there was this lovely letter from Leonard to Marianne

"Dearest Marianne

l'm just a little behind you

Close enough to take your hand

This old body of mine has given up as yours has, too.

l've never forgotten your love and your beauty, but you know that

I don't have to say more Safe travels, old friend.

See you down the road.

Endless love and gratitude,

Your Leonard”.

And the beautiful thing was that this old, sick man

reached his old, sick lover

with a message that

she had always wanted to hear.

I think that, uh... for Marianne

this was a ring that started with leaving Oslo

and going into the adventure with Axel

and meeting Leonard losing Leonard...

meeting Jan

having problems, of course with her son...

And then when this love letter came from Leonard,

I think she felt that it was all completed

So, uh

that's what “words of love” can do.

Greece is a good place to look at the moon, isn't it?

You can read by moonlight

You can read on the terrace

You can see a face as you saw it when you were young

There was good light then oil lamps and candles

and those little flames that floated on a cork in olive oil

What I loved in my old life I haven't forgotten.

It lives in my spine

Marianne and the child

The days of kindness

It rises in my spine and it manifests as tears

I pray that a loving memory exists for them, too,

the precious ones I overthrew

for an education in the world