Leonard Cohen, rock music’s man of letters, whose songs earned him critical and popular acclaim, has died at age 82, a statement on his Facebook page said.
“It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away,” a statement on the Facebook page said. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.”
The statement did not provide further details on Cohen’s death, and representatives for the singer could not be reached immediately for comment. It said a memorial was planned in Los Angeles, where Cohen had lived for many years.
“R.I.P. Leonard Cohen,” singer-songwriter Carole King said on Twitter. Singer Roseanne Cash echoed the lyrics from Cohen’s song Anthem when she said in a tweet: “Leonard Cohen is dead. There’s a crack in everything. No light yet.”
Cohen, a native of Quebec, 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.
Although he influenced many musicians and won many honours, including induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada, Cohen rarely made the pop music charts with his sometimes moody folk-rock.
Many of Cohen’s songs became hits for other artistes, including Judy Collins, who helped Cohen gain fame by recording some of his early compositions in the 1960s.
Cohen’s lyrics were deeply personal and at times took on an element of prayer.
Cohen’s 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.
A New Yorker profile of Cohen last month recounted how, after being told in July she had only a few days left to live, he e-mailed her: “Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon.”
Two days later, he learned in an e-mail she had died after reading his note.
Cohen toured extensively from 2008 to 2013 after being unable to collect most of a $9mn judgment against his former manager and lover, Kelley Lynch, whom he accused of draining his savings.
He released an album, You Want It Darker, just last month.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Cohen as “a most remarkable Montrealer” who had “managed to reach the highest of artistic achievement, both as an acclaimed poet and a world-renowned singer-songwriter”.