The Song of Leonard Cohen (Ebook)
Buy from
A rare insight into the poet, musician and artist Leonard Cohen written by the man who spent a year on tour with him - and containing previously unpublished songs and poems.
'In 1979 Leonard Cohen set off on his Field Commander Cohen world tour accompanied by Harry Rasky. Rasky was a young filmmaker and it would be one of the wildest years of his life. From soaking in a Jacuzzi with Cohen, drinking wine and discussing the meaning of life to the pair running away from armed police in Germany suspected of being Bader-Meinhof terrorists this is the full story of that tour and a rare insight into Leonard Cohen the poet, musician and man. Harry Rasky created the acclaimed documentary The Song of Leonard Cohen and he has now delved into his personal archives and diaries to write this intimate and moving portrait of Cohen. Including previously unseen photos, as well as Cohen's own commentary on his writing and his development as a writer no other book gets so close to Leonard Cohen the writer.Also containing a special bonus chapter, The Dylan Diaries, based on Harry Rasky's notes from an abandoned 1966 documentary project with Bob Dylan that captures Dylan's chaotic creativity at the time.
Reviews for The Song of Leonard Cohen
Rolling Stone
Harry Rasky
Harry Rasky is a Canadian film maker, producer, director, author. Rasky was born in Toronto, one of eight children in a Yiddish-speaking Russian immigrant home. Harry, whose father was a cantor and sho?et, spoke only Yiddish until he began public school. In 1949 he graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in arts and began looking for a job in the media, a field not always welcoming to Jews. He found a first job as a reporter in Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario but soon moved back to Toronto to work as editor for a local radio station and also wrote copy for popular newscaster Lorne Greene. In 1952 Rasky began to write and direct news programs for the new CBC television network and in 1955 he moved to New York to work for Edward R. Murrow. In 1970, already an accomplished documentary film maker and winner of an Emmy award for his film Hall of Kings, a documentary on Westminster Abbey, Rasky returned to Toronto, where he continued his career as freelance filmmaker.
Rasky regards his more than 40 films as infused with Jewishness – about half of his documentaries deal directly with Jewish themes and many of the rest are informed by his Jewish roots. His unique, innovative documentary films, often dubbed "Raskymentaries" for their combination of documentary and fiction-film elements, include: Homage to Chagall: The Colours of Love (1975), Arthur Miller on Home Ground (1979), Karsh: The Searching Eye (1986), and the autobiographical Nobody Swings on Sunday (2003). His work has chronicled the lives of people as diverse as Shaw and Tennessee Williams, Northrop Frye and Robertson Davies, Leonard Cohen and Henry Moore. In 2005 he was preparing a film on Italian-Jewish artist Amedeo Modigliani.
Rasky's art has been honored with more than 200 international prizes and citations, including the Venice Film Award, the Golden Eagle, several Peabody Awards, an Emmy, and two Oscar Nominations. In 1992, he was given the lifetime award of the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists. The Denver International Film Festival called Harry Rasky "the world's most acclaimed nonfiction filmmaker." Rasky has also published a number of books on his life, his art, and some of those he has documented on film, including Nobody Swings on Sunday, The Many Lives and Films of Harry Rasky (1980), and The Three Harrys (1999).