Leonard Cohen
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Year:
2008
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Inducted by:
Lou Reed (The Velvet Underground)
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Category:
Performers
Introduction
For six decades, Leonard Cohen revealed his soul to the world through poetry and song—his deep and timeless humanity touching our very core.
Simply brilliant. His music and words will resonate forever.
Lou Reed Inducts Leonard Cohen
Lou Reed Inducts Leonard Cohen at the 2008 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony-
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Lou Reed Inducts Leonard Cohen00:08:10 -
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Leonard Cohen Acceptance Speech00:04:27 -
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"Hallelujah"00:04:13
Hall of Fame Essay
2008
I always experience myself as falling apart, and I’m taking emergency measures,” Leonard Cohen said fifteen years ago. “It’s coming apart at every moment. I try Prozac. I try love. I try drugs. I try Zen meditation. I try the monastery. I try forgetting about all those strategies and going straight. And the place where the evaluation happens is where I write the songs, when I get to that place where I can’t be dishonest about what I’ve been doing.”
For four decades, Cohen has been a model of gut-wrenching emotional honesty. He is, without question, one of the most important and influential songwriters of our time, a figure whose body of work achieves greater depths of mystery and meaning as time goes on.
We’re so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is.
