When Kenny Met Lenny

Last night I watched a long and richly depressing documentary on BBC2 – Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love, made by semi-gonzo film-maker Nick Broomfield. As the name suggests, its focus was the relationship between L. Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian girl he met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. In a way, it's quite a sweet story about a loving relationship that lasted, off and on (mostly off), through both their lives, and resulted in some great songs. However, the film also made clear that the free-form hedonism of life among the expats on Hydra in the Sixties took a pretty terrible toll: less on the men (unless they succumbed, as some did, to the drugs and booze) than on the women and, especially, the children. Among the casualties was Marianne's own son (by writer Axel Jensen), who at the age of eight was dumped at A.S. Neill's madhouse of a boarding school, Summerhill, and who spent most of the rest of his life in mental institutions. 
  The poet Kenneth Koch, however, came through unscathed. He spent some while on Hydra in the Sixties (see 'The Departure from Hydra', 'With Janice', etc), where his path inevitably crossed with that of Leonard Cohen, whose later rise to fame as a singer surprised and bemused Koch. Cohen later suggested that Koch too should try his hand at being a singer. In an interview, Koch ruefully recalled the occasion:

'I met Leonard Cohen on the island of Hydra in Greece where Janice [K's wife] and Katherine age five and I had gone for a summer vacation. And we became very good friends. We travelled also to Turkey together, to Istanbul. I liked Leonard a lot and so did Janice. We saw each other then a few times after that, it was nice and intense, but never more than a day. After some years, we were already living on West 4th Street, Katherine must have been ten by then. I ran into him on a bus. “Leonard!” I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Don’t you know? I’m a singer.” He had been a poet and a novelist. I got him to tell me all about it. I invited him over to our place and he told me I should become a singer too. I should sing all my poems. It was wonderful because you met lots of women and made a lot of money and you got to travel around and it was very satisfying to sing your poems. I said, “That’s great, Leonard,” and of course I was interested. I said, “Leonard, I can’t sing.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I can’t carry a tune.” He said, “That’s good, that means no one else will be able to sing your stuff.” And I said, “Well okay, but also I don’t play an instrument.” He said, “You can probably learn — let’s try.” There wasn’t anything that made noise except a vacuum cleaner. I plugged in the vacuum cleaner and I thought I’d be more in the mood to sing if I stood up on a chair. He said, “Sing one of your poems.” I said, “There’s no music to any of my poems.” He said, “That’s okay.” I sang, with intermittent noise from the vacuum cleaner, “You were wearing your Edgar Allan Poe printed cotton blouse” in a hillbilly voice.

Leonard interrupted me after a few bars I think they’re called — “You’re not serious.” Well there I was standing up on a chair and playing a vacuum cleaner. I stopped playing the vacuum cleaner and tried to be serious. He said, “I don’t believe you. Who are you singing to?” “Leonard, I’m singing to you, there’s no one else here.” “No — who in the audience. Who do you want to go to bed with after the show? Who are you addressing? Who do you want to like you?” “Twenty-two year old women.” “No. Everybody wants 22-year-old women. Sing to somebody else. You know who I sing to? 14-year-olds and 40-year olds.” I’m not sure those are the exact numbers — something like 14 and 40. I said, “Okay, I’ll try to sing to 14 yr olds.” But trying to sing my poems? It didn’t work too well. I said I’d try. At my age how can I get started? I can’t carry a tune, I don’t play an instrument, and I’ve never sung before. I was already 40 at least by then. “There’s one way you can help me.” And he said, “Anything, what is it?” “Are you going to have tributes on your sleeve, put me on the record jacket. Say, ‘Even the legendary Kenny has come out of retirement to praise Leonard Cohen.’” I figured that people who respond to this kind of thing are not exactly scholarly. He promised he would put this on the record cover. Months went by. I never heard from Leonard. I did receive from him this big rectangle, his record. On the cover was this girl (I don’t know if she was 14 or 40) rising from flames, somewhere in between, and on the back was Leonard, his lyrics, and no tributes. And no Kenny, and that was the end of another career, another attempt to become rich.'