At 5 PM on Wednesday, September 26th, Gatsby Books is presenting a reading, book signing and impromptu ukulele performance by legendary rock journalist Sylvie Simmons, whose new authorized biography, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, was recently released in the United States.
If there’s a Goddess of rock journalism, Sylvie Simmons is it. Springing from the thriving London music scene of the mid-70s, she left for Los Angeles where she immediately plunged into the glamour and excess of the time. Writing primarily for the UK based Sounds, she interviewed nearly every member of international rock royalty.
She was also on the forefront of coverage about the emerging heavy metal and “hair band” scene in L.A., bringing attention to then-unknown groups like Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe.
In addition to a mile-high stack of published articles and interviews, Simmons has written Grammy-nominated liner notes and authored several books, including biographies of Neil Young and Serge Gainsbourg, and a work of fiction, Too Weird for Ziggy.
Since Laonard Cohen’s career extends back to the 60s, the reclusive Canadian poet, singer and songwriter has garnered a large and avid international following. He’s the darling of music critics, literary types and folks enamoured of his dark, almost tuneless singing. Still, his song “Hallelujah” has been covered by John Cale and Jeff Buckley, used in the animated film Shrek and has been performed by hundreds of artists in a multitude of languages. He’s been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was described by Lou Reed as belonging to the “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters.”
When I spoke with Simmons, she was madly scrambling to finish edits for the U.K. version of the book.
“I love how the English language is so malleable at times,” Simmons said. “There’s also a Canadian edition—three different English-language publishers, who each have teams of people turning trousers into pants and back again to trousers. And the US edition—which came out first—has removed all sorts of ‘ou’ combinations and tossed zees all over the place. The English favour the ‘s’—maybe it was some kind of royal decree of the sort that changed our religion to the Church of England in one swoop.”
This biography of Cohen is different than her previous efforts, mostly in the monumental scope of it.
“Generally I’m happy with the shorter form—an extended essay, as my Neil Young book was (that’s what it was commissioned to be), or something like my Serge Gainsbourg book, more of a tribute and introduction to him for a non-French-speaking fan. Even my first book of fiction, Too Weird for Ziggy, was short stories. No, this is the big one, the deep one, the diligent one, the one I kept putting off writing because I knew what hard work it would be.
“It had been on the back burner of my brain since 2001, when I was living in London and Leonard was there doing promotion for his first album since coming down from the mountain (he spent five and a half years living as a monk in a monastery on Mt. Baldy). I write for MOJO, a big British music magazine, and we tend to do in-depth interviews and articles, almost mini-books (or that’s how it feels when you’re writing one sometimes) and I interviewed Leonard over a three day period.
“In my research for the article I became aware that though I had two shelves full of serious books on Bob Dylan, there were very few of that calibre on Leonard. I thought of writing one, but kept putting it off until that remarkable last tour. I saw him at the Paramount in Oakland (I had seen him many times before in the past in England,where, as in the rest of Europe, he is among the household gods) but that was my first show of that ‘comeback tour’. That pushed me over the edge.”
Widespread mainstream attention, and universal praise of her book, has been spreading across the internet. Of this, she mused, “Mostly, my feelings this morning are somewhere between abject wonder and, as Leonard Cohen once put, an appreciation of the book’s ‘quality of doneness.’ Three years and 200,000 words.”
Gatsby Books is located at 5535 E. Spring Street. Learn more about Sylvie at SylvieSimmons.com.