The art to turn mortality to music or how David Bowie and Leonard Cohen musically faced death

(excerpt of the book: BOWIE & COHEN – encounters and memories)by Christof Graf

Cohen in Los Angeles, Bowie in New York, one British, the other Canadian; both living in the U.S for decades, one on the east coast, the other on the west. In fact, although they were invited to the great stages of the world, Grammy awards shows, the Oscars, Emmys and inductions into the „Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame“, they never crossed paths. Yes, they also met the other greats, like Jagger, McCartney or Dylan, but never one another. In the end they are brothers in spirit, as they each ordered their own personal requiems, their holy mass, with new creations, shortly before their departure.

Bowie’s „Blackstar“ and Leonard Cohen’s „You Want It Darker“ are such astonishing musical farewells, that the only thing thematically comparable would be Johnny Cash’s „farewell“-album.

The presentiment of death

The clues were obvious, that it would be Leonard Cohen’s last album, as he presented it during the fireside chat in the embassy on October 16th, 2016, where he invited a small group of media representatives from around the world. The preparation of the presentation was akin to the preparation of a swansong. Nineteen days later he passed away and it felt like the recurrence of David Bowies passing at the beginning of 2016. Cohen’s illness was a somewhat shrouded mystery, with limited information based on basic knowledge or guesswork. He had already stated in the U.S magazine NEW YORKER that he was ready to die and even posted on FACEBOOK, when he heard of the death of his one-time muse Marianne Ihlen, that he would soon follow her. A few months later, he did.

Prior to his passing, up to the age of 80, he continued travelling through the world for six years, performing in as many concerts as he had in the last fifteen years of his career. Moreover, with albums such as „Old Ideas“ (2012), „Popular Problems“ (2014), and, of course, „You Want It Darker“ (2016), he created three more pieces of „later works“. Fourteen studio albums encompass his entire musical repertoire.

Since David Bowie’s last concert on June 25th, 2004, at the German Hurricane-Festival in Scheeßel, which he had to break off due to a heart attack – after his last song „Ziggy Stardust“ – he never went on tour again, apart from a few guest appearances on David Gilmour (2006) and „Arcade Fire“ (2005 and 2013).

On January 8th, 2013 – on his 66th birthday – for the first time in ten years, he released a single titled „Where Are We Now“, along with a video by Tony Oursler, as a homage to his time in Berlin from 1976 to 1979. Following that, on March 8th, 2013, he released the album „The Next Day“. Some believed this to be a sort of comeback, although it merely was the beginning of the end. On November 18th, 2015, Bowie’s musical „Lazarus“, with Michael C. Hall as the leading role, was performed for the first time; the official premiere happened in presence of David Bowie on December 7th, 2015, in New York. The musical is an adaption of the movie „The Man Who Fell to Earth“ from 1976, in which Bowie had a leading role. On January 8th, 2016, „Blackstar“, the 26th and final studio album of David Bowie, was released. Two days later he died of lung cancer, which was diagnosed 18 months prior. Bowie had not shared this with the public.

The death of Leonard Cohen was „sudden, unexpected, but tranquil“, that was what his manager Robert Kory had explained. It was said that the 82-year-old passed away as a result of his fall on November 7th, 2016, in his Los Angeles house. At first, there was no information as to the cause. Cohen had to fight with a constant declining state of health since 2015, but continued to cover up the kind of suffering he was in. It was later discovered that he was suffering from blood cancer and spinal marrow cancer.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time that „death“ was picked as a central theme in rock music. But it was the first time in pop history that so many high-profile artists had passed within a year, and how some of them, such as Bowie and Cohen, confronted their own death during their imminent demise, by making it part of their late works. With that they managed to do something only Johnny Cash had done before, as he released his last album on November 5th 2002 „The Man Comes Around“, the fourth album in the „American Recordings“-series; the pop artists wrote their own requiems and dealt with them.

One could tell that Cash had been very sick in 2002. The broken twang of his voice, however, fit perfectly with the base tone of the album. His singing on this album is fragile, reserved and dignified, much like the singing of Bowie and Cohen. Cash’s 2002 album deals mainly with love, death and the life thereafter. The title song deals with the Last Judgment and the rebirth of Christ and is one of the final pieces Cash ever wrote. The first edition of the „American Recordings“ in 1994 also features Leonard Cohen’s „Bird on A Wire“ as a cover version.

2016 was thus not the first time that one mourned the passing of dearly fond musical personalities and it certainly won’t be the last. But it was different in its intensity.