STACK #244 February 2025

MUSIC FEATURE

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SHAKE SOME ACTION A SKETCHY MEETING WITH LEONARD COHEN Words Stuart Coupe

L et me take you back to a morning in March 1980, when I was wandering towards the Hilton Hotel in Sydney for a late breakfast interview with Leonard Cohen, an artist whose songs, poetry, and fiction were already deeply imbedded in my psyche. Cohen was in Australia for his first tour, performing with a large band that included several Greek musicians, and I had the chance to talk with him before the first Sydney show. Was I nervous? Most definitely. It was Leonard Cohen. We went to the hotel café overlooking George Street. Cohen was dressed in a suit. Stylish. Classy. Reserved but friendly. We were chatting at the table when Cohen turned over his placemat and took a pen from his jacket pocket. Of course he had a pen in his lapel pocket. That’s what classy people like Leonard Cohen do. He began sketching. As I was sitting on the opposite side of the table I had no idea what he was doing. He kept looking up, answering my question at the same time. Eventually the pen strokes revealed the rudimentary outline of a face. My face. And my left hand. Why? Cohen had been taken by the way I was leaning forward, resting my elbow on the table and cradling my face with my extended fingers. Nothing unusual to me but clearly intriguing enough for him to be captivated by it. It slowly dawned on me that I was actually being… Sketched… By… Leonard… Cohen. I’d done many, many interviews prior to this but no-one had ever drawn me during an interview. Cohen finished his sketch, and we concluded the interview. He got up and went to take the

things. I took it home. Put it in a pile of things and there it stayed. Maybe I moved with the wrong people at the time but no one I knew ever seemed all that excited to see Leonard Cohen’s sketch of me. So, no doubt it languished in ever-increasing piles of – STUFF. Concert programs, magazines, newspaper clippings, story drafts. Stuff. It probably moved house with me a few times. I just assumed it was there – somewhere – and would reappear from time to time. But during the 1980s I moved. And I moved often. Sometimes quickly. Things went everywhere. I’m sure some stuff was tossed out and lots left behind. I didn’t really think about the Leonard Cohen sketch until one day I did – and I couldn’t find it. Does someone I know have it? Was it destroyed? Does someone else have it? Did anyone even know that roughly sketched face was the work of Leonard Cohen? Decades later I was chatting with Cohen’s biographer Sylvie Simmons and I mentioned the incident. “Oh, I’d love to see that sketch,” she said, before I explained that I didn’t have it anymore and had no idea where it was. I have no proof that I was ever sketched by Leonard Cohen in the café at the Hilton Hotel that March morning. None at all. You need to take my word for it. Honestly, it did happen. Things come and they go. It’s so very random. I don’t have the sketch that Cohen did, but I do have the scrap of paper where Johnny Depp scribbled his phone number at the Regent Hotel for me and said I should ask for Dean Moriarty when I called or dropped by. Would I trade that ephemera for my Cohen

your sketch – but it’s my face,” I said. Slightly reluctantly, he gave it to me after signing my copy of his latest album, Recent Songs , with tiny handwriting in a top corner: “Stuart, All Good Things – Leonard Cohen”. Now, you know I should have immediately framed this placemat adorned with Leonard Cohen’s sketch of me. Of course I should have. But money was tight. And I didn’t really think of these He kept looking up, answering my question at the same time. Eventually the pen strokes revealed the rudimentary outline of a face. My face

placemat. Naturally I wanted the drawing. I asked him for it and he politely declined. “Leonard, it’s

sketch? You bet. Why does one object travel with you and another disappear? But I was sketched by Leonard Cohen. I need you to trust me on this. I cannot prove it.

50 FEBRUARY 2025

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