Ron was a couple of years older than me and he lived in the village of my childhood. It was he who first introduced me to the songs of Leonard Cohen in the late sixties. We played those first albums over and over - "The Songs of Leonard Cohen" (1967) and "Songs From a Room" (1968). Later I bought "Songs of Love and Hate" (1971) and we gave it the same treatment - played over and over.
From the very start, I never thought of Leonard Cohen as a mournful, gloomy singer songwriter. There was humour there and humanity and of course an intimate affection for language. He was a poet who had lived and loved. I looked on the back of the album cover for "Songs From a Room" and saw his one time lover, Marianne, sitting in a humble room on the Grecian island of Hydra where Leonard Cohen lived for a year or two long before he became famous.
My friend Ron became a bank worker with The National Westminster Bank down in London but when his marriage broke up and he lost his job, he returned to the village of my childhood as gradually alcoholism took over his life. He lived alone in his old family home and was found sitting in his favourite armchair several days after his death. I guess that Leonard Cohen might have been inspired to write a song about Ron's death if he had only known about it.
This is partly for you Ron - in your memory - and for any blog visitors who care to listen.
Three songs
From "The Songs of Leonard Cohen"...
From "Songs of Love and Hate"...
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/rGQaiqZ
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