Singer Leonard Cohen Dies

LOS ANGELES, CA -- Influential folk music singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has died, his music label announced on Facebook on Thursday night. He was 82

"A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief," the post stated.

Cohen combined his gravelly voice and soulful poetry to mesmerizing effect with albums that captured critical acclaim and adoration from fellow musicians if not always chart-topping success.

Cohen is known for writing and recording songs that then become hits when covered by other artists, such as "Suzanne" and "Bird On a Wire" for Judy Collins and "Hallelujah" for the late Jeff Buckley.

A complicated figure who once secluded himself in a Mt. Baldy Buddhist monastery for years at a time, Cohen was famed for his fleeting affairs with famous women such as Joni Mitchell, or as in the case of Janis Joplin, one night stands.

The brief encounter with Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel inspired the song Chelsea Hotel # 2. Cohen would later tell BBC his indiscretion in telling of the night spent with Joplin was one of his deepest regrets.

But for all his famous loves, it was a searing loneliness that marked his poetry, music and life. As he wrote in the poem "Titles" from "The Book of Longing," "My reputation as a Ladies’ Man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone."

Born in Quebec, Canada on September 21, 1934 to a middle-class Jewish family (one grandfather was a Talmudic scholar, the other was a co-founder of the Canadian Jewish Congress), Cohen first focused on poetry, heavily influenced by the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca (he would name his daughter, Lorca).

He published his first collection of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies in 1956 when he was 22. That was followed by The Spice-Box of Earth five years later.

Using money from a trust fund, Cohen moved to the Greek Island of Hydra where he continued to write and publish poetry and fiction.

Around the time of his first novel - "Beautiful Losers" - he also wrote Suzanne, which became a hit song for Collins.

That, combined with his poetry, led to Columbia Records giving him a contract to record The Songs of Leonard Cohen, which came out in 1967. While none of his songs made the charts in the United States, he built a following in Canada and Europe and went on to record 13 more albums.

His most recent album, You Want it Darker, was just released last month.

Leonard never married and is survived by his two children, Adam and Lorca.

-- Patch staffers Paige Austin and Colin Miner contributed to this report. Photo credit: Takahiro Kyono/Wiki Commons