I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, “You must not ask for so much”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”
More than a half century after Leonard Cohen released Bird on the Wire, a stash of his notes, lyrics and memorabilia will go to the highest bidders on Friday in a sale organized by Julien’s Auctions in Los Angeles. Despite such curios as a lock of the troubadour’s hair, a pair of signed blank cheques and a Greek fisherman’s cap billed as Cohen’s “magic writing” hat, the auction is typical when it comes to celebrity mementos.
What is remarkable about the auction, Celebrating Leonard Cohen – The Collections of Aviva Layton, Anjani Thomas, & More, is that it takes place against a backdrop of protracted legal wrangling involving Cohen’s children and his former manager and attorney.
Cohen died in 2016 in Los Angeles at the age of 82. The latest development in the battle over his estate is a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Feb. 6. According to a Los Angeles Times report, Lorca Cohen and Adam Cohen allege that their father’s long-time law firm, Ervin Cohen & Jessup, covered up “malfeasance” by his manager, Robert Kory.
Because the items being auctioned off this week are from private collections, the sale is unaffected by the Cohen estate’s legal actions. But the motherlode of Cohen archives and memorabilia are controlled by the Leonard Cohen Family Trust. The ongoing legal dispute, says one Cohen biographer, has thrown a monkey wrench into plans for the monetization and utilization of items including unreleased recordings. In particular, an ambitious archival project involving institutions across Canada is in limbo.
“The legal situation is preventing the project from being realized,” Ira Nadel said. “Also, plans were drawn up for a Leonard Cohen box set. But none of it has happened.”
Nadel, who was brought in as an academic adviser on the project, was among the attendees of a one-day conference at the Art Gallery of Ontario during the gallery’s 2022-23 mounting of the multimedia exhibit, Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows. A discussion involved the digitization of the family trust archives, with plans for physical items to be divided between the AGO, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, McGill University and the National Music Centre in Calgary.
“Leonard was very conscious of his legacy,” said the author of 1994′s Leonard Cohen: A Life in Art. “He wanted the archive to be in Canada, not in Fargo, North Dakota or Columbia, South Carolina, just because an American could afford to purchase the whole archive.”
If a 2019 Christie’s auction of correspondence between Cohen and his late muse and lover Marianne Ihlen is any indication, the price for items associated with the Closing Time singer won’t go cheap. A signed letter to Ihlen from Cohen in 1967 on Penn Terminal Hotel stationery detailing his disastrous New York debut – “couldn’t get more than a croak out of my throat” – fetched US$35,000.
Items in this week’s auction are from the collections of Aviva Layton (former wife of the late poet and Cohen pal, Irving Layton), Anjani Thomas (who had a musical and romantic relationship with Cohen) and Cohen editors Cork Smith and Nancy Bacal.
Of particular interest is a black cotton fisherman’s cap from Cohen’s years on the Greek island of Hydra. Claiming the hat magically helped him to write, he gifted it to Layton.
“It didn’t help Irving,” said Aviva Layton. “It only worked with Leonard.”
The cap is estimated to sell for US$6,000. Other Layton pieces include a skeleton key to Cohen’s house on Hydra – “That was a million years ago; I don’t even know if the door even exists anymore” – and a pair of I Ching coins given to her in Montreal after Cohen guided Layton on her first acid trip in 1967.
Layton licked the psychedelic substance from a corner of a notebook page which came from the first batch of LSD made in a bathtub by Timothy Leary in Mexico. As she explained it, “It was the Sixties, you know?”
Though it is believed that most of Cohen’s notebooks are in the possession of the family trust, one from Thomas, who provided backup vocals on Cohen’s recording of Hallelujah, is being auctioned off by Julien’s. Dated Jan. 21, 2007, it contains 76 pages of notes, poems and drafts of lyrics in Cohen’s hand. Its preauction estimate is US$100,000 to US$150,000.
In addition to verses in the works and a poem for Thomas, the notebook includes an accounting of the couple’s bets and debts. “We bet high, and we never collected off each other,” Thomas said.
Other Thomas items include a locket with a lock of Cohen’s hair. Though estimated at US$600, preauction online bidding has already doubled that amount. Also up for grabs are a pair of blank, signed cheques drawn from Cohen’s account at the City National Bank in Beverly Hills. “The account,” Thomas confirmed, “is closed.”