Soon after the release of his final album, You Want It Darker, Leonard Cohen stated via an article on The New Yorker that he was ready to die.
"I am ready to die. I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me," were his exact words. A little later he made clear that he was exaggerating on that statement, that's how his dark sense of humour was working in his mind, but he ended up dying just days later after all.
Leonard Cohen passed away on November 7th 2016 but his death was announced three days later via a statement by his son, Adam, which said that the man left this world "peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records."
Although he was already a published writer before, his involvement in the music industry began in 1967 when he was 34 years old, an age which especially in those times was considered too late for someone to make it in the business. However, Leonard proved that if the talent is there, there's no such thing as "too late". He proved it by making it indeed and eventually becoming one of the greatest and most celebrated singers/songwriters of all time.
Watch the following amazing footage of him from the amazing 1974 documentary by Tony Palmer, Leonard Cohen: Bird On A Wire, which captures Cohen on his 1972 tour. The film had disappeared since its original limited run, but resurfaced many years later, in 2010, when it was released for the first time on DVD.
ZR