Leonard Cohen's Legacy: The Hydra Home That Inspired His Music (photos & videos)

Leonard Cohen passed away at the age of 82 on November 10, leaving behind not only his musical legacy but his beloved home on the Greek island of Hydra. Since his death, fans have been flocking to pay their respects to the house that inspired some of his most significant works.

The cosmopolitan writer and singer lived and traveled the world during his life. He kept a house in the Westmount suburb of Montreal, the city where he grew up, but it was his Hydra home that was closest to his heart.

In September of 1960, just six days after his 26th birthday, Cohen bought the 19th-century stone house with $1,500 from his grandmother’s legacy. He lived there for seven years, even meeting a romantic partner, Marianne Jensen, who inspired countless songs, including So Long, Marianne on his debut album. He eventually left to pursue a music career in Nashville and other arts around the world—but he always returned to Hydra, escaping there during the summers.

Cohen’s original Hydra home has changed quite a bit in the past 80 years, most notably with the addition of electricity, plumbing, and running water. (LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)

In an interview with Kari Hesthamar for Norwegian Radio, Cohen described how he resided in the house with little money and simple pleasures: “My house looked beautiful, and it looks exactly the same as it always did. It doesn’t have a great view. It’s a big house full of little rooms…Most things in that house were given to me by people who were moving up and could afford better.”

The kitchen table was donated to Cohen by a former resident. (Photo by Rauli Arjatsalo)

The three-story whitewashed house, with five small rooms, stands just a ten-minute walk away from the Aegean Sea. When Cohen first moved there, the building didn’t have electricity, plumbing, or running water. In fact, the entire island didn’t have consistent electricity; the streets were so pristine that there weren’t any wires strung between them.

When the telephone poles finally appeared, so did the birds, inspiring Cohen to write Bird on the Wire.

Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free.

Cohen eventually finished the song in a motel on Sunset Boulevard in 1969.

His music room served as his writing sanctuary. (Photo by Rauli Arjatsalo)

Even with electricity, though, Cohen saw Hydra as a paradise of solitude—a primitive place to focus on his craft and not the expectations of the western urban world. He decorated his home simply and built a music room on the third floor where he completed two of his most notable novels, The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

The terrace where Cohen did much of his reflection. (Photo by Rauli Arjatsalo)

In a letter to his mother in the ’60s, he wrote about his routine of getting up at seven each day to work until noon. He described how he found solace from the “musical voices” of vendors and donkeys outside since no cars were allowed on the quaint island. “The house has a huge terrace overlooking a dramatic mountain. Rooms are large and cool, with deep windows in the thick walls. I guess it must be very old, over 200 years, and I often think how many nautical generations have lived here.”

The view of the garden from the inside. (Photo by Rauli Arjatsalo)

Cohen’s poem, Days of Kindness, best summarized his time residing on the island.

Greece is a good place

To look at the moon, isn’t it
You can read by moonlight
You can read on the terrace
You can see a face
As you saw it when you were young
There was good light then
Oil lamps and candles
And those little flames
That floated on a cork in olive oil
What I loved in my old life
I haven’t forgotten
It lives in my spine
Marianne and the child
The days of kindness
It rises in my spine
And it manifests as tears
I pray that a loving memory
Exists for them too
The precious ones I overthrew
For an education in the world

From one generation to the next: Adam, Cohen’s son, recorded two of his albums in his father’s Hydra and Montreal homes.

Cohen’s son, Adam, eventually followed his father’s footsteps as a musician. He even recorded his past album, We Go Home, in his father’s Montreal and Hydra homes, where he spent much of his childhood.”

In his album’s preview video which looks inside the houses, Adam reflected, “You can hear the echo of homes where so many grow up…I mean, I’m in my father’s house. We could pass by his hat hanging on the coat hangers, that telephone with enormous buttons because he can’t see.”

“My (musical) muse turned out to be home life, my roots, family,” he said. It would be a shame to not memorialize that home because hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

On November 11, Hydra residents left flowers, candles, and messages outside Leonard Cohen’s home on the island. (LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Karen Hua

Source: Forbes (with additions)