by Matteo Persivale
The clash with the singer’s last lawyer in Los Angeles Superior Court: He is said to have forged some documents. He replies: “Children cannot manage a fortune”
“The great poets die in chamber pots of steaming shit,” wrote Charles Bukowski, who knew a great deal about poetry and poverty, and when not exactly in poverty, Leonard Cohen died on November 7, 2016 with counted money, despite being one of the greatest Post-war musician, poet and writer, author of extraordinary hits – “Suzanne”, “So Long, Marianne” – was robbed by an unscrupulous manager who took advantage of his good faith – and very long spiritual retreat – in a Zen monastery – took at least 5 Millions of dollars of his life savings and sold the rights to part of the catalog without his knowledge.
The end of the poor man
Cohen spent the last years of his life renting a nondescript house in an anonymous neighborhood of Los Angeles, where rock stars and superstars didn’t even send the limousine to fill up, and recorded the songs of the final chapter of his extraordinary career in the living room on the recording room to save.
The lawyer and manager
Now, incredibly, it turns out (or at least it’s believed according to the family) that Cohen was even robbed at his death, again by a manager, Robert Kory, an attorney who has controlled the Leonard Cohen Family Trust since the musician’s death. The poet’s sons, Adam and Lorca, took him to court, claiming that he had failed to update them on the state of their father’s finances as required and accusing him of taking control of Cohen’s business through fraud. In disgrace, they can count on the help of an extraordinary lawyer, Adam Streisand, one of the leading American experts on inheritance law, who in the past has solved very complicated cases involving the inheritance of famous names such as Michael Jackson, Hugh Hefner, Muhammad Ali, Ray Charles, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Michael Crichton, Rock Hudson, and Bing Crosby (we’re in Los Angeles, though, and his name isn’t Streisand because of simple homonymy: he’s a cousin of singer Barbra).
The signature
If Kory really did blackmail the already ill and drugged Cohen into signing the document entrusting him with near-total control of the musician’s legacy, Streisand is the right attorney to get at least something. According to the two brothers, the trust’s finances remain opaque. Kory denies this, saying he took over the trust “because Leonard didn’t think his children could work together in managing the inheritance (but they certainly have the same attorney, ed.)”.
The payment
We’re not talking pennies here: The trust manages $48 million worth of copyrights to the songwriter’s songs, poems, novels and over 8,000 photographs taken by Cohen. how will it end Certainly Cohen wrote succinctly in matters of justice: “Let the judges despair of justice in their hearts: their sentences shall be sharper / Let the generals despair of victory in their hearts; Killing will be an insult / Let the priests despair of faith in their hearts: their compassion will be true”.
December 16, 2022 (Change December 16, 2022 | 09:00)
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