Adam in his own image

RAY ROGERS: Why do you write and perform music?

ADAM COHEN: It's a form of expression I find so pleasurable when it's delivered to me that I'm learning to deliver it myself. It's really the love I was given for music that I want to keep in motion.

RR: You've been slogging it out in bands for ten years, and only now are you bringing out your own solo record [Adam Cohen]. What finally clicked?

AC: It's just the passing of the torch from one era in my life to another. Suddenly I was no longer going to make demos and wonder if I could generate interest in myself and apologize for the miserable incarnations of bands I found myself in - I was making a record for Columbia Records with a really mature batch of songs, a remarkable cast of players, an established producer, and a manager. It was like terra firma. It took me two years to make the record, but for those two years I've felt like I was on the landing strip, buckled up, all systems go - captain says turbulence ahead but I'm prepared for takeoff.

RR: When did you start writing?

AC: Probably at the age of five at the kitchen table in Montreal with my Pops.

RR: Do you ever wish that your dad wasn't Leonard Cohen?

AC: I considered changing my name . . . for about twenty seconds. I thought, Do I really want to deal with it? And then I thought, what is "it"? You mean, my life? You mean, the situation that I've always been in - being my father's son? Or am I suddenly, at twenty-five, going to respond to a different name? It's unauthentic, and second of all, I'm proud to be my father's son. End of the twenty-second segment.

RR: Was there internal pressure to live up to the quality of your dad's work?

AC: I try to embrace and cultivate the qualities I see in him that I find in myself. There are qualities I don't have that he does have, but the wonderful thing about it is that it's reciprocal: There are qualities I have that he doesn't have.

RR: Listening to your record, two words come to mind: dark and seductive. Does that describe your nature?

AC: I hope so. Although the darker quality is something that is being spoofed by my generation, I do consider myself to have dark characteristics: my dark eyes, my dark hair, my dark sense of humor . . . dark little secrets. [laughs]

RR: Such as?

AC: Listen, Peter Sellers, cool it! RAY ROGERS

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