One April day in 1960 a pale, gangly man in his mid-20s stepped off the boat on the Greek island of Hydra unaware that the tiny island – and the people he met there – would shape his life in extraordinary ways. The young man carried a Canadian passport and his name was Leonard Cohen.
A dreary soCanadianjourn in London had prompted his trip to Greece in search of sun and he had heard that Hydra – locals pronounce it “Ee-dra” – was home to a community of artists and writers trying to make sense of the postwar world.
Cohen would find his writer’s voice here amid what American novelist Henry Miller described as Hydra’s “wild and naked perfection”. He would meet Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian woman who would become one of the great loves of his life and an inspiration for his work, most famously his song So Long, Marianne. He would live with her and her son in a modest house he bought with $1,500 he received in his grandmother’s will.
The back cover of Cohen’s 1969 album Songs From a Room features a photograph of a smiling Ihlen at home in Hydra, wrapped in a towel and typing at the desk they shared. There, nestled among Hydra’s steep and narrow streets that rise amphitheatre-like above its horseshoe-shaped port, they led a simple life.
Trouble would later come to paradise in the form of tensions between Cohen and Ihlen, including regarding his spiralling drug use, and rifts within the bohemian expatriate milieu they inhabited, but for a spell at least, it was a charmed life that laid the foundation for much of Cohen’s later creative output.
More than 60 years later and almost a decade since Cohen died at the age of 82, his name remains indelibly linked with Hydra. Many Cohen fans come here in search of what it was about this rugged island with a permanent population of little over 2,000 that made him the singer-songwriter he later became. When Cohen first pitched up here, there was no running water, electricity or cars. Cohen was inspired to write his song Bird On The Wire after observing the installation of telephone poles on the island.
Today, cars and other motor traffic remain banned but the island’s unique appeal is drawing more visitors. Locals – known as Hydriots – debate how to manage this growing tourism and the impact of foreigners buying up properties to use as holiday homes or rent out on Airbnb in a place where heritage laws mean no new buildings can be constructed.
For years, there was a low-key approach to the Cohen footprint here. When asked, shopkeepers and restaurant owners might – or might not – give directions to his residence, which remains in the family. His children Adam and Lorca often visit the island and stay there. Adam produced some of his father’s posthumous work in the unassuming bougainvillea-draped house and the video for the track Moving On – which was filmed on Hydra – includes scenes from its sparsely furnished interior.
In 2016, the mayor of Hydra, George Koukoudakis, decided to name the alleyway that leads to the house after Cohen, an unusual gesture on an island with few street signs. The blue and white metal plaque was inaugurated the following year. As a result, there are more visitors now and they often leave flowers, candles and other offerings on the doorstep. One fan’s homage took the form of carefully arranged Lipton tea bags and oranges in reference to the lyrics of Cohen’s song Suzanne.
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“Leonard Cohen became a Hydriot in many respects,” Koukoudakis, who was elected for a third term in 2023, told me in his office, which is lined with portraits of Hydra’s legendary seafarers and independence fighters. “We consider him a Hydriot. His second home was always this island and we wanted to honour him in a permanent way.” Koukoudakis has also sought to have Hydra twinned with Cohen’s birthplace of Montreal.
Older Hydriots often tell stories of Cohen and their encounters with him, including locals who carried out repairs at his house or helped him with paperwork. Sometimes in these stories the lines can appear blurred between what is real and apocryphal but the overwhelming impression is of a man who, as Koukoudakis notes, was not just widely liked but who was treated as an adopted Hydriot.
Locals like to cite what Cohen told a BBC documentary in 1988: “There’s nowhere in the world you can live like you can in Hydra. And that includes Hydra.”
Shortly after Cohen landed on Hydra in 1960, a photographer from Life magazine came to capture the bohemian scene that had emerged on the island. One of the images shows Cohen sitting under a tree at Xeri Elia Taverna, also known as Douskos (the name of the family that owns it), strumming a guitar, surrounded by friends. Next to him is Charmian Clift, an Australian writer whose novels Peel Me A Lotus and Mermaid Singing chronicled the lives of the expat creatives who had then converged on Hydra. Another photo shows Cohen, Clift and Ihlen fresh from swimming at one of the island’s pebbly beaches.
Douskos is still operating and its owners indulge visitors who want to sit next to “Leonard’s tree” as they peruse a menu that features a poem of Cohen’s written in 1967: “They are still singing down at Dusko’s/sitting under the ancient pine tree … ”
Douskos is on the itinerary of local walking tours focusing on Hydra’s literary and artistic heritage. It is also a mainstay for the Cohen fans who organise an annual gathering on the island. This includes concerts by tribute bands and it draws people from across the world – including many from Ireland – a testament to the wide and enduring appeal of his music.
In 2017, these fans got permission from the Historical Office in Athens to install a stone and wood bench overlooking the Aegean in Cohen’s honour. His lyrics “I came so far for beauty … ” along with the Greek translation are painted on the wooden backrest. Located on a cliffside road that connects Hydra’s main town to Kamini beach, it’s a favourite sunset viewing spot for both locals and visitors.
In recent years, there have been signs of attempts to cash in on the Cohen connection that have dismayed some locals and visiting fans. Canvas tote bags emblazoned with lyrics from some of Cohen’s best-known songs can be found in the port-side souvenir shops that cater for the hundreds of day-trippers disgorged each morning by ferries coming from Piraeus. A boutique on the quay is named Everybody Knows, the title of a track from Cohen’s 1988 album I’m Your Man. “It can be quite tasteless,” says one resident who is a friend of Cohen’s children. “I’m not sure who is actually buying those bags.”
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Mayor Koukoudakis maintains that Hydra will always escape the excesses of mass tourism because it is car-free and new construction is banned but many locals and long-time visitors fret that the island risks losing, in other ways, what makes it unique.
They have seen spikes of Leonard Cohen-related tourism in recent years coinciding with Nick Broomfield’s 2019 documentary Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love and So Long, Marianne, a jointly produced Norwegian-Canadian eight-part drama series streamed on several platforms last year. The latter, which was lushly filmed in Hydra, seems to have introduced Cohen – and the island – to a whole new generation, according to locals. During my recent trip, I met a visiting Norwegian couple who told me the series had proved a hit in Ihlen’s home country. It turned out that the woman had been a palliative nurse for Ihlen’s former husband – the man she left for Cohen – Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen, when he lay dying in Norway in 2003.
In Hydra, so many have a story related to Leonard Cohen.