GIVE ME A LEONARD COHEN AFTERWORLD A BOOK BY STEFAN BANZ, SWITZERLAND First of all: this book has no connection with Leonard Cohen - except the title, and even that has been adapted from a song by Nirvana. These photos are flashes of common family life. But - still - the feeling, ambience? The book is a family album. Stefan Banz, the author explains: "The photographs in this book were taken between 1989 and 1994. They show my family, friends, acquaintances and landscapes in my immediate vicinity - images of those moments when coincidence and sharp-sightedness unite and the hidden mystery of reality becomes visible in its curious ambiguity. They appear in a shroud of suggestive beauty, provoke feelings of strangeness, melancholy, absurdity, and at the same time they make unmistakably clear how inexorably deceptive appearances are. The publishers of the book is Cantz Verlag and Ars Futura Galerie, Zurich. Printed in Germany (limited edition of 1.000 copies) in 1995. 72 pages, 66 color photos. Hardbound, ISBN 3-89322-720-2. The title is a line of the song Pennyroyal Tea from Kurt Cobain (1967-1994). This gives us an opportunity to quote some interesting comments on Cobain by Cohen: ATN Toronto correspondent Peter Howell reported in Addicted to Noise (Internet Music Magazine) on August 6, 1995: Perhaps the most interesting thing to merge from our conversation was Cohen's comments about Kurt Cobain, who made his own indirect tribute to the Godfather of Gloom in the Nirvana song "Pennyroyal Tea," off In Utero: ``Give me Leonard Cohen afterworld/ So I can sigh eternally.'' Cohen said he wished he had had the chance to speak with Cobain; he would have tried to help the troubled star, perhaps by introducing him to the small Zen community on Mt. Baldy, north of L. A., where he now lives, working as cook and personal assistant to a Zen master. "I'm sorry I couldn't have spoken to the young man," Cohen said of Cobain, recognizing some of his own past excesses in Cobain's downfall. ``I see a lot of people at the Zen Center, who have gone through drugs and found a way out that is not just Sunday school. There are always alternatives, and I might have been able to lay something on him. Or maybe not.'' Cohen said the members of Nirvana all turned out to see him, when he performed in Seattle in 1993. And he knows Courtney Love indirectly (Love adores him, and plays Cohen records at her shows), because his daughter is a friend of new Hole bassist, Melissa Auf der Maur. Thanks to Martin Rupps, Germany, for sending a copy of the book!