Marianne's son

[alang]

Does anyone know what happened to Marianne's son? While the adults in his life went about leading their interesting lives, I wonder how much attention the needs of the child received. I looked up the Norwegian tax records, and there is an Axel Joachim Jensen, born in 1960, who doesn't appear to be doing well financially. Is this him? If so - and if he was agreeable - should we start a collection? Maybe I'm prying too much, but I find myself worrying about him.

[seadove]

It's time that....

we began....

To laugh....

and cry...

and cry ....

and laugh about it all again.

[kalinowt]

Does anyone know what happened to Marianne's son? While the adults in his life went about leading their interesting lives, I wonder how much attention the needs of the child received. I looked up the Norwegian tax records, and there is an Axel Joachim Jensen, born in 1960, who doesn't appear to be doing well financially. Is this him? If so - and if he was agreeable - should we start a collection? Maybe I'm prying too much, but I find myself worrying about him.

Hi alang,

I don't know if there is cause for worry. Marianne was interviewed in 2008, (if memory serves me correctly), when she attended a concert in Sweden. Can another forum member remember where this was listed? She mentioned that her son Axel and Leonard Cohen were still close. Below is a link to an interview Marianne did with a Swedish television program back in 2005 when she talked about her life together with Leonard and his good relationship with her son, and presumably Cohen would be a good resource for Axel if he ever needed anything.

If Axel is poor, it's probably because he is an artist like his father Axel Jensen Sr. Artists never have money.

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/marianne2006.html

[norw52]

Hello I just want to complete the story about Marianne's son , Axel Joachim . I find it important.

This interview is taken from a Greek website , a journalist met Marianne on the island in 2015 :

She takes some black and white photographs out of her bag. The first of these depicts Marianne and her then twelve-year old son, Axel Joachim, at the port of Hydra. It is winter of ’72 and the carefree years with Cohen are over. Marianne bends over the photo sorrowfully, covering her face with her hands. She stands motionless for a moment above the almost adolescent boy and the smiling woman, like crying silently.

She explains that Axel Joachim has lived since age 15 in an asylum, and she asks me to mention his story in the article because it can help some other boy or his parents.

"Axel Joachim was an excellent student and a lovely child that changed forever when his father offered him LSD at the age of 15. Can you imagine this? That one and only time destroyed his mind. He was always sensitive and as a parent it is not always easy to see that clearly. We went from place to place for years while all my child needed was stability. If we lived in the same place, maybe things had not come to this. Until today I am tormented by remorse."

[oldfriend28]

I saw this yesterday, and wondered what has happened to Axel since this was written. Does anyone know? What a tragedy. Did poor Marianne have any more children? I read she had married and worked in the oil industry. Just once, her son tried this stuff, and that was it. Am missing Leonard all the time. Hope he was able to help Axel in some way. Thanks to all.

[icecreamtruck]

Is there anyone who can offer some follow-up on this? How is young Axel now?

[marinilya]

Is there anyone who can offer some follow-up on this? How is young Axel now?

Little Axel
60 min
documentary in development
http://antipodefilms.com/projects/little%20axel.html

[hydriot]

Nick Broomfield's documentary Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love proved to be much better than I expected, not a saccharine paean like so many previous works, but a hard-hitting critique which revealed in passing who really suffered from the selfishness of the Beautiful Losers: the children.

I arrived on the island as a teenager at Easter 1965 and I have a clear memory of little Axel, a golden boy, scampering happily across the agora naked. But in later years I became increasingly worried how these feral children were actually going to make a living in the real world when they became adults. It was all very well for the middle-class parents to drop-out from their educated backgrounds and go back to a simpler life, but from what could their children, who had known no other life, drop-out? What path was open to them, should they wish to take it, to drop-in?

I don't believe for one minute that a single tab of acid played a significant role in Axel's descent. Rather, he was victim of a prolonged level of neglect that today would see the parent prosecuted. For example, Nick Broomfield in his film gives proper prominence to Marianne's disastrous decision to dump Axel in an ill-disciplined British boarding school at the age of eight. The pleas Axel sent his mother from that place are heart-rending.

I was fortunate. I enjoyed my adolescent summers on Hydra immensely but always I had the security of a reasonably conventional life back in England with which to counterbalance the wildness of life on the island. And I have made sure that my own children have had a similar mixed upbringing. They adore Hydra and, like me, find the island's slow pace of life immensely therapeutic. But, as the autumnal winds start to shake our almond tree and olive tree, they return to their wider lives in the UK.

I recommend Nick Broomfield's documentary. Following its broadcast on BBC it will remain available on iPlayer until the last days of October.

[Mabeanie1]

Thanks M. It’s nice to see some reasoned comment from someone who knows and saw for himself.

Much criticism has been levied at the reference to Marianne’s abortion in the film but actually I felt it needed to be there. It was so telling of M & L’s relationship and I also felt perhaps she didn’t want to bring another child up in an unstable world and risk making the same mistakes again.

Wendy

[anastasia74]

Nick Broomfield's documentary Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love proved to be much better than I expected, not a saccharine paean like so many previous works, but a hard-hitting critique which revealed in passing who really suffered from the selfishness of the Beautiful Losers: the children.

I arrived on the island as a teenager at Easter 1965 and I have a clear memory of little Axel, a golden boy, scampering happily across the agora naked. But in later years I became increasingly worried how these feral children were actually going to make a living in the real world when they became adults. It was all very well for the middle-class parents to drop-out from their educated backgrounds and go back to a simpler life, but from what could their children, who had known no other life, drop-out? What path was open to them, should they wish to take it, to drop-in?

I don't believe for one minute that a single tab of acid played a significant role in Axel's descent. Rather, he was victim of a prolonged level of neglect that today would see the parent prosecuted. For example, Nick Broomfield in his film gives proper prominence to Marianne's disastrous decision to dump Axel in an ill-disciplined British boarding school at the age of eight. The pleas Axel sent his mother from that place are heart-rending.

I was fortunate. I enjoyed my adolescent summers on Hydra immensely but always I had the security of a reasonably conventional life back in England with which to counterbalance the wildness of life on the island. And I have made sure that my own children have had a similar mixed upbringing. They adore Hydra and, like me, find the island's slow pace of life immensely therapeutic. But, as the autumnal winds start to shake our almond tree and olive tree, they return to their wider lives in the UK.

I recommend Nick Broomfield's documentary. Following its broadcast on BBC it will remain available on iPlayer until the last days of October.

And yet, it seems that Nick Broomfield does not judge Marianne at all concerning her obvious parental neglect and the fate of her son - he merely states the fact.