Patrick Leonard reveals that Leonard Cohen was working on an R&B record

The last time producer Patrick Leonard visited Leonard Cohen, the two were in talks to work on an R&B album. 

Leonard, who co-produced Cohen's last three albums (he began production on this year's You Want It Darker but Cohen's son Adam completed it), was looking forward to this "pseudo instrumental" project. He was even scheduled to go into the studio to record six more string quartets yesterday when news came out that Cohen had died. 

"He was in good spirits," Leonard tells host Tom Power this morning. "He was okay." 

Leonard opens up about his experience working with Cohen, being given a huge amount of trust with his lyrics and how he was a "great hang" when they weren't working on music. 

He concludes: "If you want to be a poet right now, in this world we live in, you want to aspire to what is the greatest poetry you know of. If you want to be an archer or whatever it is you want to be, you want to look up at what you think is the best and move in that direction. I think the difference between Leonard and everybody else I worked with is he was that direction. He was it. He was the star that everybody wanted to move towards, whether they knew it or not."