Biography

Was paid $90,000 for the movie rights to his 1976 "New York" magazine article, "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", about how the disco craze affected Italian-American teenagers in the working-class section of Brooklyn. It was eventually made into the movie Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Maintains homes in Shelter Island, New York, and Ardara, County Donegal.

Grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland.

Son of historian Norman Cohn.

In his October, 5, 1969, review of the Beatles album Abbey Road in the NY Times, Cohn said that the entire album was mediocre but for the long medley on the second side of the album. Of "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something" he stated that these were "two songs by George Harrison, mediocrity incarnate." He also mistakenly wrote that John Lennon sang "Oh! Darling" and that on that song, although "Lennon has always had a terrific voice," that "Just the same, it doesn't sound right. Why not? Just because he tries too hard" and "flounders in an orgy of gulps, howls and retches, flung together at random, and the whole point is lost." In reality, it was Paul McCartney wrote and sang the song.