Now, at the age of 25, a first, self-titled album has been released by Columbia. In retrospect it was like a virus - something he had caught and could not seem to lose. He believes success ''could have been interpreted as inevitable'' from the beginning - the result of ''assimilating and shuffling through influences to come out with my own identity.'' His father's manager's office helped him process the product, package it and the mail boy took it to the post office. This is tedious work, but it can be an insight into power. Don't forget that David Geffen got his start in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency.
Power fills a vacuum.
Harnessing the necessary power as an up and coming singer-songwriter can hardly be much of a problem when your father is Leonard Cohen. At the very least, the mailed packages will be opened. By now, Adam has concluded that those early rejections were in fact healthy for him. They toughened him up. They were his own rejections, nobody else's.