spirituality, which was fitting, considering it was
Leonard Cohen.
At 7:30pm, precisely, the lights came down and the
curtains began their ascension. First, his nine-piece
band, with an arsenal that ranged from pedal steel and
Hammond B3 organ to archilaud (a type of Spanish flute)
and bass clarinet. Along with a strong vocal support
provided by the Webb Sisters, (Charley and Hattie, a young
British-based duo), and Sharon Robinson, a long-time
collaborator and co-writer of several songs, make their
way to center stage.
Followed by the Dean of Cool, the Master of Zen, the
Buddha Monk, dapper and smart, wearing his usual attire,
a perfectly pressed Armani suit, crisp shirt and Fedora,
which he removed to take a bow after each song. The audience
rose, and an uproar of claps and cheers ensues. The native
son had come home.
At 73, Montreal poet, novelist, songwriter and singer
Leonard Cohen truly merits the label 'immortal'. An icon
of song as well as literature, he is considered one of
the most important and influential songwriters of our time.
He has forged a resolutely unique, inimitable body of work.
The singer with the singularly deep voice played to a packed
room, one of three, at Place des Arts, his first tour in
15 years, since 'The Future' brought him to the Forum in
June 1993. It was a non-stop, eclectic, drunken stupor
of classics.
Cohen bowed and broke into a huge smile, and he never stopped
beaming the rest of the night. While quipping that at shows
in the 1990s', "I was just a kid of 60 with a crazy dream."
He also took time to express concern about the state of the
world, and how fortunate he was to have come from, and live
in such a beautiful city with pretty streets. Plenty of
irreplaceable banter, and surprisingly speaks French well,
which completely sent the audience into a whooping standing
ovation, with sporadic shouts, LEONARD. The poet dazzled
the audience.
His age is beginning to show... he moved slower, stooped
and sang just a little quieter. Cradling a handheld microphone,
he was able to move energetically around the centre stage
to interact with his band, and played guitar on several occasions.
He was still in the kind of form you'd be a fool to undersell.
He played through 40 years of song classics such as 'So Long',
'Marianne', 'Bird on a Wire', 'Hallelujah', 'Everybody Knows'
and 'I'm Your Man'.
Cohen knows his songs well and so did the audience, many
of them old enough to recall that first album in 1967. Already
one of Canada's young literary lions, the poet and novelist
seized the time to marry his muse to popular music, whose
boundaries were expanding under the influence of slightly younger
contemporaries such as Bob Dylan. In March of this year, he
was inducted into the New York's Rock and Roll Hall of fame.
On the road again, Cohen is once more among his own folk,
less melancholy than his reputation and as passionate and
articulate as ever. After all, public performance is a literary
tradition at least as old as Homer.
On a personal note, listening to Cohen, took me back to
a place, on the main, called Di Salvio's. A private club,
filled with the beautiful people. Cool to nth degree. Women
not girls, in droves, wearing the skimpiest and shortest
skirts, parading across the dance floor. Leonard Cohen blaring
from the refrigerator-sized speakers, and you wishing that
some day you could be as cool as he was.
* From Where I Sit!
June 26, 2008
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