Leonard Cohen had no choice

He was born with the gift of a golden voice...

The last time I saw Leonard Cohen in concert, I was pretty sure it would be the last time I saw him in concert. It was 1993 and he was a frail-looking, white-haired 60-year-old.

He’d just been on the Letterman show a few weeks before, and his performance was something of a train wreck. He came in at the wrong time with the wrong part of the song while his girl backup singers came in exactly where and when they should have… oh, I was embarrassed for him. But I was already a huge fan, so I figured I’d go see the show just to support him in his dotage. Ah, the miracle of lowered expectations.

We also managed to score some really decent orchestra-level seats without having to pay an arm and a leg, and most of my best friends at the time were all sitting nearby in the block of seats we’d purchased.

And he came out and the night, truly, was magic. I still put that show in the top 10, maybe the top five of all the shows I’ve seen, and living in L.A. for 20 years, I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shows. Pink Floyd and Roger Waters’ competing tours within weeks of each other. Guns & Roses and Metallica at the Rose Bowl. Bob Dylan with Paul Simon at the Greek Theater, Warren Zevon endless times from a few feet away at the Strand, Tom Waits at the Wiltern (where I met Leonard Cohen in the audience and scored the autograph, above), Johnny Cash, Yngwie Malmsteen – I’ve seen them all, and the 1993 Leonard Cohen show in L.A. still ranks among the finest.

So it was with some heightened anticipation that The Missus and I scared up $300 for a couple of balcony tickets to go see him this week in the Big City on the mainland. I took a photo of the marquee with my cell phone, but I’ve never learned how to extract photos from the damn thing once I’ve taken them, so there it resides.

My pal The Last Boy Scout, upon hearing about the hoops we had to jump through to get to this show, remarked, “Cohen, huh? I still don't get it.” I have other, otherwise very cool friends who would rather chew tin foil than listen to Leonard Cohen. To them, I say “Download ‘The Faith’ from his most recent album off of iTunes and if you don’t like that, I’ll personally reimburse your 99¢.”

Maybe it’s the voice. It’s indeed fair to say that Mr. Cohen’s vocal instrument has all the range of a Daisy Air Rifle. Maybe it’s the production on his albums; too spare in the early work, and too pimped-out on his 1992 album “The Future.” Kind of New Age/Disco. Maybe it’s the lack of sturm und drang – Leonard is a lover, not a rocker. Maybe it’s the simple fact that almost everyone I know who likes Leonard is a musician, a critic or a wanna-be musician (my category). In an “American Idol”-ized culture, it’s easy to see how the subtle charms of a Leonard Cohen performance could be lost.

But if you’ve heard Neil Diamond sing “Suzanne,” or Jeff Buckley (or John Cale or Brandi Carlisle or any one of a hundred others) sing “Hallelujah,” you’ve admired Mr. Cohen’s songwriting. Jennifer Warnes’ “Famous Blue Raincoat?” Leonard Cohen.

(Here’s a list of one writer’s Top Ten Cohen Covers if you’re curious what other songs you like he may have written.)

Last night’s show was a marathon, especially for a man who admitted about half-way though his set, “The last time I was on this stage was 14, 15 years ago… I was just sixty then, a kid with a crazy dream…” He outlasted The Missus by a good hour, and like his girlfriends, she is less than half his age, and was sitting for the whole thing.

Me? I still think The Final Time I Saw Leonard Cohen In Concert was an experience to be drawn out, but that’s why they put apples and oranges on erasers...

The show started bang on time at 8 p.m., with Mr. Cohen literally skipping out from stage right, and ended 3.5 hours later as he and bid us goodnight at 11:30, with a 20-minute intermission in between sets and a series of encores that lasted longer than the second set.

I enjoyed it thoroughly, in spite of the increasing frequency of the long-suffering yawns coming from the past-her-bedtime Mrs. B at my side. Cohen was every bit the gentleman and entertainer I remembered from the 1993 show and hadn’t lost a step in the 16 years since.

And the nice thing about having a three-note vocal range (in a voice so deep and resonant that it makes the angry God of the Old Testament sound like Alfalfa from the Li’l Rascals) is that the songs you wrote when you were twenty, you can still hit all the notes when you’re 74!

My only quibble with the show, as it is with most shows I go to, was the set list. The artists always insist on doing the songs they want to do, not the ones I want them to. The only legitimate gripe I feel I have is that he didn’t perform any of the songs from his most recent album, “Dear Heather,” which contains a number of remarkable compositions that his crackerjack live ensemble could have knocked out of the park and that frankly, I was hoping to hear.

Every number he did play, however, he performed as if his life depended on it. And at song’s end, when the crowd roared, Mr. Cohen stepped back out of the center spotlight, removed his fedora and bowed his head in the direction of his fellow musicians. Goddammit, he’s so classy I’d like to have him over for tea to talk poetry, and I don’t even drink tea or like poetry. He’s the rare human being that you feel elevated simply by being in his presence.

I won’t spoil any of the little surprises that so delighted last night’s audience, since they’re probably staples of the tour. For me, if I had to pick one musical highlight, it would have to be “Bird On A Wire,” never a favorite even when Cash recorded it. But last night, he made it come alive for me, inhabited it in a way that added a whole new appreciation for me. And his interpretation of “Chelsea Hotel,” a song he wrote about a late-60s tryst with Janis Joplin, surprised me with the sudden understanding that the song’s final lyric, “That’s all, I don’t think of you that often,” is naked denial, not the cool brush-off the studio recording makes it sound like it is.

Artists of his caliber don’t come around that often and there aren’t that many of them left. I’m grateful I still have the memories of the transformative event that was his 1993 show, and this tour did nothing to diminish those memories. My only regret is that by the time The Boy is ready to start attending concerts, he will almost certainly have missed the opportunity to see Leonard Cohen perform in the flesh. He’ll have to settle for the recording of an early show from this tour, currently available in both CD and DVD formats.

Thanks for the songs, Mr. Cohen.

—Sincerely, F. Bastardson,
100 floors below you in the tower of song.

The set list follows.

SET LIST, APRIL 13, 2009:

“Dance Me to the End of Love”
“The Future”
“Ain't No Cure for Love”
“Bird on a Wire”
“Everybody Knows”
“In My Secret Life”
“Who by Fire”
“Chelsea Hotel”
“Waiting for the Miracle”
“Anthem”

Set break

“Tower of Song”
“Suzanne”
“The Gypsy's Wife”
“The Partisan”
“Bogie Street”
“Hallelujah”
“I'm Your Man”
“A Thousand Kisses Deep”
“Take This Waltz”

ENCORE:
“So Long Marianne”
“First We Take Manhattan”

ENCORE 2:
“Famous Blue Raincoat”
“If It Be Your Will”
“Democracy”

ENCORE 3:
“Lullaby”
“Closing Time'

ENCORE 4:
“I Tried to Leave You”
“Whither Thou Goest”