Was there ever a singer so world-weary yet seductive as Leonard Cohen? Has there ever been less likely an icon? Despite his esoteric nature, Cohen, who at 75 is at an age some consider dotage, is at his peak, proving that poetry, that least lucrative of professions, can pay off.
Cohen’s first major tour in 15 years generated headlines in
September when he collapsed from food poisoning during a concert in
Spain and performed for 55,000 in Tel Aviv, ignoring a Palestinian call
for a boycott of Israel.
While the record business is dying, this most unlikely matinee idol
is thriving. The web is abuzz with Cohen news, old videos have been
unearthed and reviews of his recent double CD, Leonard Cohen Live in
London, are gushy. (Another double-live set, Leonard Cohen Live
at the Isle of Wight 1970, just came out, proving that Cohen’s no
stranger to crowds. This one numbered 600,000, as Cohen followed Jimi
Hendrix.)
Strange that an artist so rarefied should be so adulated. But Cohen
— who might have achieved Dylan-level popularity had he not
diffused his energy among music, poetry and spirituality (an observer
of Judaism, he’s also a Zen Buddhist who spent five years in a
California monastery in the ’90s) — is unique, his work
commanding.
Born in Montreal into the comfortable class, Cohen seemed destined
to be a poet. He might be the last romantic in rock ‘n’ roll, though
some call him a folksinger rather than a rocker. In 1967, when he
released his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, his poetry and
fiction had already gained him a following in his native Canada.
Cohen’s voice, which experience has distilled into a burred bass,
snares the listener like a lover, confidentiality and intimacy at its
core.
His approach, captured on the live CDs and video, is gentle, almost
courtly. On Live in London, he sports a fedora and a natty,
double-breasted suit, makes intelligent small talk and treats the
audience as if they were in his living room. He’s your genial host
bearing messages of great import.
Cohen’s early songs — “Suzanne,” “So Long, Marianne,” “Bird on
the Wire,” “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” — cemented his
image as the Lord Byron of rock. They’re complex songs of yearning and
regret, and they’re sexy. Affairs with the likes of Joni Mitchell and
Rebecca De Mornay heightened his laconic roué luster. Cohen’s
songs have been covered by artists spanning Joan Baez, Tim Buckley,
Nick Cave, Cobra Verde, Jarvis Cocker, early champion Judy Collins,
even Bob Dylan (on a bootleg, of course).
Still, Cohen, that affable concierge of Hotel Armageddon, never
transcended cult status. Releasing 20 albums over 42 years didn’t keep
him in the public eye, perhaps because many are anthologies and/or
live. And he rarely toured. But Cohen seems to have caught up with
himself. Not only has he released six albums since the turn of the
century, his brackish voice has sunk into a unique, sepulchral vehicle.
Bilked of more than $5 million by his former manager, he’s touring to
make money, forced back into the spotlight.
In tunes like “The Future,” the jaunty, despairing “Democracy,” the
stirring “First We Take Manhattan” and long-time associate Sharon
Robinson’s ravishing “Boogie Street,” the oracular Cohen lashes images
of social decay to ones of sexual battle, masterfully blurring the
personal and the political. The music is vaguely martial, most tunes
mid-tempo. In regard to women, Cohen is both supplicant and ravisher.
When it comes to politics, he’s subversive, even anarchic.
On the stunning London set, the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Famer
fronts a large band with unique instrumentation. It’s a continental
group featuring satiny backup singers Sharon Robinson and the Webb
Sisters, Middle Eastern spicing courtesy of Spanish plectrist Javier
Mas, the seasoned guitar of Bob Metzger and the arrangements of bassist
Roscoe Beck. At 26 tunes and more than three hours, there’s not a dull
moment; even Cohen’s kibitzing is gallant and funny as he carefully
walks the line between the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and
the salacious.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2009.