Layer 58 Leonard Cohen

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Leonard Cohen . The O2 . Thursday July 17th

They say rock and roll is here to stay (in one form or another) and Leonard Cohen now looks like he’s going on forever. He’s created a genre all of his own, and his millions of devotees will ensure that his music and his poetry will live eternally - a huge body of work that is truly staggering in its scope, its variety, its beauty and its complexity.

Cohen, who’s now well into his seventies (and singing as well as, if not better than, ever), is jauntily making his way around the world in the company of an incredible group of musicians and ‘backing singers’, which includes his long-time ‘collaborator’, and sometime co-writer, the wonderful Sharon Robinson.

Another legend, another all-time great singer/songwriter, John Lee Hooker, carried on recording and performing well into his eighties, so why not Leonard Cohen?

He doesn’t just walk on and off the stage, he jogs - he almost runs. He wears a pinstriped double-breasted suit and a fedora, which he doffs regularly in response to his audience’s ecstatic acclaim. He even begins the show by thanking us for coming, saying it’s a privilege to be playing for us, and tells us that it’s 14 years since he last played in London - “When I’d just turned 60 - nothing more than a kid with a head full of crazy dreams . . .”

He then went on to list all the drugs he’s supposedly taken since passing that milestone, including Prozac and Ritalin! His self-mocking sense of humour pervades the evening, an element of his character and his work that seems to evade casual observers. The man is genuinely a humble genius, and possibly a saint or a Zen master, or their secular equivalent.

Over the years he’s perhaps written a few songs that are not of the highest class, or at least not in the upper ranks of his own work, but none of them are included in this long, loving reunion - it’s unfair to characterise this love-in with his fans as just a ‘show’. He has no need to. He’s written enough songs of the very highest calibre to fill with ease the near three hours he’s allowed us.

At one point, in the second half, he does a run of songs, including Gipsy Wife, Boogie Street, Hallelujah, Democracy and I’m Your Man that are overwhelming in their cumulative brilliance and the extraordinary panache of their performance. That’s not to say that the earlier and more familiar songs, such as Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy and No Way To Say Goodbye are less powerful, or less satisfying, but their relative and deceptive simplicity combined with their very familiarity tend to make them more like hymns and love songs than the anthems which these other songs undoubtedly are. Very few in the audience did not join in ecstatically with their own ‘Hallelujah!’, ‘I’m your man!’ and ‘Democracy is coming - to the USA!’

As the show moves toward its conclusion, and the time approaches 11.00pm, having started at 8.00 promptly, Cohen teases us with “So Long, Marianne” and brings vast numbers of us up on our feet, reckoning that these might even be the last few minutes of his last ever gig in London. But no, still to come is a brilliant version of “Closing Time”, with a fresh arrangement that’s sung and played with incredible joie de vivre and jauntiness.

But even that was not quite the end. Quite possibly, and surprisingly, the best song of the evening, for me at least, turned out to be the very last - a bluesy version of “I Tried To Leave You”, a fitting climax to an unbelievably brilliant show, perfect in every way. It’s a (generally) little-known track from one of his less well-known albums, New Skin For The Old Ceremony (1974), but for this tour he’s re-arranged what was a very simple song with a single guitar accompaniment into a stretched-out blues, which allows each and every member of the band (and I can’t remember the last time I heard either a bass solo or a drum solo) to showcase one last time their phenomenal skills. Cohen gives them all a name check and thanks them all individually with words of praise.

I wonder how many in the audience did not have a sense of him speaking to them personally as he sings “Goodnight my darling - I hope you’re satisfied”.

“And here’s a man still working for your smile.”

http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Leonard-Cohen/I-Tried-To-Leave-You.html

Please read these beautiful reviews which tell you everything you could possibly want to know about this tour and the members of the band.

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/tour2008-12.html
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/tour2008-9.html
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/tour2008-5.html
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/tour2008-3.html
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/indez.html The Index!