All at once the torches flare The inner door flies open One by one they enter there In every style of passion                      The Guests                           Recent Songs

The following photo and article, a review of the Royal Albert Hall concert, appeared in the Sunday Express (London), May 16, 1993. The photo of Val Hennessy is by Richard Young.

Cohen Round Again By Val Hennessy Leonard Cohen at the Albert Hall. I nearly missed him. Yes, me, his number one fan, beetling to the Box Office to discover all seats sold out. Only one ticket left, standing room only. I grabbed it. Jammed behind the wrought iron railings with kids-in-grunge leaning over my shoulder to read my programme, I sensed that I was the only one in the gallery who could remember Cohen the first time around. God. 1967. His first album Songs of Leonard Cohen. In student bedsits across the nation Cohen's doom-laden ballads were the downfall of an entire generation of gullible girls. How many millions surrendered their virtue to shaggy young guitar twangers droning: "Travelling lady stay a while, until the night is over..."? How many jilted idealists sobbed on mattresses in darkened rooms with Cohen's: "Like a bird on a wire..." groaning from their gramophones? Oooh, it was music to slash your wrists by. Best of all you could actually hear the words. And what words. Real poetry. "Oh take this longing from my tongue / all the useless things these hands have done," for example. Anyway, I'm up in the gallery hemmed in by people wearing today's new-fangled flared trousers which, I have to say, are not a patch on the original flared trousers. In fact I'd dusted down my genuine loons (circa 1970) to wear to the gig but, alas, they got stuck on the way up just past my knees. These days I'm twice the woman I was way back when Cohen, nicknamed the Jeremiah of Tin Pan Alley, first stretched the peripheries of pop with his slow, razor-blade litanies. I'm peering down from a vertiginous height, and there he is, 58 years old and more popular than ever, in the blue spotlight with an eight-piece band, breaking into the bouzouki bounce of "Dance Me To The End Of Love." These days the laconic, gravelly, Canadian-accented voice sounds like HAL the computer, when it gradually grinds to a halt in the film 2001. Talk about take you back. I'm singing along, eyes closed (almost "sent" as we used to say in the Seventies) until someone old enough to be my son, if not my grandson, jabs me in the back and says: "Give Leonard a chance, will ya?" Between songs Cohen has a nice line in self-deprecatory patter. "My friends, you've been writing your kind letters, sending messages of hope to me for 25 years, and you know what? They didn't help...life is still bleak." A huge roar of applause here. After an apocalyptic rendering of his new song "Democracy", which has the mascara running down my cheeks, he announces: "My friends, we are in the midst of the deluge. The landmarks have been overthrown, the lights have been extinguished, people are holding on to little orange crates..." Actually I am holding on to the railings, my back is killing me, but I'm stamping my feet on the floor and shouting "More, more" as Cohen moans and the Albert Hall's revolving glitter ball covers me in luminous speckles. The gig ends at 10 pm. The encore ends at 11:30. Some people are holding hands and skip-jiving. Naturally I gatecrash the party in the Elgar Room. "I couldn't get him off the stage," says Cohen's harassed tour manager, Geoff Clennel, "the guy was having such a great time." Enter Cohen. At first no-one notices, except me. You remember that scene in Midnight Cowboy when Ratso (Dustin Hoffman) expires from TB on the Greyhound Bus? That's what Cohen looks like up close. What I do next is not the sort of behaviour you expect from a hardened hack who has spent two decades interviewing the famous. Flushed with the effort of holding my stomach in I ask Cohen to autograph my programme. "Sure," he says, his top lip twitching in a suicide smile. "Would you like to sleep with me tonight, my friend, I'm feeling kinda lonesome?" My knees knock like a doting groupie's. Twenty five years ago you couldn't have held me back. Cohen jabs me playfully in the ribs and gives a hollow, mournful laugh that makes me think of clods landing on a coffin: "But that's the sort of thing they expect a poet to say at the party." Then the flashbulbs pop, and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics claims his attention but not before Cohen gloomily pecks my cheek, fixes me with his funereal gaze and says: "The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold, keep flying with the angels, see ya again in three years' time..." I tell you, I didn't come down for the next three days.

The following article, a review of the Royal Albert Hall concert, appeared in the The Independent on Sunday, May 16, 1993, under the title "Back to Life with a Blast from the Rocket Man".

From The Independent on Sunday By Ben Thompson Another veteran troubadour came to Britain last week, but this one did not kick over his piano stool [a reference to Elton John who's concert was reviewed in the same article]. So utterly did Leonard Cohen reject his traditional (and erroneous) categorisation as a purveyor of unrelieved gloom, however, that it would have been no surprise if he had. Cohen is the Mel Brooks of misery. His wit dry to the point of desiccation, he responds to the impassioned requests of an over-zealous Albert Hall crowd by breaking into verses of "Loch Lomond", afterwards confessing, "I was in a very dark mood when I wrote that song". Self-deprecation is, of course, the subtlest form of vanity. And Cohen's tendency to presage each song with a solemn reading from the lyric we are about to receive takes a bit of getting used to. The lines "I thank you for those items that you sent me / The monkey and the plywood violin" are rather mystifying outside the context of "First We Take Manhattan". But there's no mistaking that voice -- Barry White and Johnny Cash share a joke in a throat-specialist's waiting room -- even if it has sunk so low that dogs can't hear it. As Cohen is phlegmy, so his backing vocalists, Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen, are celestial. The musicians, on the other hand, are so tastefully understated you sometimes wonder if it's worth their while being there at all. The most effective part of the show is the beginning of the second half, when Cohen does "Avalanche" and "Suzanne" alone with his guitar, then follows up, band back in place, with the delightfully barbed "Tower Of Song", which he enlivens still further with an impossibly funky one-handed synthesiser solo. He does go on a bit in the end, though, and by the fourteenth encore his evident good humour and self-satifaction have become slightly, well, depressing.

The following article, a review of the Royal Albert Hall concert, appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, May 14, 1993.

Brilliantly Miserable, As Ever By Helen Jacobus Performing 21 songs in three-and-a-half-hours -- one sung twice -- Leonard Cohen, 59 and still not bad-looking, demonstrated this week how to thrive on the joys of misery. He delighted capacity audiences at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday and Tuesday by mercilessly parodying his famous, inimitable talent for making depression an art form. "Some of you have been sending me gifts and flowers for the past 23 years," he growled, warmed up, mid-way through the Monday concert, "but it doesn't help. It just damn well gets worse and worse." Kindred spirits roared in applause The Canadian poet-singer-songwriter, who has a penchant for the occasional Cabalistic line or two, served up a surprising mix of vintage songs and new material from his latest album, The Future. But only "Waiting For The Miracle" had been developed for a live audience, with a mystical-sounding flute solo from Paul Ostermayer. It was one of many new arrangements in an array of gems. Ostermayer also helped to shift a hot new "Sisters Of Mercy" a couple of decades, with a wonderful bluesy nightclub sax solo. That was during the first encore. There were four. "Let's face it," said Len morosely, continuing the stream of in-jokes that it was impossible to listen to his albums on a sunny day, "we have nowhere to go." Monday's concert was full of instant classics: magnificent reworkings of older material. At last, "Hallelujah" got what it deserves, a wonderfully soulful new interpretation; hopefully, it will be recorded on this world tour so that everyone can hear Bob Metzger's long electric guitar solo. "So Long, Marianne" (second encore) also enriched by electric guitar and sax backing and performed under green lights, was almost unrecognisable. "Joan Of Arc" was another visual and aural spectacular, violinist Bob Furgo and vocalist Julie Christensen adding intensity to the well know song, bathed in red against images of flames. "Take This Waltz," one of Len's favourites, was accompanied by a revolving galaxy of starlight. The audience stood in disbelief as he played "First We Take Manhattan" for a second time, against New York silhouettes, when he took the stage for a third encore. It looked as if he was starting all over again. "It's OK, you can leave," he told them, before launching, unaccompanied, into a long-forgotten song from somewhere in the past, as a finale, "I won't be offended." "I'll be singing to your children and grandchildren," he told us as the night wore on. "Let's leave this dismal world to them." He doesn't mean it. Young men and women came up to the stage to hold his hands at the end. It was, I'm afraid, a hugely enjoyable evening.

	For their kind and generous support, many thanks to Kelley Lynch, Mr. Leonard Cohen and Dick "The Hummingbird" Straub.

The following article, a review of the Albert Hall Concert, appeared in the Independent, 13 May 1993. The photograph of band member Bob Metzger is from The Future 1993 World Tour Book. About Metzger it states: "Bob Metzger - Guitars & Pedal Steel. Bob Metzger has previously appeared in concert with Leonard Cohen in the 1988 'I'm Your Man' tour. He has also appeared in concert with Ian Matthews, Don McLean, Randy Crawford, and Spencer Davis. Bob plays six different instruments and is featured on recordings by many different artists. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California."

Live: When the Cohen Gets Tough: Leonard Cohen, the Existential Serenader, Is Still Glad to Be Glum By Andy Gill "You know me, I'm just a journalist of the inner dismal condition." Leonard Cohen knows his audience well, and his audience, likewise, knows him: we chuckle at the self-deprecation of this assessment, because it ignores, as many did for years, the essential humour of his work, the hollow laugh that renders its dolorous pessimism not just bearable, but enjoyable. After a show lasting over three hours, his audience knows him even better, though the same can't be said for Len and his own songs; he fluffs the cuckold pay-off lines in "Everybody Knows" through concentrating too much on his over-emotional delivery. Less than two years short of his 60th birthday, Cohen seems to have decided he's a soul singer, leaning into his songs with a little bend of the knees, and emoting like crazy throughout. His songs, of course, don't really need this treatment: it's the glum ironies we like, not the soul, particularly when he zooms up an ill-considered octave for the final verse of "Bird On A Wire." This being Cohen, of course, it's still not that far off baritone. That voice is Cohen's Unique Selling Point: when he gets to the line in "Tower of Song" about being "born with the gift of a golden voice", he lays it on extra thick, with a subterranean murmur which, I kid you not, elicits the kind of squeals more appropriate to somebody like Suede. But the screams don't belong to teenybopprs, but to mature women, utterly beguiled by this gentle existential serenader. Between songs, a woman from the fifth or sixth row of the stalls stole up to the stage and handed him a note. He bent down and clasped her hand warmly in both of his, before pocketing the billet-doux and continuing with the show. Still, the perfect gentleman. The band on this tour resembles that which appeared here in 1988 - with the two "angels" on backing vocals even more to the fore - though this one offers more varied arrangements, with violin, tenor sax and synthesized strings lending a refined Palm Court Orchestra feel to many of the songs. Everyone plays with quiet refinement - the drummer uses mainly brushes and synthetic, programmable drum-pads, the better to control his volume - but the guitarist Bob Metzger, in particular, is superb, serving as Cohen's Robbie Robertson with his subtle touches and string-bending. Metzger's solo on "Bird On A Wire" is quite exquisite, a model of restraint which refuses to prick the delicate meniscus of atmosphere on which it rests. It's debatable, though, whether the old songs are any more effective done with the band than by Cohen, solo. Few sounds were quite as evocative as the familiar wavelets of his distinctive fingerstyle guitar, rippling into the second set with "Avalanche" as a brace of blue spotlights crept over his still form. The songs are generally prefaced with a spoken verse, as if in preparation for some close textual analysis. This affords space for people to shout out requests, some risible - though Cohen obliges with a verse of "Loch Lomond", followed swiftly by "Rule Britannia" and something which I presume is the Canadian national anthem. "I've been observing your predicament from a distance," he said, "and I think you owe the Queen an apology." This is but one of several dry quips with which Cohen paces the set; between the finale of "Closing Time" - the country spoof that is his latest single - and the first of innumerable encores, he extended his gratitude to well-wishers and benefactors: "Thanks for sending me the letters and all the flowers," he began warmly, pausing before adding, "but they don't help." Well, thank heaven for that.

	Fiona Harrington, a shining and generous spirit, shares this article with all Cohen fans. Thank you, dear Fiona.

The following article appeared in the New York Times, June 16, 1993. The photograph of Leonard Cohen is by Mariano Brustio and is reprinted with permission.

The Somber Rituals of Leonard Cohen By Jon Pareles Leonard Cohen's audience roared when he sang, "I was born with the gift of a golden voice" at the Paramount in Manhattan on Monday night. His voice isn't golden; like a rusty old farm implement, it rasps and creaks, moving out of a deep monotone only with great effort. It can be a whisper, a growl, a croak; it suggests deathbed confidences or prophecies from beyond the grave. When Mr. Cohen sings a lover's promises, as he sometimes does, the words sound desperate and ominous. Mr. Cohen, who is 58, has carried on a remarkably consistent career since his first album appeared in 1967. He writes stately, imagistic songs with zingers every few lines: "It's lonely here, there's no one left to torture," he sings in the title song of his current album, "The Future" (Columbia). In early songs like "Suzanne" and "Sisters of Mercy," romance and religiosity are intertwined; soon, his concerns about doom and salvation extend beyond the personal sphere, leading to profoundly cynical, black-humored litanies of bad news like "Everybody Knows" and "There Is a War." At first, the quiet finger picking of folk guitar carried his songs. But he gradually made connections with European cabaret and pop, and at the Paramount, his hushed, understated band alluded to styles from subdued disco ("First We Take Manhattan") to country ("Closing Time") to hymn ("Bird on a Wire") to orchestral pop ("Waiting for the Miracle to Come"), all of them weathered by the tone of his voice. Mr. Cohen's concerts take place in slow motion. Most performers alternate slow and fast songs; at the Paramount, where he performed two sets and a half-dozen encores at a concert that lasted nearly three hours, he alternated slow and slower ones, only gradually working his way up to a midtempo march at the end of each set. Two female backup singers provided sweetly ethereal harmonies or "la-la's" that only made Mr. Cohen sound more corroded. With his close-cropped gray hair, his large features and his lined face, Mr. Cohen looked something like a singing Easter Island head. He introduced many songs by gravely intoning some lyrics as poetry, and he usually sang while standing nearly motionless, eyes closed, his face a mask of penitence that only occasionally showed a smirk. For Mr. Cohen, the concert is a somber ritual, not to be broken even by obstreperous audiences -- "Thank you for your incoherent screaming," he said calmly after one outburst -- and he ended his Paramount show with a biblical benediction, in which he and his musicians sang an unaccompanied setting of Ruth 1:16 ("Whither thou goest..."). There was no little pretension in Mr. Cohen's concert, which demanded that listeners settle in for a long, leisurely, almost reverent performance, waiting for every phrase. But the music, though unhurried, held genuine melodies, and Mr. Cohen's lyrics rarely made a false move. "Say it clear, say it cold," he sings in "The Future," and that's what he does; his words are etched in acid. And his grave voice, beyond the possibility of sweetening or credulity, is their best vehicle. On Tour Leonard Cohen performs in Toronto today through Friday. He will be in Detroit on Saturday, Chicago on Sunday and Minneapolis on Tuesday. His tour continues in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on June 24; Regina Saskatchewan, June 24; Calgary, Alberta, June 26; Edmonton, Alberta, June 27; Vancouver, June 29-30, and Seattle, July 1. Then San Francisco, July 3-4; Los Angeles, July 5-6; San Diego, July 8; Santa Fe, N.M., July 9; Austin, Tex., July 11; Atlanta, July 13; Glenside, Pa, July 15; Boston, July 16, and Washington, July 18.

	Many thanks to the generous Mean Larry for mastering his tool to provide this article.  (His new scanner!) And thank you to Mariano Brustio for sharing another one of his stunning photographs.

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