Tour Reviews and Other Memories from
LEONARD COHEN WORLD TOUR Spring/Summer 2008
May 11, 2008
Fredericton, NB, Canada
Fredericton Playhouse |
Set List for May 11
Daily Gleaner photo
CBC.ca review
Globe and Mail review
Daily Gleaner review
Daily Gleaner review & photo
YouTube
Fan reports
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May 12-17, 2008
Halifax, NS, Canada
Rebecca Cohn Auditorium |
Set List for May 12
Set List for May 13
Set List for May 15 - unknown
Set List for May 16
Set List for May 17
Metro News Canada review & photo
Chronicle Hearld review & photo
The Truro Daily News
Kentville Advertiser
YouTube
Fan reports
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Next Page
Charlottetown, PE, Canada
Glace Bay, NS, Canada
Moncton, NB, Canada |
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Fredericton, NB, Canada
Set List - May 11, 2008
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
(intermission)
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I'm Your Man
Take This Waltz
(encores)
Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Closing Time
Fredericton, NB, Canada
First, he takes Fredericton
The Daily Gleaner
- May 12, 2008
(Photo:Ray Bourgeois)
| I'M YOUR MAN: Montreal native Leonard Cohen, a famous poet and singer-songwriter, performs to a sold-out crowd at the playhouse on Sunday night. This is his first series of concert appearances in more than 15 years. His tour will take him all over the world. |
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Fredericton, NB, Canada
Cohen delivers fan favourites for
tour kickoff in N.B.
CBC.ca
- May 12, 2008 by Bob Mersereau
NOVA.SCOTIA (CBC) - Canadian music icon Leonard Cohen kicked off his first tour in 15 years with a crowd-pleasing concert at Fredericton's sold-out riverside Playhouse Sunday night.
Greeted with one of the night's many standing ovations the moment he took the stage, the 73-year-old Cohen started by thanking the city for its hospitality towards him since his arrival in town - especially so soon after suffering flood damage.
Cohen then proceeded to deliver a program filled with his greatest hits over the approximately 2-1/2-hour show.
The set list spanned favourites like Suzanne, So Long, Marianne, Bird on the Wire and Ain't No Cure For Love, with a performance of his 1984 song Hallelujah among the evening's highlights. No new material was showcased.
Cohen appeared overjoyed at the reception he received from the Fredericton crowd and admitted that he had felt some nervousness before hitting the stage.
The Montreal-born singer, songwriter and poet was inducted into the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March and, the day after the New York gala, announced he would be embarking on a tour, including major stops such as three days prior to the Montreal International Jazz Festival (June 23, 24, 25), two dates in Toronto (June 26, 27)[correction: June 6,7, &8] and a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival in the United Kingdom (June 29).
Two days later, he added a host of additional dates across Atlantic Canada that would precede the previously named shows in Toronto, Montreal and in Europe.
Though the intimate Atlantic Canada venues would likely offer a chance to work out the kinks of his new show before hitting bigger cities, there were few wrinkles to worry about from Cohen or his nine-piece group, according to CBC arts reporter Bob Mersereau.
Cohen proceeds next to concerts in Halifax, Charlottetown, Glace Bay, N.S., Moncton, St. John's, Saguenay, Que. and Kitchener, Ont.
Fredericton, NB, Canada
He was Fredericton's man
Globe and Mail
- May 13, 2008 by David Frank
Leonard Cohen may have 48 dates in 14 countries over the next several months, including Switzerland's prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival and Britain's Big Chill fest, but first he took Fredericton in an accomplished performance Sunday night.
The 73-year-old veteran singer/songwriter began by confessing his nervousness - "this is the first time in 14 years I have stood before you in this position as a performer" - but he needn't have. As soon as he stepped onstage for the first show of his first tour since the early 1990s, he was welcomed with a standing ovation from the sold-out house. While quipping that at shows in the 1990s, "I was just a kid of 60 with crazy dreams," he also took time to express concern for the flooded homes and fields of the Saint John River Valley. (Only 10 days earlier, The Playhouse itself was dark, its operations menaced by the overflowing floodwaters of the Saint John River.)
This Atlantic Canada mini-tour, which takes him to Halifax, Charlottetown, Glace Bay, Moncton and St. John's, is a warm-up for the main touring event, in which Cohen will move westward across Canada and into international dates starting in June.
The Playhouse, a venue of little more than 700 seats, was a good place to be starting over and proved well suited to the intimate qualities of his music. It also gave Cohen a chance to note how pleased he was to open his tour in a city known for its poets. "I used to read the Fiddlehead poetry magazine a lot," he said, mentioning local poets Bliss Carman and Fred Cogswell.Onstage more than 2½ hours, Cohen certainly looked his age, a little stooped but dapper in a double-breasted suit and a fedora, which he removed to take a bow after each song. Cradling a hand-held microphone, he was able to move energetically around centre stage to interact with his band. He played two sets of eight songs each and four encores, including 1960s standards such as Suzanne, Bird on the Wire and So Long, Marianne as well as classics from his middle period in the 1980s and early 1990s such as Everybody Knows, Take This Waltz, Hallelujah and I'm Your Man.
There were no new songs in the lineup and only two songs, In My Secret Life and Boogie Street, were drawn from a more recent 2001 album. With its martial rhythm and biting harmonica, however, the 1992 song Democracy definitely sounded a contemporary note.
Cohen took up a guitar toward the end of the first set and again for two songs later. At the start of the second set, he also toyed with an electric keyboard, even taking out his glasses to examine the buttons when starting his Tower of Song.
He was relaxed enough by then to share a laugh with the audience over the ironic line in that song about his "golden voice."
In fact, he was in excellent voice, his sure delivery given musical depth by a virtuoso group under the direction of veteran bass player Roscoe Beck and including Bob Metzger (electric guitar), Neil Larsen (keyboards), Rafael Gayol (drums), Dino Soldo (electric woodwind, harmonica and saxophone) and Javier Mas (acoustic guitar, oud and other strings).
Strong vocal support was provided by the Webb Sisters (Charley and Hattie Webb, a young British-based duo) and Sharon Robinson, a long-time collaborator and co-writer of several songs, who sang several solos and duets. There had been pre-show buzz that another musical collaborator, Cohen's romantic partner, Anjani Thomas, would perform, but she did not appear.
Cohen knows his songs well and so did the audience, many of them old enough to recall that first album in December, 1967, that made his reputation in popular culture. 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 mid-March, Cohen's influence was celebrated yet again, when he was inducted into New York's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - although most record stores still file him under Folk.
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, and although Cohen's hair may be grey, closing time still seems a long way away.
Fredericton, NB, Canada
Leonard Cohen wows Fredericton
The Daily Gleaner
- May 13, 2008 by Wilfred Langmaid
It was the most unlikely of scenarios.
Sony BMG artist Leonard Cohen had not been on tour in a decade-and-a-half, and he is almost 74. He announced a world tour in March, and that got worldwide attention. News that the tour would begin in small venues - and that the first stop would be Fredericton - was a minor miracle. The show sold out in minutes.
Most people expected quite a few hiccups on opening night. Many people expected a relatively short show, all things considered. Some people thought that the show would be rather weak, but it would still be a chance to see a legend.
These people were all wrong.
Leonard Cohen came to the stage at The Playhouse at 8:05 p.m. on Sunday night. Six male musicians and three female vocalists preceded him, and the place burst into two minutes of standing applause. After some comments of warmth toward the city that has taken him to heart these last few days despite "all the troubles of the swollen river," declaring "the hospitality has been impeccable," he kicked into the 1984 track Dance Me To The End Of Love.
He left the stage almost three hours later as his band played the final strains of Closing Time from his 1992 album The Future.
The energy and strength of Cohen was really the evening's most pleasant surprise. He was in fine voice all night long, and his enthusiasm never flagged over a 20-song performance.
He admitted some nervousness after the warm response to his second track, quipping "I was kind of nervous. It's the first time I've done this in 14 years. I was 60 years old the last time - just a kid with a crazy dream."
However, he loosened up quickly, and was fully engaged by the fourth track, a stretched out version of 1969's Bird On The Wire.
He dabbled in guitar on some songs, such as 1967's Suzanne early in set two, and had some fun with a keyboard on the second set opener Tower Of Song from 1988.
It is said that The Playhouse has never seen a more extensive arsenal of equipment, and the sound was impeccable. Roscoe Beck (bass & vocals, music director), Neil Larsen (keyboard, accordion, brass instruments), Bob Metzger (guitar, steel guitar & vocals), Javier Mas (acoustic guitar, oud &. string instruments), Rafael Gayol (drums & percussion) and Dino Soldo (keyboard, saxophone, wind instruments & vocals) were all master musicians who delivered nary a wasted note.
Beck's arrangements were sometimes jarringly inventive - such as the move of So Long Marianne from his 1967 debut album Songs Of Leonard Cohen from 3/4 time to a 4/4 with some cadence shifts - but everything worked like a charm.
Mas and Larsen were bedrock musicians in the team. Mas' skills with 12-string guitar, oud, and other stringed instruments were intense beyond description, while the Hammond B3 work of Larsen on some songs was especially key.
Of the backing vocalists, the shining star was Sharon Robinson. She has sung with him off and on through the years, and was co-credited with him on his 2001 album Ten New Songs.
Speculation as to the set list was rampant amongst fans worldwide before the show. The answer was given in a concert of two eight-song sets and four encores.
The concert was heavy on his material from three consecutive albums - three songs from 1984's Various Positions, six songs from 1988's I'm Your Man, and four songs from 1992's The Future.
Besides the three songs from the 1960s, there were two from the 2001 album Ten New Songs and none from 2004's Dear Heather.
There were only two songs in total from his four albums of the 1970s. However, they were showstoppers - a late first set version of 1974's Who By Fire and an early second set version of 1979's The Gypsy's Wife.
Cohen played the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax last night. His tour continues there tonight. Before it is all said and done, he will headline at the United Kingdom's Glastonbury Festival on June 29 for 150,000 fans. The Montreux Jazz Festival and Spain's Bennicasim are also on the schedule.
However, it all started here Sunday night.
Fredericton, NB, Canada
Leonard Cohen concert was a night to remember
The Daily Gleaner
- May 16, 2008 by Wilfred Langmaid
(Photo: Ray Bourgeois)
"There is a crack, a crack in everything /
That's how the light gets in."
- Anthem by Leonard Cohen
It is a night that I will never forget - and something that can never be taken away from our fair city.
Leonard Cohen actually did begin his first tour in 15 years on Sunday night in Fredericton.
It was one of those electric evenings that will be etched in my mind forever.
Put it this way: When my time on this mortal coil nears to a close and, if by grace, some pivotal life moments are allowed to rattle back into my mind, this night will be one of them.
The graciousness of the man with his audience, his clear gratitude and happiness as he began this journey in our presence, and the sheer musical strength of the performance were all beyond my expectations.
All I wanted, after all, was a chance to be with Shelley as we together saw the artist whose gifts she introduced to me early in our relationship, after long assuming that we had seen him in his last tour ever. The show we saw back in 1993 was great, but this was something of a far more profound depth.
To be able to simply have an evening together in our own town and ease into amazing seats in a beautiful little venue to see Leonard again would have been quite enough.
Cohen gave us more. The band was stronger overall than the nice unit that backed him in 1993, and we could literally see them work out the little jitters as the first set began.
As another great sign of the magic of it all, I have already had my chance to write my detailed analysis of the concert itself, so enough about that.
Please check out the review from Tuesday's paper if you are so inclined. Suffice it to say that Cohen sang with a strength and passion that I could have never dreamed I would see from a man who was until recently thought to be a retired septuagenarian.
The other thing that made it all so special was the personal connection that Cohen established with those of us who were privileged to be among the little throng that night. When he followed his band on the stage at 8:05 p.m., he began the night with comments of warmth towards the city that had taken him to heart during the days he quietly spent in our midst despite "all the troubles of the swollen river."
He declared "the hospitality has been impeccable" before he kicked off the concert.
He admitted some nervousness after the warm response to his second track The Future, quipping "I was kind of nervous. You know, this is the first time I've done this in 14 years. I was 60 years old the last time - just a kid with a crazy dream."
While he graciously and with frequency thanked his audience and acknowledged his bandmates back in 1993, which was one thing I always remember from that show in Toronto's O'Keefe Centre, he did so even more on Sunday.
It all reached a crescendo near the end of his second set. Leading into the set closer Take This Waltz, he spoke about the life that he chose as a poet.
He noted "this city is the home of many great poets," citing 20th century spanners Bliss Carman and Fred Cogswell, and speaking of a time when he regularly read our literary magazine The Fiddlehead.
Displaying his wit and charm yet again by referencing a legendary UNB English professor, writer and literary critic, he said, "Desmond Pacey came from here. He criticized me very severely ... I don't hold it against you."
Leonard Cohen. Here. Triumphantly starting his first tour in a decade and a half.
It makes me feel like I am just a kid with a crazy dream. But, I'm not.
It really happened. It's a night I'll never forget.
Longtime Daily Gleaner columnist Wilfred Langmaid is employed by the University of New Brunswick. He resides in Fredericton.
Fredericton, NB, Canada
youtube.com
Fredericton, NB, Canada
Blog, Facebook, Photos and Other Fan Reports
Photos at RansomNoteMusic.com
Report by Steve Wilcox and photos by Charles Saindon on The Leonard Cohen Files.
Concert photos from the Leonard Cohen Facebook page (must be a member to view)
Blog - Under the Mad Hat - "I love Sin...in a Leonard sandwich...sort of...er...uh..."
...This was my Mother's Day gift. There could be no better one. He may be 74 but he's still the man...
Discuss the tour and read fan reviews on The Leonard Cohen Forum and in French on the Leonard Cohen Forum (French site).
Halifax, NS, Canada
Set List - May 12, 2008
First Set
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I'm Your Man
Take This Waltz
First Encore
Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Second Encore
Closing Time
Final Encore
I Tried to Leave You
Halifax, NS, Canada
Set List - May 13, 2008
First Set
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I'm Your Man
Take This Waltz
First Encore
Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Second Encore
That Don't Make It Junk
Final Encore
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
Halifax, NS, Canada
Set List - May 16, 2008
First Set
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
First Encore
Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Second Encore
That Don't Make It Junk
Closing Time
Final Encore
I Tried to Leave You
Halifax, NS, Canada
Set List - May 17, 2008
First Set
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
First Encore
Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Second Encore
That Don't Make It Junk
Closing Time
Final Encore
I Tried to Leave You
Halifax, NS, Canada
Concert shows Cohen still your man
MetroNewsCanada
- May 13, 2008 by Dean Lisk
(Photo: dean lisk/metro halifax)
He is a much lauded singer, songwriter, poet, novelist — a Canadian icon — but Leonard Cohen’s performance last night was punctuated with a sense of humility.
The musician, a recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, took the time between each song to recognize the members of his band, and to thank the audience with respectful bows of his head.
“I haven’t been out on the road for a while, but this is a wonderful way to begin,” he told the audience of more than 1,000 after walking out on the Rebecca Cohn stage without an introduction but to a rousing ovation.
“I hope you won’t be disappointed. Thanks for getting me started again,” added Cohen. His five sold-out nights at the Cohn come after a 15-year hiatus from arena touring and at the start of a world tour.
Wearing a fedora and double breasted dark suit, the 73-year-old Montreal native performed many of the hits from his six decades in the business. They included Suzanne, Everybody Knows, Bird On The Wire, and The Future.
His distinctive bass voice harmonized effortlessly with those of his three back up singers.
By the time the last hallelujah raised from his voice during his song of the same name, the Cohn audience was already on its feet — one of a half-dozen standing ovations the ordained Buddhist monk received.
“Sit down, please,” he said quietly. “We have some songs left.”
Halifax, NS, Canada
First he takes Halifax
The ChronicleHearld
- May 13, 2008 by Stephen Cooke
(Photo: Ingrid Bulmer / Staff)
Leonard Cohen may ache in the places where he used to play, but judging by his Monday night show at Halifax’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, he’s far from played out.
The 73-year-old Canadian songwriting icon proved he’s still earning his keep in the Tower of Song with a nearly two-and-a-half hour show that had the sold-out crowd leaping to its feet at regular intervals, at which point the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee — and strong candidate for Coolest Man Alive — waved them back down.
"We haven’t been on the road for a while, but this is a wonderful way to begin," said a bemused Cohen after the first ovation. "I hope you won’t be disappointed."
"Never!" answered one fan enthusiastically.
Cohen and his band set the tone with Dance Me to the End of Love, summoning up a Euro-folk-jazz vibe augmented by Javier Mas’s gypsy guitar and Dino Soldo’s mellow electronic horn. The Montreal singer’s famous baritone came across soft and seductive, sounding even better than expected and nicely balanced by both the musicians and backup singers Sharon Robinson and the Webb sisters.
Besides sounding good, they also looked sharp, in dark suits and fedoras, including the man in charge. "About the hats … we’re all very orthodox musicians," he explained with a grin.
Frequently introducing songs in French, it only took the words "comme un oiseau…" for people to know that the timeless Bird on the Wire was coming up, performed as a blues waltz with Cohen’s longtime guitarist Bob Metzger providing some delicate fretwork to accompany some of the most beautiful imagery in popular song. Later it would be Mas’s turn to take the lead, with a haunting Middle Eastern oud intro to Who By Fire, with Neil Larsen’s Hammond organ lending an eerie air to its nursery rhyme litany of death.
After the intermission, Cohen gave us Tower of Song, with the slightly self-mocking description of "being born with the gift of a golden voice" before finally strapping on a guitar for a gorgeous Suzanne, with an almost subliminal blend of voices, synth strings and Soldo’s bass clarinet. It’s the song that made Cohen famous, and it’s still a one-of-a-kind love song.
Another mid-set standing ovation greeted a soul-stirring Hallelujah, which built to an inspired crescendo of praise and forgiveness, and by the end, and the Viennese sophistication of Take This Waltz, no one wanted the night to end. A four-song encore including So Long Marianne and, of course, Closing Time, wasn’t quite enough; but after a final second encore of the 1974 song I Tried to Leave You, Cohen’s fans floated out of the Cohn on a cloud of ecstacy that could probably take them all the way to China.
( scooke@herald.ca)
Halifax, NS, Canada
Cohen concert was a classic summation
My life is now complete. I’ve seen/heard/experienced Leonard Cohen live, in concert. Cohen at the Cohn, the Rebecca Cohn in Halifax that is.
It’s not just that I’ve lived a busy life away from the centre of things and have not made it to all that many concerts. Leonard is someone special. He is a Canadian icon. For my generation, and perhaps for the next one, he has been the constant presence who from the tumultuous 1960s right to the present has held it all together. He touches the essence of life in a way that resonates with the breadth and depth of our own beings. I can think of no other performer who, for me, is in the same league.
Attending the concert came as a total surprise to me. My daughter Patricia and Emily conspired to lure me to Halifax for dinner and a visit. I even knew that Cohen was coming to Halifax, and when, but by the time I became aware of it his concerts were all sold out. Besides, I comforted myself by thinking that the cost would be out of our price range. Which it was.
While enjoying our dinner I mentioned that Leonard Cohen was in town, and Patricia answered, “Why do you think you’re here?”
For three hours, with one intermission, he sang. He opened to a standing ovation and ended with four curtain calls – for the third he sang Closing Time and for the fourth I Tried to Leave You! I trust that all the clapping and shouting and standing ovations let him know that he has penetrated our souls in a way matched by few others.
Other musicians have been more important to me at certain times in my life. Simon and Garfunkle kept me alive in the 1960s during my initial wrestling with the death-of-God – Cathy’s Song, “I stand alone without beliefs, the only truth I know is you.”
And in another major crisis time in my life it was Beethoven. But through it all Leonard Cohen was a constant companion, not listened to too much, but always there as a probing. haunting presence.
Cohen is primarily a poet, with all the pithy and enticing images and metaphors of a great one. Many of them are beyond our (my) understanding but they elicit an intuitive awareness that we are in the presence of a profound depth.
“Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river”... “And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water,” captured us away back in the ‘60s. And we have been enthralled ever since.
His overriding theme is love. Often he is explicitly and intensely sexual; “I’m your man,” “Dance me to the end of love.” But he goes far beyond being only erotic. He explores the heights and depths of the sexual relationship, which is, for him, at the heart of life. “And now it comes to distances, and both of us must try. Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.”
He touches us by exposing our fragility and failures in our relationships. We all know something of which he sings as he expounds on “all that I have done wrong.”
In his exploring of sexuality the physical is only one facet. He is a profoundly spiritual person and knows at a depth beyond what most of us can imagine that our relationships involve a meeting of souls. He has freed us to know our sexuality as a spiritual experience, and has done so from the very beginning; “for she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.”
His other thrust is global and political; “I’ve seen the future, and it is murder;” “Everybody knows, the dice is loaded.” “Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. ... the source of the best and the worst.”
He touches the depths of disillusionment and despair, but behind it all he knows there is a spiritual power at work; “Who shall I say is calling,” “If it be your will.”
“And even when it all goes wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.”
His concert was a classic, a summation of a life’s work, a presentation of the depth and mystery of life expressed in song.
Thanks Patricia. It was worth every cent of your money.
Don Murray is a retired United Church minister.
Halifax, NS, Canada
Cohen still has the charisma
It was pretty thrilling recently to be in the Baby Boomer crowd thronging Leonard Cohen’s third sold-out concert in Halifax, especially because it was so hard to get tickets. My better half spent hours on the phone and computer without any luck the day the tickets went on sale. They kept adding concert after concert, too.
We were resigned to missing out, when a few days later, I got an e-mail out of the blue from fellow Wolfville resident Grace Proszynska.
“I have four tickets for Leonard Cohen available if you know someone who likes him very much. Piotr and I are his fans all right; however we bought four and our friends bought another four on that buying-frenzy day a couple of weeks ago when the tickets went on sale. We did it simultaneously and ended up with eight!”
Let me tell you we weren’t long in getting back to her. When picking up our tickets, Grace told me that she and Piotr had wanted to hear Leonard decades ago in eastern Europe, but couldn’t. Two seats would have cost them two months salary.
I went to my first Leonard Cohen concert in 1970 as a ‘freshette’ at Acadia. It was in the glamourous, old Capital Theatre on Barrington Street that was later demolished. The man in black was totally suave and cool, but hardly a stellar singer.
Leonard still isn’t a singer and the audience in Halifax earlier this month did not care. People stood up when he first walked out on stage and later gave him five more standing ovations.
No question one of our musical icons was out to please the crowd, but the love travelled two ways around that hall. We all knew we were there to bump up his retirement fund after his untrustworthy manager frittered his life savings away.
Many of the songs Leonard and his terrific nine-piece back-up band launched into are Canadian anthems today. The set list included “Suzanne,” “So Long, Marianne,” “Bird on the Wire” and “Ain't No Cure for Love.” The performance of his 1984 song “Hallelujah” was among the evening's highlights.
At 73, short and somewhat stooped, he joked about not having toured or “been on this ledge” for 14 years. No sign of age, though, when a performer sings until nearly 11 p.m.
Checking with Grace later, she said, “we did enjoy the concert tremendously. He was great, what energy still.”
Jokingly she added, “one lady said on the radio last week that, at some moments, she was so moved that she was afraid her heart would jump out of her chest. Therefore I put a tight bra, just in case.”
I know one guy who muttered during intermission that Leonard was all about love songs to women. But most of us were glad that he had to leave his life of Zen meditation in California to sing for his supper. The Montreal-born singer, songwriter and poet was only inducted into the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March. His 14-country world tour will keep him on the road until the end of June, but we sure were lucky to see him live.
Halifax, NS, Canada
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Halifax, NS, Canada
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Blog - Sonic "JB"log - "I Just Saw Leonard Cohen"
Brilliant and beautiful, last night's show was all that I was hoping it would be and more. Spectacular band, lighting, sound, voice, crowd... One of the top 3 best concerts I've ever seen...
Discuss the tour and read fan reviews on The Leonard Cohen Forum and in French on the Leonard Cohen Forum (French site).
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