Tour Reviews and Other Memories from
LEONARD COHEN WORLD TOUR Fall 2009
November 7, 2009
St Louis, Missouri
Fox Theatre
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Set List for November 7
St. Louis Post-Dispatch review
Riverfront Times review
Fan reports
Youtube
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November 9, 2009
Kansas City, Missouri
The Midland by AMC
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Set List for November 9
The Pitch Weekly review & photos
The Kansas City Star review & photos
Fan reports
Youtube
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November 12, 2009
Las Vegas, Nevada
The Colosseum at Caesars Palace
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Set List for November 12
Las Vegas Review-Journal review & photo
Las Vegas Sun review
Las Vegas Weekly review
Fan reports
Youtube
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November 13, 2009
San Jose, California
HP Pavilion at San Jose
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Set List for November 13
Spartan Daily review
LiveDaily review
Fan reports
Youtube
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St Louis, Missouri
Set List - November 7, 2009
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
Chelsea Hotel
Waiting For The Miracle
The Flood (recitation)
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Sisters Of Mercy
Gypsy Wife
New Song - "the darkness"
The Partisan
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
Encores
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Famous Blue Raincoat
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
St Louis, Missouri
Leonard Cohen earns ovations at Fox concert
ST. LOUIS — Leonard Cohen earned the first of many standing ovations at the Fox Theatre Saturday night just by showing up.
Many audience members likely thought they'd never lay eyes on the reclusive singer, who hasn't toured in 15 years and has never performed in St. Louis. Their ecstatic reaction was not unexpected when Cohen bounded onto the stage but was wholly justified when he left it for the last time more than three hours later.
Dressed in a black suit and fedora and backed by a six-piece band plus a trio of vocalists, the 75-year-old singer admitted he didn't know when he'd pass this way again, but he said, "Our intention tonight is to give you everything we've got."
Cohen dug deep into his large catalog of material and offered up numerous gems, including "Hallelujah," "Suzanne," "Bird on the Wire," "First We Take Manhattan" and "I'm Your Man." He mostly stood stock-still at center stage, gripping the microphone in one hand and cupping the other around it, whispering his lyrics conspiratorially in his foggy, froggy voice. During some songs, he dropped to his knees, as if in supplication.
Cohen's humility was extended toward his musicians, each of whom was offered plenty of time in the spotlight. Javier Mas, who played a variety of exotic string instruments, shone brightly, as did reed man Dino Soldo, whom Cohen dubbed the "maestro of breath."
Backup vocalist Sharon Robinson sang the sly, knowing "Boogie Street," which she co-wrote with Cohen, and Hattie and Charley Webb performed a prayerful "If It Be Your Will." From the shadows, Cohen gave his rapt attention, hat held over his heart.
Many of his songs are relentlessly bleak, but Cohen undercut the dour mood with some comic relief. In "The Future," a catalog of humankind's outrageous acts and a call, more or less, for the apocalypse, Cohen hit the line about "white girls dancing," prompting the Webb sisters to turn cartwheels on the spot. In the droll, sexually frank "I'm Your Man," he altered one line slightly and sang, "I'll wear an old man's mask for you." As if at this point he needs one.
Despite his chronological age, though, Cohen seemed buoyed by the crowd's response as he jogged, danced and even skipped on and off the stage during the encores. "Here's a man still working for your smile," he sang in the closing song, "I Tried to Leave You." He got it, having given his all, as promised.
Though it was decades overdue, Cohen's St. Louis debut was an absolute stunner.
St Louis, Missouri
Show Review + Setlist: Leonard Cohen at the Fabulous Fox, November 7
Riverfront Times
- November 8, 2009 by Aimee Levitt
At the Fox Theatre on Saturday night, in the middle of "Tower of Song," Leonard Cohen intoned, "I was born with the gift of a golden voice." The audience applauded enthusiastically, even though the line was not strictly true. Actually, it was not true at all, and it never was. Cohen was originally a poet who occasionally strummed a guitar. But over the years, his voice has tarnished and deepened, and he's transformed it into a remarkable instrument. Other singers may have done prettier versions of some of his songs -- Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah," Rufus Wainwright's "Chelsea Hotel #2" -- but nobody sings Cohen like Cohen.
His lyrics combine wordliness, wisdom, sly self-deprecation, biting sarcasm and the righteous rage of an Old Testament prophet, sometimes all at once: Who else could pull off a line like, "Everybody knows what you've been through/From the bloody cross on top of Calvary/To the beach of Malibu"?
Cohen's touring band provided a perfect setting for his voice -- the literal and the literary. His trio of backup singers, occasional collaborator Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters, made up for his lack of vocal range. The six musicians, all of whom play multiple instruments, provided a harmonious backdrop that enhanced, rather than overshadowed, Cohen's words (particularly the guitar and mandolin player Javier Mas). They also rescued the songs from the cheesy overproduction that nearly ruined his albums from the eighties. During the show, they each took generous solos, and Cohen listened, holding his hat humbly in his hand.
St. Louis has been waiting for Cohen for a very, very long time. Saturday night was the first time in his 40-year career that he visited here. The crowd at the Fox ranged from young hipsters to people who probably bought Cohen's first LP when it came out back in 1967. Many of them had dressed up (some of the men wore fedoras, just like Cohen himself) and they all greeted him with a standing ovation and punctuated the concert with several more. This was not just a show -- this was a pilgrimage. One woman left a dozen roses at the foot of the stage and gasped audibly when Cohen picked them up and cradled them against his shoulder.
Cohen seemed to know and appreciate this. He accepted the adulation by removing his hat and bowing his head. "I don't know when we'll pass this way again," he said, "but it's our intention tonight to give you everything we got." He wasn't kidding.
He and the band played for more than three hours. His impeccably-cut black silk suit remained unwrinkled (Cohen's father was a tailor) and he barely seemed to break a sweat. Bear in mind the man is 75 years old, though he might not believe it himself: In "I'm Your Man," he sang, "If you want a different kind of lover, I'll wear an old man's mask for you." He didn't merely walk on- and offstage for intermission -- and the encores, he pranced.
(Combined with Bruce Springsteen's set two weeks ago, this is shaping up to be the season when the geezers give the young punks a thorough ass-whupping.)
Since this was a pilgrimage, Cohen gave the audience exactly what they wanted: the old hippie favorites "Suzanne" and "So Long, Marianne," and the more recent "Everybody Knows," "First We Take Manhattan" and "Dance Me to the End of Love," all of which he must have performed thousands of times by now, but which sounded as fresh as if he and the band had come up with them that morning.
"Chelsea Hotel #2" in particular acquired extra resonance live. The audience chuckled when Cohen sang, "You told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you would make an exception", but the song, in his old-man voice, came off like an elegy, particularly the ironic final line, "That's all, I don't even think of you that often."
There was new music, too: "The Darkness," which Cohen introduced earlier on this tour. He delivered it in his Old Testament prophet mode, though its apocalypticness was marred somewhat by the band's jazzy noodling. (They did not make that mistake with "Who By Fire," which is adapted from a prayer Jews say during the High Holidays when they speculate about their fate for the coming year. It was far more scary and sobering in the splendid, luxurious Fox than it ever was in synagogue.)
And yes, there was "Hallelujah." After Jeff Buckley, after its endless replaying in the movies and on TV (and, yes, in college dorm rooms and twentysomething apartments when the inhabitants are feeling particularly torn up and self-pitying about love affairs gone bad), one would expect the song to have lost some of its power.
But when Cohen dropped to his knees and sang, "Remember when I moved in you and the holy doubt was moving, too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah," it all came rushing back: the mixture of love and lust and God and doubt and loss. Like the best poetry, Cohen's songs make connections and drive your thoughts someplace unexpected and even shocking and on Saturday night, "Hallelujah" could still bring on a chill.
"Good night my darling," Cohen intoned at the very end, surrounded by his band. "I hope you're satisfied....Here's a man working for your smile."
And the crowd was satisfied. And everyone left smiling.
St Louis, Missouri
Blogs and Other Fan Reports
Blog - "Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia" - "Leonard Cohen Concert: Both Sublime and Ridiculous "
And of course, he was witty. The song choices were even witty. I was sad not to hear Closing Time, but of course they saved that for one of the later encores. I think the very last song was I Tried to Leave You. When the house lights came up, I was so satisfied, Gary asked if I wanted to finally get dinner and I felt I didn't want to even eat ever again...
Discuss the tour and read fan reviews on The Leonard Cohen Forum and in French on the Leonard Cohen Forum (French site).
Kansas City, Missouri
Set List - November 9, 2009
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
Chelsea Hotel
Waiting For The Miracle
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Sisters Of Mercy
Gypsy Wife
New Song - "the other blues song a/k/a feels so good"
The Partisan
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
Encores
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Famous Blue Raincoat
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
Kansas City, Missouri
Concert Review: Leonard Cohen at the Midland
The Pitch Weekly - November 10, 2009 by Scott Wilson (Photos: Scott Spychalski)
The ticket admonished: "8 p.m. sharp." And at 7:58 last night, the lights inside the Midland dimmed, and a low-voltage current of recorded flamenco music swept six musicians and three singers onto the stage. Then Leonard Cohen bounded out -- bounded, like someone on his way to high-five Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan. The first song: "Dance Me to the End of Love." Mission accomplished.
The 75-year-old poet and songwriter spent three and a half hours (less an intermission) dancing an enraptured crowd to the farthest reaches of ... well, if not love, then whatever it is that animates his graceful ballads of devotion and dissipation. All night he prowled the stage with feline grace -- crouching fast in supplication to his own lyrics, twisting upward on his toes when the beat kicked in, doffing his narrow-brimmed fedora in courtly deference to his backing singers, locking his knees together in mock-Jagger sexual panic. To call him merely spry would do a disservice to senior water-aerobics classes everywhere. What should have looked like Abe Vigoda auditioning for the Backstreet Boys was closer to seeing Michael Jackson moonwalk for the first time. No one who was there will forget it.
Not that it takes steady kinetic demonstration to sell Cohen's songs, which dance easily from wry biblical allusions to naked propositions and back again, with waltzing pit stops for drinks and blood-in-the-eyes jealousy and thwarted obsession. To long for the spirit is to crave the flesh is to beg forgiveness is to be denied healing. The stillest moment of the night came late, when verses from an early, unrecorded version of his 2001 song "A Thousand Kisses Deep" rumbled from his chest with no accompaniment besides his faded Canadian accent, and no movement in the house except the holding of breath. He earned a laugh at the start with the lines You came to me this morning/And you handled me like meat/You´d have to be a man to know/How good that feels, how sweet.
It would be crude and incorrect to say that a barb like that (axiomatic as it may be) sums up Cohen's late-period worldview, but the set gave more than fair voice to the most poetic -- and most jaundiced -- of these newer songs. There and with "In My Secret Life" and "Boogie Street" (frequent Cohen songwriting partner Sharon Robinson sang the latter last night), the simmering carnal regret (and fresh longing) of his early songs settled into the dusty landscape of 1992's apocalyptic The Future, represented at the Midland by the title song, "Anthem," a sprint-paced "Closing Time" and the heartbreaking epic of romantic entropy "Waiting for the Miracle." Taken together, the post-1992 material adds up to a kind of sex manual for the end of days.
The only problem last night wasn't onstage -- and it was less a problem than a sometimes aggravating curiosity. Especially in the show's first half, a few people on the floor at the Midland greeted a surprising assortment of lines in Cohen's songs with arena-style cheers, little viral ululations signaling approval without much attention to, you know, context.
Well, sure -- you wait a lifetime for the man's first-ever appearance in Kansas City, and you might blow up a little when he finally, finally, finally sings ... I know what is wrong and what is right (from "In My Secret Life")? Really? Old black Joe still picking cotton for your ribbons and bows ("Everybody Knows")? Hmm. Even the scream for We are ugly but we have the music from "Chelsea Hotel #2" rang a little false; what, Leonard Cohen is emo now?
Things calmed down some during the second half, when the downstairs bar closed and the first balcony ran out of red wine (I'm told). In the interest of participation, however belated, here are a couple of lines I would totally have gunned it for if I were into letting the people sitting around me at concerts know that my ticket is more important than their ticket: I tuned the old banjo ("Boogie Street") -- OWWW! YEAH! She sends her regards ("Famous Blue Raincoat") -- WOO! REGARDS! Let your mercy spill ("If It Be Your Will") -- DAMN, LEN! SPILL!
At the core of the note-perfect band were guitarist Bob Metzger and bass player (and bandleader) Roscoe Beck. Both have worked with Cohen for decades on and off the road. (Our sister paper in Dallas interviewed Beck not long ago.) No less crucial was Javier Mas, who deployed a caravan of exotic stringed instruments to deepen the textures of every song he played on. (Cohen discovered Mas after the Spaniard contributed to a Cohen tribute album in his home country.) Dino Soldo blew a variety of wind instruments but might have made his most lasting impression with a couple of unexpected virtuoso turns on chromatic harmonica. Appropriately for much of the set, keyboard player Neil Larsen found nagging martial chords and David Lynchian hums for songs like "Everybody Knows" and "First We Take Manhattan." He shone whenever he drove his Hammond B3 to the dark end of the street, as during the startling "Hallelujah."
When Cohen emerged for the night's second half, standing at a small keyboard ("I don't want to alarm you, but I'm going to fire this up," he said before starting "Tower of Song." "This thing plays by itself"), he told the audience, "Thank you so much for not going home." No, Leonard Cohen. Thank you for not staying home.
Kansas City, Missouri
Review: Leonard Cohen
The Kansas City Star - November 10, 2009 by Timothy Finn (Photos: Chris Oberholtz/The Star)
Like some upper-level graduate course, this show came with some prerequisites: You needed to know the music of Leonard Cohen, and the more intimately the better. You also needed to appreciate his singing voice, which, these days, comes from somewhere between Barry Whites' and a lighter shade of Darth Vader's.
Monday night as the clock struck 8 p.m., Cohen skipped onto the stage of the Midland theater in the wake of the band of backup singers and musicians who nearly stole his own show from him. He would tip his hat a few dozen times and deliver 27 songs, a few dozen thank-yous, one hallelujah, a few droll wisecracks and a reading of one of his own poems that aroused one of the spine-tingliest moments of the year.
Cohen is 75, but he sang with equal sincerity and indifference about love and sodomy, war and transcendence, life and death. And for most of a show that lasted almost three hours (plus a 30 minute intermission), he kept his sold-out crowd enraptured. It was his first show ever in Kansas City; and many in the place were seeing someone they'd been listening to for decades and only dreamed of seeing live. He gave them plenty to rave about, including a six-song encore.
There is much to write about, starting with the performance of his outstanding band and background singers. All night they artfully colored, embroidered and adorned his songs and embellished his vocals, especially Javier Mas on bandurria, 12-string acoustic guitar (and others), Dino Soldo, on sax, clarinet (and others) and Neil Larsen on keyboards and Hammond B3 (his solo during "Hallelujah" was divine).
He brought a drummer, Rafael Gayol, but the way the sound was mixed, he was almost parenthetical -- way in the back, literally and figuratively, gently keeping time. The vocals, however, were another thing. The three singers to his right weren't exactly background singers; they were front and center and they carried equal weight for many songs. He gave them their own solo moments: Sharon Robinson on "Boogie Street," which gave the song an Everything But the Girl vibe; and the Webb sisters on "If It Be Your Will."
The mood all night was organic and loose -- not free-wheeling, but unbuttoned. At times the show took on a cabaret or Kurt Weill vibe.
The crowd made noise a few times, mostly when Cohen sang a line that resonated and prompted some whoops and applause, like "I was born with the gift of a golden voice," during "Tower of Song," "There's not much entertainment / And the critics are severe," during "Waiting for the Miracle," and "There is a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in," during "Anthem."
His audience remained in a suspended state of reverence and glee all night. He repaid them with humility, gratitude and humor. By night's end, he'd introduced his band at least twice and thanked his lighting director.
Before "Chelsea Hotel #2," he told a story about escaping to Miami 40 years ago: "I was taking a vacation from deep authenticity," he deadpanned. During "The Future," he altered the lyrics to "There'll be fires on the road / and white girls dancing." As he sang the line, the Webb sisters took a step back and executed perfect synchronized cartwheels. And during "Hallelujah," he added some local flavor to a lyric: "I didn't come to the Midland theater to fool you ..."
I suppose some moments were better than others, but this show was a lot like the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss "Raising Sand" show out at Starlight last year: relentless in how good it was. You could argue that the second (and longer) half was more powerful than the first, but that verges on hair-splitting and nit-picking.
One of the finer moments was Cohen's stunning recitation of "A Thousand Deep Kisses," which brought the house to a spell-bound silence as he delivered lines like: "I loved you when you opened / Like a lily to the heat / You see I’m just another snowman / Standing in the rain and sleet ..."
Many singers have covered his songs, but last night Cohen reclaimed all of them, including "Hallelujah," most of which he performed on his knees. He also took back "Suzanne" and during his gorgeous altered version of "Bird on the Wire," he sounded like a guy delivering the definitive cover version of his own song.
He gave us a new song, one that's (apparently) titled "The Other Blues Song" (or "Feels So Good"). It's a song about emerging from heartache, about feeling better about loving someone less. The crowd applauded several lines that everyone related to, especially: "I feel like they tore away my blindfold and said, 'We're gonna let this prisoner live' ..."
You could say his best songs do the same thing: liberate his listeners by letting them perceive new truths, by unbinding blindfolds and letting in the light.
Kansas City, Missouri
Blogs and Other Fan Reports
Blog - "There Stands the Glass" - "Review: Leonard Cohen at The Midland Theater "
Cohen was spectacular. His voice was so much stronger and more resonant than I had expected...
Discuss the tour and read fan reviews on The Leonard Cohen Forum and in French on the Leonard Cohen Forum (French site).
Las Vegas, Nevada
Set List - November 12, 2009
Per Marie
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
Chelsea Hotel
Waiting For The Miracle
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Sisters Of Mercy
Gypsy Wife
New Song - "the other blues song a/k/a feels so good"
New Song - "the darkness"
The Partisan
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
Encores
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Famous Blue Raincoat
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
Las Vegas, Nevada
REVIEW: Leonard Cohen stirs passions during spirited Caesars show
Las Vegas Review-Journal - November 14, 2009 by Jason Bracelin (Photo: Jason Bean/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Nov. 14--He sang the songs as if he were whispering them into a lover's ear.
His voice was husky, seductive and more than a little worn around the edges, a coiled snake of sensuality.
In song, Leonard Cohen once claimed to have a heart of ice, and yet his tunes could melt a glacier with all their libidinal heat.
The man's crazy for love, his repertoire being his padded cell.
"Love is not a victory march," he purred at one point Thursday at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. "It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
"Hallelujah," the song in question, was a triumphant sounding, lump-in-the-throat hymnal that Cohen sang from his knees in a penitent pose.
"I did not come to the palace of Caesar to fool you," he added moments later, earnest as can be.
Cohen's skilled at filling a room with lots of dark clouds, but in the end, most of them prove to have a nickel-plated lining.
He sees the beauty in decay, the promise in imperfection.
"Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering," he sang on "Anthem." "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
As such, his show on Thursday was a joyous, spirited occasion, even when Cohen was questioning his own fate.
"I see no future, I know my days are few," he growled during the hard-eyed blues swing of "The Darkness," a new tune that sounded far more invigorated than resigned.
This was a constant of the evening.
Playing with a six-piece band and a trio of backing singers, including longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson and the sublime Webb Sisters, Cohen turned in loose-limbed, slightly more full-bodied versions of standards like "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" and "Bird on the Wire," rendering many of them spry, self-aware waltzes that somehow managed to feel both upbeat and downcast at once.
Cohen seemed determined to match the energy of his band, skipping on and off the stage like he had bedsprings for legs, smiling broadly, singing with his knees pressed together, harnessing the full force of his dapper frame.
Performing on a sparsely appointed stage, bathed in red and purple hues, Cohen and his band often appeared as dark silhouettes in an even darker room.
It created an intimate, unguarded atmosphere that suited Cohen's material well and to which the rapturous, near-capacity crowd responded as if he were serenading each and every one of them individually.
If Cohen's catalog is capable of stirring such passions, it's no secret why. There is precious little ambivalence in his works. He thrusts himself headfirst into the love, longing, rapture and defeat that defines much of it.
There's seldom any middle ground amidst it all, and this kind of uninhibitedness can be intoxicating.
"Give me Christ, or give me Hiroshima," he sang during the punchy shuffle of "The Future," and that pretty much says it all.
And yet, it's all delivered with a knowing wink, a palpable lack of pretense despite the poetic license in which Cohen freely indulges.
To wit, he ended his nearly three-hour performance with an extended "I Tried to Leave You," a song that took on a double meaning as Cohen sung it in a voice so deep, it occasionally mimicked the drone of a didgeridoo.
"Good night my darling, I hope you're satisfied," he sang, addressing a former flame and the crowd in the same breath. "Here's a man still working for your smile."
And then he left the stage, knowing that his work was complete.
SOUNDING OFF: Plenty to say thanks for this year
Getting to cover the likes of Kenny Chesney, Josh Groban and Fergie for a living, I have a lot to be thankful about -- namely, earplugs and alcohol.
Seriously, though, I have the best job, and considering the holiday before us today, here's what I'm most thankful for in 2009:
Leonard Cohen. If you told me at the beginning of the year that I could choose any living artist to see in concert, it easily would have been Leonard Cohen. And with expectations outsized enough to imperil high-flying aircraft, Cohen exceeded them all with an equally commanding and vulnerable performance, often sung on bended knee, with such grace, beauty and poise that his songs felt like they could have sutured up the most broken of hearts...
Las Vegas, Nevada
Leonard Cohen calls down angels in the palace of Caesar
Las Vegas Sun - November 13, 2009 by Michael Mishak
If heaven has a house band, you can be sure Leonard Cohen will lead it.
But heaven will have to wait.
The 75-year-old poet laureate of women, wine and song performed an unlikely Las Vegas miracle Thursday night, turning The Colosseum at Caesars Palace into a sacred temple, with his songs of love, loss and longing serving as soundtrack to some sort of spiritual celebration.
Three songs into the show, Cohen sang that he had heard angels declare: "Ain't no cure for love." As light burned through the stage's flowing white curtain, I was not only willing to believe him -- I was hearing them myself. Ask anyone in the house. It was that kind of night.
Cohen, dressed in a sharp suit befitting a gangster, put in a Springsteen-worthy performance, playing for more than three hours, with a 25-minute break between sets. Shortly after 8 p.m., he bounded onto the stage, doffed his fedora to the audience and launched into "Dance Me To The End Of Love," kneeling before guitarist Javier Mas for a pseudo serenade. A few minutes later, during "The Future," Cohen tapped his toes, locked his knees together and executed what looked like a brief moonwalk.
A superb nine-piece band, led by bassist Roscoe Beck and including drummer Rafael Gayol, guitarists Mas and Bob Metzger, reed player Dino Soldo and organist Neil Larsen, provided a canvas for Cohen to paint his words upon.
"We've played some unlikely places, and I don't know when we'll pass through this way again," Cohen told the crowd. "But it is our intention to give you everything we have tonight."
That was 22 songs over two sets and a three-part, six-song encore, encompassing, as Cohen once put it, everything from "the latest hit to the wisdom of old." After a 15-year hiatus, Cohen clearly enjoyed being back in the spotlight, clenching his fist to his chest as he sang, "take one last look at this sacred heart before it blows" in "Everybody Knows."
Visibly looser in the second set, he donned an acoustic guitar and played two new songs, one of which could hint at the trouble that spurred his surprise world tour.
In 2005, he sued his former manager and lover, alleging she had misappropriated millions from his retirement fund. In the bluesy "The Darkness," Cohen sings:
"I should have seen the darkness It was right behind your eyes All those pools so deep and heartless I just had to take a dive Yeah but winning you was easy But the darkness was the price."
Still, the mood in the room was anything but dark. Cohen and the band were often bathed in white light, offering exultations to the heavens. "Hallelujah" was, well, a revelation. Cohen dropped to his knees, singing, "I tell the truth, I did not come to the palace of Caesar to fool you." The crowd went nuts. Cohen seemed genuinely humbled by the response. Returning from intermission, he told the crowd: "Thank you for not going back to the casino."
Special praise to backup singer and collaborator Sharon Robinson, who sang a riveting solo rendition of "Boogie Street," and the Webb sisters, Charley and Hattie, who dueted on "If It Be Your Will," complete with harp. If the band could be faulted for anything, it's Soldo's intensity. The wind player, while excellent, strayed into Kenny G country too often.
During the encore, he danced and galloped off the stage -- and skipped back for more, his deep, gravelly bass-baritone sounding stronger than ever. Comically, he returned to the stage for the third time to finish with "I Tried To Leave You."
To paraphrase Cohen, that was one hell of a way to say goodbye.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Late-night thoughts on Leonard Cohen
Las Vegas Weekly - November 13, 2009 by Spencer Patterson
For those worried about Leonard Cohen’s health after his September onstage collapse: The folk-rock icon actually appears healthier at 75 than he did at 74. During his hour-long set at April’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Cohen took several rests, sitting while singing for parts of his performance. Tonight at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Cohen—who moved past the three-quarter-century mark on September 21) stood for the entirety of his colossal three-and-a-half-hour concert (save a 20-minute intermission), remaining upright even during full-song lead-vocal turns by his backing singers, Sharon Robinson (“Boogie Street”) and the Webb Sisters (“If It Be Your Will”). Cohen also galloped—seriously, no exaggeration—on and off the stage between each portion of the show, which ended with three separate encore segments comprising six total numbers. Take that, weary 20-somethings.
Most significantly, Cohen’s famously dark voice sounded far more fit than frail, creeping through the filled 4,000-capacity room with relative ease (okay, the overall sound could have been more robust, but that’s no reflection on the man’s vocal fortitude). Perhaps Vegas lucked out, with Cohen coming in off two nights’ rest following a November 9 show in Kansas City. Wonder if Friday night’s gig in San Jose, California, will be any worse for wear …
Best changed lyric: “I did not come to the Palace at Caesars to fool ya,” in “Hallelujah.”
Best storytelling line: “I was taking a vacation from my deeply authentic life,” as Cohen related the backstory to “Chelsea Hotel #2.”
Las Vegas, Nevada
Blogs and Other Fan Reports
Blog - "The Opening Acts" - "The Great Event – Leonard Cohen Plays Caesars Palace"
If Cohen’s “Ain’t No Cure For Love” is his red valentine, then “Feels So Good” (not to love you like I did) is his blackened, but healed heart; an incredible song...
Discuss the tour and read fan reviews on The Leonard Cohen Forum and in French on the Leonard Cohen Forum (French site).
San Jose, California
Set List - November 13, 2009
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
Chelsea Hotel
Waiting For The Miracle
The Flood (recitation)
Anthem
Second Set
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Sisters Of Mercy
Gypsy Wife
New Song - "the other blues song a/k/a feels so good"
New Song - "the darkness"
The Partisan
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep (recitation)
Take This Waltz
Encores
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Famous Blue Raincoat
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
Democracy
San Jose, California
Lyrical legend performs songs of 'Love and Hate'
Spartan Daily - November 16, 2009 by Hank Drew
HP Pavilion was packed to the gills Friday night as 75-year-old Leonard Cohen delivered words of love, death and religion with his sonorous baritone.
The stage was covered in deep red Persian rugs and was bathed in lush backing curtains that shifted colors when the stage lights changed.
Cohen - decked out in a black suit, white shirt and black fedora - bounded onto stage to a thunderous standing ovation befitting perhaps the greatest pop wordsmith of the past 100 years.
The band immediately whipped into "Dance Me to the End of Love" with Cohen deeply intoning: "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin / Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in / Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove."
This is why Cohen as a pop music manifestation matters. His lyrics transcend the medium.
As if to punctuate this point, Cohen would pause at certain points of the event to deliver lines from his songs as spoken word versions.
I could have spent three hours just listening to this man speak with his wizened voice.
Instead, I was happy to spend three hours listening to the words delivered in song.
Cohen's backing band is the standard backing band - technically proficient, but lacking that individual spark of genius. But, that is the point of a backing band.
The night was Cohen's, and the backing band faded into the corners of the stage. The smooth sounds of the band actually accentuated the grain of his dark voice.
Cohen was a gracious leader, though. He introduced each member of the group twice and allowed individual members to shine with moments of their own.
One of the highlights of the first set included "The Future," a song that seems to have predicted the current state of the world: "There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code / Your private life will suddenly explode / There'll be phantoms / There'll be fires on the road and the white man dancing / You'll see a woman hanging upside down / Her features covered by her fallen gown / and all the lousy little poets coming round tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson and the white man dancin'."
Another highlight was "Chelsea Hotel," a recounting of Cohen's tryst with Janis Joplin, which peels away the layers of love and reveals truth behind the lies of modern pop music: "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel / You were famous, your heart was a legend / You told me again you preferred handsome men / But for me you would make an exception."
This song highlights another important aspect of Cohen - his ability to see himself as he is.
He isn't a handsome fellow by any standard and by all accounts suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life. All of these feelings crept into his lyrics and present a portrait of a life that is perhaps a little too close to the bone for mainstream audiences.
This could explain how Cohen has existed along the margins of pop music. The masses are more interested in imagining that there is a higher order to life, love and death.
Cohen explodes those myths.
After a short 15-minute intermission, Cohen returned to the stage to perform 19 more songs, including three encores.
As he grabbed his microphone, he said, "Thank you for returning after the break. Some people have called my songs depressing."
The live version of "Suzanne" was a very lush affair. The original was mostly Cohen's nasally tenor voice lilting over finger-picked guitar and pretty female vocals.
"Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river / You can hear the boats go by / You can spend the night beside her / And you know that she's half crazy / But that's why you want to be there."
What makes these lyrics so poetic is that he provides concrete images that allow the mind to wander. This is the essence of poetry, and Cohen always nails this.
In the end, this night was more than I could have ever expected from my first time seeing Cohen perform live.
I first discovered Cohen after hearing an '80s cover version of "Who by Fire" by the band Coil. When artists I respect cover other artists, I tend to take notice.
This set off my love affair with lyrical poetry and a weary graveled voice.
San Jose, California
Live Review: Leonard Cohen in San Jose, CA
LiveDaily - November 16, 2009 by NULL
San Francisco Bay Area residents should count their blessings; not every metropolitan area was rewarded with two stops on Leonard Cohen tickets's tour.
Having performed three nights at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland back in April, the acclaimed Canadian singer/songwriter decided to spend Friday the 13th at the HP Pavilion in San Jose (located about 50 miles south of the Paramount). It was the last night of Cohen's tour and he certainly made it count.
Wasting no time, Cohen literally ran out to center stage and, joining his nine-piece band, launched into his regular opener, "Dance Me to the End of Love." When it was all said and done, Cohen had performed a 29-tune show that stretched over two healthy sets and three multi-song encores. The show clocked in at right around three-and-a-half hours.
Not bad for a 75-year-old rock 'n' roll recluse, whose previous North American tour came back in 1993. Sixteen years is a long time to wait for the chance to see one of the most important artists of the last 50 years, and the fans at HP responded to each and every song like they were being offered a piece of pure pop-music gold.
And they were--not a single tune performed during the evening was anything less than fantastic.
The first thing that gets you is the voice--so impossibly deep and rich that it's hard to reconcile in your head that it's actually being uttered by a human. Those distinctive pipes, which were seen as a hindrance at the start of Cohen's career, make everything that comes out of his mouth sound important. Indeed, he could simply recite the menu of a Chinese restaurant and it would translate like divine poetry.
Fortunately, Cohen doesn't need to resort to such endeavors. His body of work as a songwriter stands tall next to that belonging to anybody you want to mention. Other scribes, most certainly, have larger batches of well-known songs at their disposal. When it comes to owning a collection of finely crafted, insanely literate tunes, however, nobody stands eye to eye with Cohen. And, no, I'm not forgetting about Bob Dylan.
If you hear a Cohen track--any Cohen track--and don't find a lyric that leaves you in awe, then you weren't really listening. The depth to his songwriting is astounding, touching upon a nearly full range of emotions with each set of lyrics. In San Jose, I "discovered" lines that somehow I'd missed in songs that I'd heard dozens of times. For instance, I've always thought "Chelsea Hotel" was an overrated tune, finding it a bit too cocky and trite to stand among Cohen's best. This time around, however, the song floored me, as I embraced the humor in the line "You told me again you preferred handsome men/ But for me you would make an exception" and found the power in the anthemic "We are ugly/ But we have the music."
Dressed in a snazzy suit and dress hat, an outfit that looked borrowed from Cary Grant's closet, Cohen was in great spirits and full of energy throughout the night. Sticking closely to the song list--but not necessarily the song order--found on this year's epic two-CD concert set, "Live in London," Cohen wowed the fans with faithful renditions of "Everybody Knows," "The Future" and "Bird on the Wire" in the first set, "Tower of Song," "Hallelujah" and "I'm Your Man" during the nightcap. His performance grew even stronger during the encores, as if Cohen correctly reasoned that the last night of a tour was no time to hold anything back, and he poured himself into "Famous Blue Raincoat," "Closing Time" and, finally, "Democracy."
The latter, which hails from the 1992 album "The Future," is one of the most memorable songs written about the U.S.A. in the last 20 years (and, yes, how ironic that it was penned by a Canadian). Now, Cohen isn't a guy who spends much time explaining his music in concert – but he made an exception for "Democracy," a tune that has been dubbed by some as overtly political.
"It's not about this administration," he said to the crowd. "It's not about the last administration. And it's not about the administration to come. It's about you and me."
San Jose, California
Blogs and Other Fan Reports
Blog - "Bearly Rambling" - "Leonard Cohen in San Jose"
The band as always were superb, as were the "backup" singers. But I have to highlight Javier Mas, I think you could put a set of strings on anything and he would play the heck out of it. Just so talented...
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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