Leonard Cohen

[DiamondSea]

He's just the greatest, I was lucky enough to see him in concert a few months ago

 

[helmut.newton]

Oh wow I just discovered his music. It's brilliant.

I love the album Songs of Love and Hate, the best.

What album do you guys love the most?

My favorite songs of his are probably "Avalanche" and "Suzanne"

 

[Belowen]

We have tickets to see him play at an evening on the green... I'm so excited

 

[MulletProof]

LEONARD COHEN RECOVERS FROM COLLAPSE
September 19, 2009
ap via yahoonews.

Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing onstage while on tour in eastern Spain, his music company said Saturday. The veteran poet and performer has been released from hospital after suffering from a stomach complaint, Doctor Music Concerts said in a statement.
Cohen was part-way through his song "Bird on the Wire" in Valencia when he fainted, causing the band to stop playing to rush to his aid as concertgoers watched. The concert was stopped.
A video showing Cohen kneeling down several times during the performance and then keeling over sideways during a saxophone solo has been placed on YouTube on the Web by a fan.
The Canadian-born musician, who will be 75 years-old on Monday, was taken in an ambulance to the Nueve de Octubre hospital in Valencia but released early Saturday, Barcelona-based Doctor Music Concerts said.
Cohen was due to perform the last show of his Spanish tour at the Palau Sant Jordi concert hall in northeastern Barcelona on Monday. Trucks carrying Cohen's show had arrived at the hall on Saturday morning and were to set up as normal, a spokesman for the concert hall said.
Cohen had to come out of retirement five years ago when he discovered that most of his retirement fund had disappeared in a disputed case of mismanagement.
After leaving Spain Cohen was due to perform next at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida on Oct. 17, his Web site said.

There's a video of the incident up on youtube.

 

[NakedIfIWantTo]

oh the voice!! I hope he's doing okay.

 

[silk skin paws]

Scary news at least he's doing better. Avalanche is chilling and brilliant.

 

[classicalbang]

Well, I am glad to hear he is okay. I refuse to watch the video of his collapse... it will break my heart.

silk skin paws, I love "Avalanche," too. Songs of Love and Hate is my favorite L. Cohen album.

 

[DiamondSea]

Avalanche is one of my favourites too

I've just finished reading Ira B.Nadal's "Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen" and highly recommend it.

 

[SpanishCaravan]

Cohen is a genius!

 

[*ana*]

This thread needs revival.

GOING HOME
by Leonard Cohen

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He will never have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want to make him certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision

That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
That is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

newyorker.com

To listen to it: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html

The Darkness

 

[saturnine]

oh yes

 

[*ana*]

Exclusive Q&A: Leonard Cohen on New Tour, 'Old Ideas'
'Touring is like taking the first step on a walk to China'
By Andy Greene
January 30, 2012 2:40 PM ET

This week Leonard Cohen releases Old Ideas, his first album of original material in eight years. The 77-year-old songwriter has hardly been inactive during that time, though. In 2008 he launched a world tour that just seemed to keep going and going, eventually ending in Las Vegas in December of 2010 after an astounding 247 shows. Cohen played to the largest audiences of his career during the tour. When it wrapped, he began work on Old Ideas with producer Patrick Leonard.

Rolling Stone sat down with Cohen backstage at Joe's Pub in New York last week after he previewed the new album for the media. Among many other things, he told us that another tour is "being booked" and shared his surprising picks for his favorite covers of "Hallelujah."

Tell me what your expectations were prior to the last tour, and how they changed as the tour went on.
I never thought I'd tour again, although I did have dreams. Sometimes my dreams would entail me being up on stage and not remembering the words or the chords. It had a nightmarish quality, which did not invite me to pursue the enterprise.

How did it feel when you actually did it?
I was very grateful for the warmth of the audience, the competence of the musicians, and the coherence of the group.

I think people were surprised that you did three hours a night.
Minimum three hours.

You did about 250 shows. Did you feel drained by the end?
There's a certain fatigue I guess you could locate, but as you probably know, when the response is warm and tangible, one is invigorated rather than depleted.

You began playing new material as the tour went on. Did you write those songs on the road?
I wrote "Darkness" on the road. I wrote "Feels So Good" on the road, although we haven't recorded it. But I did play it. I wrote "My Oh My" and I rehearsed some other songs on the road – new songs that didn't make it onto the record. So I have a new record [after this one], at least two-thirds of it, anyway.

Was it always your game plan to record a new album when the tour wrapped up?
Well, I really didn't have a game plan. I kind of surprised myself. But the inertia of the tour kept a number of us active. It isn't so easy just to stop once you've been involved in that degree of activity, so we just kept going.

During the late Nineties and early 2000s a lot of people assumed that you had just retired.
I never thought so myself. Certainly the public aspect of my life was dormant, but I never stopped working myself. I never had a sense of personal retirement. I kept blackening pages and playing my keyboard. It's just that I never thought I had to take it anywhere.

You said that this new album came to you very quickly. What do you attribute that to?
If I knew what the formula was, I'd apply it more regularly.

How long did it take you to record the whole thing?
Well, we came off the tour and we didn't do very much for a little while. Then I bumped into Pat Leonard. I was listening to my son's record, which I thought was very beautiful, and Pat had done some lovely work on that, especially some string parts that he'd written. And I thought I'd ask him to do some string parts on some other songs of mine. That didn't work out, but we started to write together, and then it went kind of swiftly.

We recorded it in my backyard. I have a little studio over my garage – Pro Tools – and Ed Sanders, who is my engineer, he has a lovely little studio. So we were in very small studios, with Pro Tools. But we ran it rough analog, which is where you get warm sound. It didn't take much more than a year to record, working off and on.

Your touring band plays on it?
They're playing on one track, but mostly it's just Pat and I. I'm playing guitar by myself on "Crazy to Love You." I'm playing all the parts on "Amen," except for Sharon Robinson playing a synth bass and live strings, and I'm playing the synth on "Different Sides" with Neil Larsen playing on top of it. So I played a lot myself, and Pat played a lot himself.

Do you want to tour again soon?
A tour is being booked. Whether I'm going to show up . . . I haven't signed on for it yet, but it's certainly in the air.

Do you want to do it?
I have two minds. I don't like to do a small tour, so whether I'm going to sign up for for another couple of years . . . is that really where I want to be? Maybe it is.

But you think it's going to happen?
Looks like it's going to happen.

I know that you toured last time partially because of your financial situation. The tour must have taken care of that, so what would drive you to tour again?
I was able to restore my tiny fortune within a year or so, but I kept on touring. It wasn't exclusively that unique situation. Touring is like taking the first step on a walk to China. It's a serious commitment, so there are a lot of factors to be examined.

I've heard "Hallelujah" covered by so many singers over the years. Do you have a favorite?
There's so many fine covers of it. It's all over YouTube, so people will send me their 11-year-old daughter singing it. That's always very charming. And there are great versions of it by k.d. lang. Bon Jovi has a great version of it.

I've always like John Cale's version of it.
John Cale's is terrific.

Why name the album Old Ideas? What does that mean to you?
It was the old ideas, old – you might even say unresolved – ideas that are wracking around in my brain, and the brain of the culture.

rollingstone


By the way, he and Chuck Berry were the first two recipients of PEN New England's Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award on Sunday:

(...)
Given the intent of the Song Lyrics award, the event was peppered with references to great writers. In an email read by organizer Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock & roll" and Cohen "the Kafka of the blues." Cohen, accepting his award, compared Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" to Walt Whitman's joyful noise – his "barbaric yawp."

"If Beethoven hadn't rolled over," he said, "there'd be no room for any of us."

After quoting key lines from Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" – "Like a bird on the wire/ Like a drunk in a midnight choir/ I have tried, in my way, to be free" – the author Rushdie, a former president of PEN American Center, said, "Put simply, if I could write like that, I would."

rollingstone

 

[BaBorrow]

The Civil Wars' cover of "Dance Me to the End of Love" knocks me off my feet every time.

YouTube/TheCivilWars

 

[Bgeltunsd]

I listened to his new album on NPR, will definitely get it!

 

[*ana*]

This picture was posted on his Facebook page today and I just have to share it. He's the best.


facebook/leonardcohen