Leonard Cohen is 74 years old and can still put on a concert in excess of three hours, and be skipping around the stage at its conclusion. His collaborator and guardian angel, Sharon Robinson, has saved him from his embezzlement foibles of a few years ago, and he seems energized to a level that even exceeds the late 1980s with Jennifer Warnes.
Westword did a fine review of the concert which you can see here. Management was being pretty tight about recording videos, so I only did a few covertly, such as "Who By Fire" above, and "Everybody Knows" here. (I also used a couple stills from photographer Soren McCarty.) One thing the Westword reviewer didn't mention is that Cohen sticks to a pretty firm setlist, understandable given the intense orchestration and engineering of the show. The Denver show was very similar to the "Live in London" CD and DVD released earlier this year. Nevertheless, there were some surprises, including "Famous Blue Raincoat," which I didn't get a chance to record; and "Chelsea Hotel #2," which I grabbed a slice of below.
Of course, no Cohen concert would be complete without "Hallelujah," and here's an excerpt. Other crowd pleasers were "Anthem," "Democracy," "Suzanne," "Sisters of Mercy," etc. The only favorite of mine that he didn't play was "Avalanche," so I'm leaving you with a wonderful interpretation from last year, that I found on good ol' YouTube.
5 comments:
A beautiful place for a concert. And I don't think you have mosquitoes in CO.
What an amazing entertainer, to go that long at that age. Clearly it fills him up too.
And to think I only discovered this guy last year.
Mosquitoes? I think I remember them. (Abby went to her cousin's graduation in Indiana last June, and said, "You mean it's like this all the time? Why do people live in the Midwest?" But then she saw fireflies for the first time.)
I started listening to Cohen at about age 9 or so, but "Songs of Love and Hate" came out in 1971 and I was obsessed for years. I didn't think that particular album was all that popular, but at the show last night, one of the T-shirts was the cover of Love and Hate. But at $35 a pop, I wasn't going to get nostalgic.
Hallelujah (and thanks), that was wonderful!
My ex employer loved Cohen! I can't believe that he was married to Rebecca DeMornay!
I TOTALLY forgot about the DeMornay connection.
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