Sunday Music Profile #1: Leonard Cohen

A dozen live performances as we introduce a new semi-regular Sunday feature spotlighting a single artist or band.

Taking a break today from the daily menu of items on politics, media, movies, TV, books and a couple of song picks (see yesterday’s offering, for example), but announcing: We may devote most Sundays going forward—if popular!—to musical tributes to some of my favorites. Today we open with the late great L. Cohen. Can I hear a “Hallelujah”? No, not here, not at all. In comments or email let me know how you like this Sunday idea—or Leonard. Then maybe subscribe, it’s still free!

Leonard Cohen, mid-1960s to 2015

Here’s an amazing Canadian doc on “young” Leonard when he was known only as a novelist and poet and, in 1965, just about to make his move into music. It’s forty-four minutes long, so you will want to return to it, but it’s one of a

Joni Mitchell and Leonard lived together for awhile, waking up for many a Chelsea (Hotel) morning in NYC. Here is one of her five greatest songs—which is saying a lot—capturing the time she went with Leonard to his parents’ home in Montreal. Yes, Leonard fled his dad’s lucrative clothing business. Joni, a fellow Canadian, may have written another one of her best songs, “A Case of You,” mainly about him….

Some consider another early composition, “Famous Blue Raincoat,” Leonard’s peak, but who can really choose? Apparently the blue raincoat existed. I saw him about the time of this clip in concert at Carnegie Hall and then attended a party afterward where, like moths to a flame, he was engulfed by seemingly half the beautiful artistic women in Manhattan….

Simply one of the greatest live performances by any assemblage, another early song, “Who By Fire,” with Sonny Rollins on sax….

Another classic live, “Joan of Arc,” with longtime backup singer (and friend of this newsletter) Julie Christensen….

After a few years out of favor, and a disastrous outing with gun-toting Phil Spector—and then the rejection by his record company of an album containing a little ditty titled “Hallelujah”—Leonard resurfaced with more than a half-dozen mid-career masterpieces, too numerous to post. But here are three: first R.E.M.’s exciting version of “First We Take Manhattan.” They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within.

Next, the brilliantly poetic, political and acute, “Democracy.” Not the album cut, but here in a jazzy recitation, Beat poet style.

Same period, the prescient “The Future,” here on Letterman.

And then the witty “Closing Time.”

Then Leonard disappeared again, this time to a Zen monastery on Mt. Baldy high above Los Angeles. After his manager stole nearly all of his money, he recorded a fine new album with singer/writer Sharon Robinson, kicking off his late-career renaissance, which led to 3-hour concerts and packed arenas all over the globe (I caught him on two separate tours when he easily filled Radio City Music Hall in NYC). Here, after an introduction by Leonard, Sharon sings his greatest song penned in this period, “Alexanndra Leaving.”

A new documentary, I’m Your Man, also promoted the Cohen comeback, while introducing his rather obscure hymn, “If It Be Your Will,” to many, thanks to this widely-hailed Antony concert performance.

Same doc featured Leonard joined by U2 for “Tower of Song.” Leonard does admit he might still be a few floors below Hank Williams.

We could post another dozen Cohens without missing a beat as we reach our own closing time, but here’s “Anthem” (with his oft-quoted “There is a crack in everything/ that’s how the light gets in”) and then the equally apt “I’m Your Man.” He was mine.

And his final venerated (and 2017 Grammy-nominated) song….

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and now has written and directed his first feature, Atomic Cover-up, which will have its American premiere at a festival this spring.