Leonard Cohen's graceful gift
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Leonard Cohen dashed onto the stage, a gray-haired old man in a dark suit, tie and fedora. He spent the next hour immersed in music before he spoke a word to the capacity crowd Monday at Oakland's Paramount Theatre.
He noted that it had been 14 or 15 years since he had last performed. "I was maybe 60 years old," he said. "Just a crazy kid with a dream."
In the 16 years since Leonard Cohen, 74, last appeared in the Bay Area at the medium-size Warfield theater, he has become widely recognized as one of the great songwriters of his generation, and he was greeted by the adoring crowd at the Paramount like the literary lion and musical giant he has always been. People were wiping tears of joy from their eyes at the warm, profound beauty of his songs.
Tickets to the first two concerts sold out almost immediately. A third show has been added for Wednesday, and tickets to the sold-out shows were fetching big bucks on the Internet. Leonard Cohen was not always such a big deal.
His own recordings usually attracted a modest cult following, but since the 1994 recording of Cohen's "Hallelujah" by the late Jeff Buckley, he seems to have achieved an elevated status - subject of tribute albums, documentary movies, "American Idol" covers and the sort of lavish encomiums and accolades usually reserved for the dead or dying.
At the Paramount, he looked to be in excellent health. Cohen was a humble, generous host whose bass voice glowed with golden tones when he dropped into his bottom register, whose best songs were as good as songs get, whose wit was exceeded only by his grace and dignity. He laces wry ripostes and puntastic wordplay into lyrics cut like jewelry, all delivered with laconic ease and mulish sure-footedness.
Cohen is not an entertainer. He wouldn't be returning to the stage at this point in his life if his ex-manager hadn't stolen his life savings. He is a Buddhist monk who sings and likes to stitch little gags into his songs. The crowd waited expectantly for key lines - for instance, "We are ugly but we have the music" from "Chelsea Hotel," the song he wrote about his one-night stand with Janis Joplin, a story now part of his legend, common knowledge to the audience - and they exploded with knowing cheers. Cohen, who was once a somewhat esoteric figure on the music scene's peripheries, has ascended into the pop pantheon.
He treated the audience to a luxurious two-hour tour through some of the many high points of his career - from ample selections from his 1988 masterpiece album, "I'm Your Man," to "Suzanne" and "So Long Marianne" from his earliest albums. He dusted off the little-noted "The Gypsy's Wife" and "Who by Fire." The now even more chilling "The Future" has never sounded the same since 9/11. He let the supple, elegant musicianship of his band wash over his songs. Cohen sang quietly, gently, deeply, and he made every word count.
Javier Mas of Barcelona added Mediterranean flavor on bandurria and other exotic stringed instruments. Bassist Roscoe Beck and guitarist Bob Metzger are veteran Cohen accompanists. His sometime songwriting collaborator, Sharon Robinson, was magnificent on her own "Boogie Street" - Cohen watching intently, hat in hand - and she was more than capably flanked in the female background choir by vocalists Hattie and Charley Webb, two charming young British ladies who count gymnastics among their performing skills.
At the heart of all this wonderful music is Cohen's unflappable humanity. The dark humor and irony are layered over a basically reassuring view of life and humankind. Everything's cracked, Cohen tells us; that's how the light gets in.
He may not have wanted to do this in the first place, but he is game and great, and these Leonard Cohen performances - this well-deserved victory lap by this world-champion words and music man - are a precious gift to all who see them.
(back to me, on a personal note ~ I've been playing my "Essential
Leonard Cohen" whenever possible and the words mean even
more to me now. What a performance, what a night. Thanks, Jen!)
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