"There is a crack in everything…"
May 10th, 2009
“…That’s how the light gets in.”
-Leonard Cohen
-Leonard Cohen
If you come here just to see photos of naked women or just because you are into photography you might want to just stop reading now. This post has nothing, and everything, to do with those subjects.
I haven’t been posting much because I’ve just been very, very busy. But I took time to do something very important last night. Leonard Cohen has been my favorite singer/songwriter/poet/philosopher since the 1960s. But somehow I had never managed to see him live in concert. The timing of my life was just wrong for that to have ever happened. So when I learned that he was doing a concert tour for the first time in 15 years I got tickets for the closest performance, in Detroit. It was a good decision.
Leonard Cohen has now bumped Patti Smith down to second place on all time best concerts that I’ve seen. Last night was wonderful. The trip up to Detroit felt like a pilgrimage. The show was a religious experience. I was moved. I am changed.
It was so great to see a master who is in complete command of his lifetime of material present it with power and joy and passion. I couldn’t help but think of comparisons to some other artists who have been with us for many years. Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger come to mind. Both of them can be very disappointing in a live concert. Dylan because he has always pretty much ignored his audiences and Jagger because he is still trying to perform as he did 30 years ago and it just doesn’t work any more.
Nothing like that going on with Leonard Cohen. What came through was a feeling of respect. Respect for his material. Respect for his audience. Respect for all the members of his band and all the others involved in the tour. How many artists have you ever heard include the tour truck driver and all the technical crew and roadies in his on-stage acknowledgements at the close of a concert?
And Cohen’s voice is even more wonderful than ever with his many years of life enriching it with depth and texture. Add to that a band of extremely talented musicians and a surprising level of energy from a man in his mid-70s. They did 3 or 4 encores…I lost count…the concert lasted 3 and a half hours. Standing ovations were the norm. He could have come out and done a dozen songs and walked off and the crowd still would have loved it…but he clearly wanted to give his fans much more than the minimum.
I cried when he performed “Chelsea Hotel” as I realized it has been 40 years since the world lost Janice Joplin.
He said it had been about 15 years since he had stood on a stage like this. “I was sixty. Just a kid with a crazy dream. I took a lot of Prozac since then. I studied the religions and the philosophies. But cheerfulness kept sneaking in.”
And cheerfulness was there last night. I felt that I was seeing a performance by a man who has found happiness. I could be wrong about that, but I know for sure that I went away happy. And I realize that it is a good thing that this was the first Leonard Cohen concert that I’ve seen. It was a perfect concert and confirmed my life-long admiration and respect for this fine artist.
He will be at Radio City Music Hall next weekend, in case my friends in NYC want to try to get tickets…if any are still available. The hall in Detroit was filled to capacity, from what I could see.
And I can’t close this review without mentioning the venue. This was the first time I’d been to the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit. What a wonderful place it is. A beautiful building and a perfect place to see a concert. Even the parking was trouble free. I entered and exited with little delay despite being unfamiliar with the parking garage.
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