The smoothest pensioner
in pop glides onto the stage and strikes a stance, legs apart, fedora
tilted forward to hide his weathered, expressive face.
So begins the
culmination of a lifetime's dream for me – to see the great man in
person, to hear him perform songs that have haunted, sobered and uplifted me since I was old enough to hear them.
Part lecherous uncle,
part evangelical preacher, the body may have aged but the wit, the
pathos and the soul are as fresh as ever.
Watching him sink to
his knees then shimmy around the stage like a fading Fred Astaire,
we're captivated - just as surely as his infamous worm on a hook.
He solemnly addresses
the crowd saying he knows that it's been a while as he didn't want to impose but then who knows when
we'll meet again. A fleeting acknowledgement that, at his advanced
age, this could well be his swan song tour - but boy what a swan
song.
Seamlessly moving from
tried and tested favourites such as Bird on a Wire, Suzanne and So
Long Marianne to his later acerbic hits such as Darkness, Cohen has
the audience in the palm of his hand from the get go.
At 79 while others are
using a bus pass and reminiscing about lovers long gone, frisky ole
Len still has a definite twinkle in his eye.
His cock of the walk
soft shoe shuffle off stage left makes your heart throb far far more than an elderly
man really should be able to manage.
His voice has aged,
less like a fine wine and more like velvet covered gravel swirled in
a vat of bourbon and then coated in ground glass. So low it reverberates in your feet, your heart and other places.
Sometimes a singer,
sometimes a growling poet, crooning and seductive, plaintive and broken but
always fascinating, riveting, mesmerising.
In the sarcastic words
of Len himself “I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born
with the gift of a golden voice.”
A voice and a talent
that the world rarely sees, and which will, all too belately, be
celebrated and lauded when it finally moves to the tower down the
track.
Part way through the
show he muses that next year - when he turns 80 - he's decided to take
up smoking again and waxes lyrical about the nurse in sweet little
white shoes that he'll get to offer him up a cigarette on a silver
tray, whilst massaging the bubbles from his IV tube.
Musings on growing old disgracefully aside, other highlights of the
show included a bitter sweet lament to his thieving former manager Kelley Lynch to
whom he ruefully says “we were both guilty.”
There's a stunningly
simple version of Alexandria Leaving sung solo by Sharon Robinson and
a barnstorming version of First We Take Manhattan, complete with
flashing backlights - the closest thing you'll get to upbeat with Cohen.
A subdued version of Hallelujah changes the mood again, with white light strafing the audience as the angelic harmonies of backing singers Charley and Hattie Webb interweave with his rumbling take on love and loss.
He's a whirlwind one minute and an oasis of still contemplation the next. Limitless in his energy and humility, he's a one-man
masterclass in showing them how it's done.
There's no backing
dancers, costume changes, lasers or pyrotechnics needed, this man is pure
entertainment, a 79 years young craftsman who calls himself “a
lazy bastard in a suit”.
And what a suit,
looking dapper and slick as ever Cohen electrifies the stage with his
presence whether he's dropping to the floor to tell us a man never
got a woman back by begging on his knees, to standing, hat in hand
like a mourner in New Orleans, as the organ virtuoso Neil Larsen
plays gospel.
I for one hope that he
has many many more years left to create albums more of his introspective,
intimate, sweeping, desolate and glorious work.
With all the drive,
energy, talent and sardonic wit that he has at his disposal, when
that glorious, gravelly voice finally calls closing time, the world
will be a colder, darker and far less humorous place without him.
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was
before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am
spoken for
If it be your will
Leonard Cohen.
