Leonard Cohen
Brisbane Entertainment Centre 6 November 2010
It's close to forty years since Hughesy's circle of high school acquaintances was rocked by the reappearance of one of our peers who had spent much of the intervening two years in Sydney.
The girl we remembered as a pigtailed pony-lover (that girlie horse fixation personified) was now, we learned, circulating on the edges of the Sydney underground, au fait with a countercultural iconography we could mostly only dream of.
Most of the details of conversations that took place, as far as I can recall, around Christmas 1970 have long since faded, but one comment has well and truly stuck.
This Leonard Cohen they're all raving about down there, she sked. Have you heard him? My God! How depressing! And so boring! But they all love him.
That assessment would have been based on Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs From A Room, which were hardly the most dynamic of performances, being largely in bard of the bedsit mode. That's not to knock the albums, but they were hardly the sort of thing suited to a close to three hour concert setting.
But that was four decades ago, when you couldn't have expected anything much over forty-five minutes in a concert set and prices were well below the current level.
If you're paying over $200, you want something more than a bare forty-five to sixty minutes.
Of course, at that stage Cohen was a relatively young man in his mid-thirties. No spring chicken, but an established literary figure who'd been able to add an extra string to his bow and could, from all accounts, eke out a comfortable existence following his muse. That muse took him into more varied musical territory as the years passed, and revealed a hitherto well-concealed sense of humour, but I never really saw Cohen as a mass market superstar.
Financial issues pushed Cohen back onto the road in 2008 after a fifteen year hiatus, and Saturday night's show at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre marked the opening of a twenty day, nine concert Australian tour.
Before the forced resumption of touring activity two and a half years ago, an extensive period of intensive rehearsals produced a set list that doesn't vary much from night to night, and I'd set off for the show armed with what was more than likely going to be almost exactly what lay in store. It was a weird feeling.
While there are plenty of shows out there where you can be pretty sure what you're going to be getting, many of them operate in the territory where high-tech spectacle interfaces with musical content and the guitar solo in the third encore needs to be exactly thirty-eight seconds long because that's where some stunning visual effect cuts in...
As a rule I tend to prefer acts that mix it up a little, but here we were, fully expecting a show that would start with Dance Me To The End of Love and follow the same set-list as recent shows. At least you're not going to have the feeling that you went on the wrong night, because the following night the audience were treated to something that was last played back in....
That's the sort of territory you might get with an Elvis Costello show ("In Canberra he played I Throw My Toys Around," webmaster JohnE informed me a little over twelve months ago before the Brisbane concert, referring to a little-known number Elvis contributed to the soundtrack of the Rugrats movie) but you know Leonard doesn't operate in that sort of environment so you don't expect it.
You can, on the other hand, expect an immaculately paced two and a half hour excursion through some of Leonard's greatest hits with a couple of works in progress thrown into the mix. More particularly, you can expect a band that's tighter than just about anything operating on the standard rock circuit. After they've been playing this for the best part of three years, so you'd be disappointed if they weren't.
More particularly, given the old anecdote about the conversation between Dylan and Cohen where they're praising each other's work and Dylan confesses to having knocked off something like Masters of War in ten minutes while Cohen informs Bob that Hallelujah took a couple of years, you're getting a show that's close to immaculately crafted, honed and buffed to as close to perfection as they're going to get on the night.
That's, arguably, the territory Cohen's always worked as far as writing goes, and if you're taking a six piece band, three backing singers and associated entourage on the road expecting to turn a large enough profit to fund Mr Cohen's delayed retirement it should come as no surprise to find the same principles applied to live performance.
That's not to suggest you're getting a perfect replica of the original recorded version. From the opening salvo of Dance Me To The End Of Love and The Future, not quite rocking them in the aisles, but hardly Bedsit Bard territory either, there were frequent instrumental asides that served the simultaneous purposes of giving the elderly star of the show a breather and adding a touch of light and shade to proceedings.
Two up tempo numbers means that you're probably looking to drop it back, so there's Bird On The Wire as an interlude before Everybody Knows, Who By Fire (with a stunning instrumental introduction from guitarist Javier Mas) and a couple of works in progress in the form of The Darkness and Born In Chains. Five fairly obvious selections from the back catalogue, two newies, then wrap up the first set with Chelsea Hotel #2, Waiting For The Miracle and a slight show-stopper in Anthem to wind up the first half.
Now I may be wrong, and I haven't been back to the Live in London DVD or the NPR podcast of the concert at New York's Beacon Theatre to make comparisons, but there's a perfect example of the care and attention to detail that's gone into the Cohen show in the end of the first set band introductions.
As Cohen moves the spotlight from member to member you get the distinct impression that what he's saying has been carefully scripted, and it's more than likely much the same from night to night. But it works, and it's comfortably removed from the ladeez'n'gennelmen give it up for Fred Nurk on the bass sort of thing that seems to be more or less de rigeur show biz a la mode.
At the same time, it seems, there's some variation.
The second set opened, as anticipated, with Tower Of Song, with Cohen on the ancient keyboard and the three backing vocalists, but sans the da doo dum dum “I've discovered the secret of life” rap that featured in London and at the Beacon.
From there, the set-list, as anticipated, ran through Suzanne, Avalanche, Sisters Of Mercy, The Gypsy's Wife and The Partisan before the four song finale. Hallelujah, as expected, soared, I'm Your Man was delivered with a wryness that underlined the humour that lurks under Cohen's work and A Thousand Kisses Deep came as a spoken poem, totally without instrumentation, a change of pace before the swirling Take This Waltz closed out the main set.
Mileages vary when it comes to the whole encore routine, but even after two plus hours of on stage time, you know there's more to come, and there's always the question of how you conclude proceedings. You know, for a start, that the crowd's going to be on their feet applauding until the artist does something to wind things up.
First up, Cohen and band were back for So Long, Marianne and Famous Blue Raincoat and wound things up in uptempo mode with a surging First We Take Manhattan, where things could have come to a halt. If something intervened - a strict curfew with substantial penalties for example - a "Sorry, but we really have to go" would probably have sent the punters away reasonably happy.
The crowd, predictably, were on their feet again, and there's that wry sense of humour coming into play when they were back for I Tried To Leave You and while he's been known to throw in Ain't No Cure For Love in after Closing Time, that number makes an almost perfect sorry but that's all folks.
So, how do you sum up proceedings? Simple. Here's the recipe.
Take a seventy-six year old figure of moderately iconic status, and back him up with an outstanding aggregation of musicians, including the stunningly good Javier Mas on assorted guitar-related items and the extroverted Dino Soldo on various wind instruments.
Throw in angelic backing vocals from Sharon Robinson and the sublime Webb sisters (Leonard's tag, and one with which you can't help but concur).
Put those players in front of an excellent rhythm section (long term MD Roscoe Beck on bass and Rafael Bernado Gayol on drums).
Add keyboards from Neil Larsen for light and shade. That's a rather good starting point.
Mix the whole into a finely tuned, polished and buffed presentation that might not vary too much from night to night but ensures that while there might be shows that aren't quite stellar (you can't, after all, be right up there every night of a lengthy tour) you're never going to leave the audience feeling that you've failed to deliver.
And if that formula gives the possibility that Leonard Cohen graces these shores with his presence in a couple of years' time (a big if, but if it's going to happen you'd think this is the formula that'd do it) that's fine with me.
I'll definitely be back if Leonard is.
And, from db.etree.org, the setlist:
Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, Australia
Set I
Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
Who By Fire
The Darkness
Born In Chains
Chelsea Hotel #2
Waiting For The Miracle
Anthem
Set II
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Avalanche
Sisters Of Mercy
The Gypsy's Wife
The Partisan
Hallelujah
I'm Your Man
A Thousand Kisses Deep
Take This Waltz
Set III
So Long, Marianne
Famous Blue Raincoat
First We Take Manhattan
I Tried To Leave You
Closing Time
Leonard Cohen - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboard.
Roscoe Beck - Bass, Double Bass, Background Vocals
Neil Larsen - Keyboards, Hammond B3, Accordion
Bob Metzger - Guitar, Steel Guitar, Background Vocals
Javier Mas - Bandurria, Laud, Archilaud
Rafael Bernardo Gayol - Drums, Percussion
Dino Soldo - Keyboard, Saxophone, Wind Instruments, Dobro, Background Vocals
Sharon Robinson - Vocals, Shaker
Hattie Webb - Vocals, Harp
Charley Webb - Vocals, Guitar