Leonard Cohen - Live At The Isle of Wight (CD/DVD)
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Leonard CohenBrand: Sony
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2009-10-20
Music Label: Sony Legacy
Soundtracks:
- Introduction
- Bird On The Wire
- Intro to So Long, Marianne
- So Long, Marianne
- Intro: "Let's renew ourselves now..."
- You Know Who I Am
- Intro to Poems
- Lady Midnight
- They Locked Up A Man (poem)/A Person Who Eats Meat/Intro
- One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong
- The Stranger Song
- Tonight Will Be Fine
- Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
- Diamonds In The Mine
- Suzanne
- Sing Another Song, Boys
- The Partisan
Free Music Notes for Live At The Isle of Wight (CD/DVD)
Free Music Review: throwing us a bone after nearly 40 years...
Hit: 5 Stars
This came with a CD and a DVD. I love Leonard Cohen so much, I didn't know how to take a new artifact from his musical work that included both a CD and a DVD. Should I listen to him first, or should I watch him? Out of necessity, I listened to him first - it was probably the right thing to do. All but three of the songs he played at this festival are from his first two albums, and as a total aspect it was just like listening to Leonard Cohen's greatest hits as I remember it, with wonderful new inter-song poetry as we have heard on other, later Leonard Cohen live pieces. It was not the full-on live stage concert spectacle, it was Leonard Cohen as he was in 1970, and people in those days understood him and what he was saying, he was one of them. It's amazing how we wander on and wander apart, and how people like Leonard Cohen only matter at certain, brief moments in history. Cohen has 11 studio albums and five live releases (of which I have three). This is the oldest one, although "Live Songs" has material that reaches back to 1970 as well; "Field Commander Cohen", from 1979, is a polished affair of polite applause, with a crack band and a groovy bass player (not to mention the violin, oud and clainet), but it is also a bit too speedy for the Cohen groove. I have not yet heard "Cohen Live" (recorded in 1988 and 1993) or "Live in London" (recorded in 2008).
The CD was recorded on August 30th, 1970 and is nearly 80 minutes long and contains 14 songs (with five sections of pre-song banter, all in the first half of the concert, that last from 16 seconds to nearly three minutes). It was the last day of the five day long festival, with the final sets by Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix playing at midnight, and Cohen following Hendrix (he was the second-last artist to perform at the festival, which was closed by Richie Havens, who played "Here Comes The Sun" as the first rays of dawn hit). It is presented "warts and all", with a few incidents of onstage voltage zaps heard as people fiddle with equipment, most notable in Suzanne, one of Cohen's mellowest songs (not to mention his most famous).
The recording starts off with Cohen's voice, "Are you guys ready? Is everybody ready?" Then the announcer comes on the PA saying "Our next artist is a novelist, a poet, an author, a singer and an album recorder. He's been trying to get here since 10:30 yesterday morning... won't you welcome Leonard Cohen and his Army." Like all Cohen live recordings, there is plenty of cryptic between-song banter, and here Cohen starts off with a story of the circus and an appeal to the audience to hold up matches so that he could see them "sparkle like fireflies, each of you at your different heights," he sounds elated, but he also notes "a lot of people without matches" (halfway through the concert again, he jibes "oh, we're sorely in need for matches"). He then launches into a shambolic impromptu song "Oh it's good to be here in front of 300,000 peopleeeee", then a very slow, sombre version of "Bird On A Wire," that is mostly him and his guitar, but also has some bass, a bit of keyboard, and some background singers.
For the most part, the songs sound like they're Cohen playing alone, even though he has two backup singers, a bassist and three seated guitarists up onstage with him (no drummer - Cohen's not about percussion). The sound quality of the recording is excellent, and the production is top notch - the songs, except where Cohen improvises, sound like they did on the albums, and they are superb to listen to. "So Long Marianne", "You Know Who I Am", "Lady Midnight", "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong", "The Stranger Song", "Tonight Will Be Fine", "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", "Diamonds In The Mine", "Suzanne", "Sing Another Song, Boys", "The Partisan", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and one of my favourites, "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," to end the evening.
The intro to "You Know Who I Am" has a short impromptu ditty called "Let's Renew Ourselves Now" that might be considered a unique new Leonard Cohen song - it is about 50 seconds long and starts with some Spanish guitar plucking, then the lyrics "I know it has been cold, and I know it has been damp/I know you've been sitting all night long"; the tempo of the song then picks up, and he says "Let's renew ourselves now, let's renew ourselves now, let's renew ourselves now," then going directly into "You Know Who I Am." Most of these songs came from his first two albums, "Songs of Leonard Cohen" and "Songs From A Room"; the three from his not-yet-released album of 1971, "Songs of Love And Hate", are "Diamonds In The Mine", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Sing Another Song, Boys" - in fact, the version of "Sing Another Song, Boys" on that album was recorded at this concert, so this is technically the second time it appears on a Leonard Cohen album (oddly enough, the tracking puts the famous "Let's sing another song boys, this one has grown old and bit-ter" intro at the end of the preceding track, "Suzanne"; this is a mistake, as it is clearly an important part of the song). The song got resounding applause, something which is cut off of the version on "Songs of Love and Hate", which fades it out quickly after his last "la-la-la-la-la-la-LA-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaaaaaaaw".
One of the highlights of the concert comes before "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong - one of his cornier songs, which he says he wrote in a peeling room in the Chelsea Hotel as he was coming off amphetamines and was pursuing a blonde lady whom he met in a Nazi poster, the courtship of which he describes even more cryptically - when he recites some poems: "As for the political situation: They locked up a man who wanted to rule the world/ The fools, they locked up the wrong man," and "A man who eats meat wants to get his teeth into something/ A man who does not eat meat wants to get his teeth into something else/ If these thoughts interest you even for a moment you are lost." He gets heckled once, to which he replies "Are you calling me a fascist pig again?"
Besides a bit of organ and backing from the two female singers, the concert is relatively restrained - "The Stranger Song" seems to be just Cohen and his guitar - until the second bar of "Tonight Will Be Fine", more than halfway through the concert, when The Army really kicks out the jams and all the members saw away, including the banjo player - Cohen just wails and wails !! (Incidentally, this recording of "Tonight Will Be Fine" also appears on "Leonard Cohen Live", which contains bits of his 1970 and 1972 live performances.) It is followed by a mellow version of "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye", but then comes an impromptu intro "They gave me some money for my sad and famous song/ They said `the crowd is waiting, hurry up or they'll be gone'/ But I could not change my style, and I guess I never will/ So I sing this song for the poison snakes on Devastation Hill/ And there are no letters in the mailbox...", which goes into a blistering version of "Diamonds In The Mine," a song that the audience would not have heard until then. It is very similar to the album version, although I suppose a keen ear will hear different lyrics.
Another interesting moment is when, just as he's playing the guitar into to "The Partisan", he says "I'd like to dedicate this song to "Joan Baez and the work she's doing." The second-last song is "Famous Blue Raincoat," another song that the audience wouldn't have heard yet, which Cohen introduces with the words "It's not that I want to be coy standing out here, you know, but I know that it's late and... I don't know, maybe this is good music to make love to. This song was written in the East Side, the east end of New York; It's four in the morning..."
For his last song, he says "(to the audience) my guitar has been heisted... (to the band) yeah, the song about Nancy, that's a good idea. (to the audience again) I want to sing this song for Nancy; it was in 1961, she went into the bathroom and blew her head off with her brother's shotgun. And, in those days there was not this kind of horizontal support, and she was right where all of you are, but there was no one around - to light their matches." He starts off with his solo voice and guitar, the bass comes in, then the voices drift in very subtly, some keyboard sounds, "Nancy wore green stockings, and she slept with everyone," background vocals come in stronger, "we told her she was beautiful, we told her she was free/ But none of us would meet her in the House of Mystery, the House of Mystery..." And that's it.
The DVD is 64 minutes long and was produced and directed by Murray Lerner, who made his name filming the Newport Folk Festival form 1963-1965, and the three days of the Isle of Wight (with iconic full-length concerts from The Who and Jimi Hendrix).
If you want to get the concert in its chronological sequence, you really need to listen to the CD, because the DVD shatters it and scatters it all around (which makes it even the more interesting to get the two packaged side-by-side). The DVD starts off with a snippet of "Diamonds In The Mine", the concert's most engaging (and engaged) piece, before moving into grandiose factoids of the concert, presented in a slideshow format, as well as some interviews with kids at the shot: "It's like going to Bethlehem, where they go to see the baby Jesus, [but] we go to see Leonard Cohen" (and somebody blurts in "Pink Floyd"). But, of course, you always wonder about duplicity from the filmmakers, especially with their memories addled by nearly 40 years of living - they say that he sang "It's four in the morning, the end of September" at four in the morning at the end of August, but was it four in the morning? Were the audience shots of hippies captured in rapture even filmed during Leonard Cohen's spot, or were they blissing out to Hendrix? I guess we'll never know.
The DVD has several interesting interviews. One of them is with Bob Johnston, a Southerner who ended up producing three Leonard Cohen albums (although only one at the time of the concert - "Songs From A Room", Cohen's second release; he also produced the third and the fourth, "Songs Of Love And Hate" of 1972 and "Live Songs", from 1973), but who also produced six Bob Dylan releases and seven Johnny Cash releases, all from the 1965-1971 - busy guy. He talks about how he was shanghaied into being a keyboardist for the release, but also how the show went down, giving the quote "I think Leonard Cohen is the best performer in the world, he bought poetry into music" (hey - is that a dig at Bob Dylan?). Kris Kristofferson, who battled the militant and unforgiving audience at the show, talks about how Cohen commanded the stage throughout, and there are a few scenes to prove it of Kris' nervous performance - gosh, he looked young without a beard in 1970. Joan Baez talks about the era, and Judy Collins gushes about Leonard and "Suzanne", a song that she sorta made famous, spouting "God bless Leonard Cohen and his muse." This bit, and to some extent Baez's bit, are shoved into the edit, as they really don't have a lot to add to the concert itself.
For the most part, the concert footage is on Leonard Cohen's face, with the occasional wander to the angelic backup singers (the only three people besides Cohen, incidentally, who stand throughout the show), with brief sections where you see the band and the whole stage (they look really bored while Cohen does "The Stranger Song" totally solo... some Army) - and a few shots where you see the band from behind, with the amps marked WHO displayed prominently. While it's not interesting to constantly watch Cohen's face as he sings his songs, it is interesting to see and hear him do the hand whistle of "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong", which I've heard a billion times but never knew it was done by Cohen himself just blowing through his hand.
Happily, "Tonight Will Be Fine" is shown in its entirety, including the part where Charlie Daniels stands up and plays the fiddle next to him, as is the "They've surrounded the island; one of these days we're going to have this land for our own," to which there is tremendous (canned?) applause. But this how it appears on the album, so... Appearing in its entirety is also the illustrious "Sing Another Song Boys", which showed up in its entirety on his next studio album "Songs Of Love And Hate", although the wigged out "Diamonds In The Mine" is not on the DVD for some reason (except for a brief excerpt of the beginning bit at the start of the DVD).
Cohen dedicates "The Partisan" to Joan Baez, and here we get a chance to see images from her press conference at the time, a bit of her live show, a snapshot of Jimi Hendrix's set as viewed from the audience (to avoid copyright hassles?), and ultimately the 2009 interview with the lady herself.
Just a bit of deception - the last song in the movie is "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," and it is presented as if it were an encore; listening to the CD, though, I'm not sure it was.
Live At The Isle of Wight (CD/DVD) Poster
Nearly 40 summers ago on August 31, 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen was awakened at 2 a.m. from a nap in his trailer and brought onstage to perform with his band at the third annual Isle Of Wight music festival. The audience of 600,000 was in a fiery and frenzied mood, after turning the festival into a political arena, trampling the fences, setting fire to structures and equipment - and stoked by the most incendiary performance of Jimi Hendrix's career.As Cohen followed Hendrix's set, onlookers and (fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood sidestage in awe as the Canadian folksinger-songwriter-poet-novelist quietly tamed the crowd. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner (From Mao To Mozart, Festival, Message To Love), perfectly captured Cohen's performance. Likewise, Columbia Records staff A&R producer Teo Macero did a brilliant job of supervising the live audio recording.
This CD/DVD package contains the new, beautiful film documentary by Lerner featuring interviews with fellow festival performers, as well as Cohen's full performance on CD. All tracks are previously unreleased (sans bits of "Suzanne" which were featured in the documentary Message to Love, also by Lerner). Included are live versions of classic songs from the first two Leonard Cohen LPs: "So Long, Marianne," "The Stranger Song," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," "Suzanne," "Bird On The Wire," "You Know Who I Am," and "The Partisan" as well as spoken word and poetry.
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