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Leonard Cohen: Live At The Isle of Wight 1970

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Oct 14, 2009
Category: Rock

This is not a review of a legendary concert appearance by Leonard Cohen.

It’s a meditation on personal power.
 
Essentially, I’m trying to figure out here what happens below the surface of your life so you can access your power for career advancement, personal gain and, not least, the good of the world.
 
But to do that, I have to tell you a Leonard Cohen story and urge you to watch a 64-minute documentary.
 
Here’s the story.
 
In l967, 32-year-old Leonard Cohen — a novelist and poet who was just starting out as a singer/songwriter — walked onstage at Carnegie Hall, looked out at the audience, and started shaking. “I can’t do this,” he said, and left the stage. In the wings, Judy Collins took his hand, led him in front of the audience again and sang “Suzanne” with him.
 
In 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen agreed to perform at England’s Isle of Wight music festival. It was not a happy event. Angered that there was a wall to keep out those who hadn’t paid, some of the young festivalgoers rebelled. They tore down fences. They crashed the gates. There were fires and fights. There was garbage.
 
600,000 people. Living outside. For almost five days.
 
At 2 in the morning of the fifth and final day, Leonard Cohen was awakened and asked to hurry onstage. There was no piano, no organ. Cohen, in his pajamas, insisted on both. And then he went back to his trailer to get dressed.
 
At 4 in the morning, Cohen took the stage. He looked into the darkness and, gently, slowly, told a story of going to the circus as a kid and liking only the moment when the audience lit matches in the darkness. He asked the crowd to light matches, and he waited while they did, and then he sang “Bird on a Wire.”
 
And he owned that crowd. He held 600,000 souls in the palm of his hand, and he brought them his brave, sad songs, and they listened to him as if he were a prophet.
 

 
This amazing footage is the start of the 64-minute concert DVD that is half of the package, Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970. (The other half is a CD of his performance there. If you are a Cohen fan, it’s of minor interest; if you’re new to Cohen, avoid it completely, as it’s less than technically perfect.)
 
Here’s my question: On that stage, Leonard Cohen was in a state of calm beyond calm. What occurred in those three years to give him that outrageous certainty in himself? How did the transformation occur?
 
And then, to make it personal, can I do that? Can you?
 
I can only hazard a guess here. (If you’ve got a clue, feel free to let me know; I’d very much appreciate the enlightenment, and others may too.) But it strikes me that, at Carnegie Hall, Cohen stuck a toe in the water of live performance. And he saw that it didn’t kill him, that it pleased him and raised him up, bringing him closer to the self he imagined. And he followed it with another step, and another, until 600,000 people were no big deal.
 
That’s a very crude formulation. It doesn’t deal at all with doubts and fears, with backsliding; it makes Cohen into a mythic figure, a terminator, resolutely moving forward. I doubt it happened that smoothly for him. I suspect there was a lot of determination involved, and picking himself up when he faltered. But I think the steadiness of the effort served him well — after a while, he was in a new place, and when he looked back, he didn’t recognize his old, fearful self.
 
It’s what Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird. Her brother had to write a school report about birds. The kid couldn’t figure out a way to do it. But their father did. “Bird by bird, buddy,” he said.
 
You want to see how far you can get if you keep at it? Look at Leonard Cohen Live in London, captured last year, when Cohen was 75. Or just go to the music. What you get is the same thing again and again — Cohen pays total attention, he’s completely in the moment, and soon you are. He tunes you, just as he tuned the 600,000 in 1970s.
 
One of the mottos of the Texas Rangers is this: “Little man whip a big man every time if the little man’s in the right and keeps on coming.” I have trouble believing that; the streets of history are littered with the corpses of little men who didn’t grasp how cruel the powerful can be. But I think Cohen believes it, and I think that simple belief made the difference. And in watching his remarkable 1970 performance, I do rediscover my courage.