20.10.2009.

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LEONARD COHEN - Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 (2009)

It was gone two in the morning by the time he finally got on stage after being woken from a nap in his trailer. Out front the mood among the throng – an astonishing 600,000 strong – was a mixture of blissed-out and fired-up after five days of music, ragged sleep and running battles between the organisers and the ‘free festival radicals’ occupying ‘Desolation Row’, the hill overlooking the site. Backstage there were jitters – already that night there had been an onstage fire, a wilful act of arson, during Jimi Hendrix’s slot. Unfazed, Leonard Cohen wandered onstage cool as an English summer. Shaggy, stubbled, tanned, and sporting a tightly belted safari suit (possibly the only time said garment has seemed dashing), he looked more film star than rock icon. At almost 36, he was, Miles Davis aside, the oldest act on a sprawling, stellar bill. Cohen’s subsequent performance was remarkable for its poise, its passion and the way it defused the tension crackling in the air. Before he had even played a note Cohen had seized his moment by reminiscing about his childhood visits to the circus and getting the audience to hold up a lighted match (a gesture yet to descend into cliché) and by singing, ad lib, “It’s good to be here alone in front of 600,000 people”. HERE

TRACKS: 01. Introduction 02. Bird On The Wire 03. Intro to So Long, Marianne 04. So Long, Marianne 05. Intro: Let’s renew ourselves now... 06. You Know Who I Am 07. Intro to Poems 08. Lady Midnight 09. They Locked Up A Man - A Person Who Eats Meat - Intro 10. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong 11. The Stranger Song 12. Tonight Will Be Fine 13. Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye 14. Diamonds In The Mine 15. Suzanne 16. Sing Another Song, Boys 17. The Partisan 18. Famous Blue Raincoat 19. Seems So Long Ago, Nancy