Leonard Cohen-Live In London

This is a review of a show that has already been given the once over here at TLOBF towers. Except I wasn’t actually at the show, didn’t have the anticipation of seeing a long time hero perform in front of my very eyes, the chance to share the communal excitement and buzz, or join in the cheer as the crowd welcomed everyone’s favourite dapper Canadian ex Zen Buddhist Monk to the stage, grinning like a cheshire cat. Despite all this as I slipped the DVD into the machine, I still had a sense of nervous excitement.As Catriona pointed out in her review, the O2 shows, and subsequent performances were a result of the greed of Leonard Cohen’s former manager, who embezzled a great deal of Cohen’s funds while he was esconsed in his Zen retreat at the brilliantly named Mount Baldy Zen Centre. Early in the show, Cohen apologises for any financial or geographical inconvenience people may have gone through to be at the show, and smiles wryly, aware that to be playing the cavernous o2 at the age of 74 probably wasn’t high on his list of retirement plans. Yet Cohen literally gallops on stage, beaming at the enraptured audience, doffing his neat fedora and proceeds to deliver his cutting lyrics of love, loss and loathing, dancing and shuffling away. With the DVD’s ability to take you right into the action, Cohen, occasionally looks frail, yet, if he really does “ache in the places where I used to play” ('Tower of Song'), he conceals it well. Unlike many who attempt comebacks in their twilight years, Cohen’s voice still rings true, all be it slightly more grizzled than it once was. Often choosing to intone rather than sing in places, as on ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’, his lyrics cut through as is beffiting for one of his, or any generations finest lyracists. Although he had the crowd in his pocket from the moment he stepped foot on the stage, Cohen’s well rehearsed wit serves to win the crowds love all the more, informing them that the last time he played London, he was nothing but a “60 year old kid with a crazy dream.” With charm to spare, Cohen is everything you could hope for: a distinguished elder statesmen.However, for the fan of earlier, more minimal Cohen material; the real slinking, sexy and mysterious stuff, at once lustfull and threatening, ‘Live In London’ may come as something of a disapointment. As Cohen himself says, the show is “just the other side of intimacy”. The close up on DVD shows Cohen seem slightly sheepish as he says this, and one can’t help but feel that a certain something is lost due to the sheer size of the O2. And then there is the band. Cohen namechecks each of them several times during the show, and without doubt they are hugely proficient and slick. However, there in lies the problem. While demonstrating technical virtuosity at times the playing feels a little soulless. The main culprit for this is wind and harmonica player Dino Soldo, whose performance on the ‘instrument of wind’ (a sort of electronic saxaphone/clarinet contraption) is a blight throughout; if smugness had a sound, it would surely be the Akai electric wind, if it had a vision, it would be the solo during ‘I’m Your Man’. Elsewhere, the curse of the ‘flaring’ of session musicians also mars an otherwise sultry ‘Ain’t No Cure For Love’, while the arrangement of ‘Who By The Fire’ is laden with hammond organ and spanish guitar. While there is no doubting the ability of the Webb sisters, or of the arranger Rocoe Beck, they seem to have been reluctant to allow Cohen’s more minimal work to stand for itself, or to have musicians sit out songs, the end result being to give a little to much warmth where before there was a brittle intimacy. An over reliance on the hammond organ veres into ‘lounge version’ territoty at times, particularly on the country swing of ‘So Long, Marrianne’. It is noticable that the shows highlights come when Cohen’s straps on the guitar himself, and the arrangements loose a little of their bombast, as on ‘Sisters of Mercy’ and ‘Suzanne’.Leonard Cohen is a consumate professional, a true musical legend and is well within his rights to arrange his songs, one can’t help but miss the the stark beauty and simplicity of the recorded versions, stripped of the bells, whistles and hammond organs here. As a document of a happy memory or experience, I would imagine Live In London will be hard to beat. However, as a release in its own right the over the top arrangements make it less essential than the intimate Live Songs (1973) or Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 (2001). 73%Leonard Cohen on MySpace