Mojo - The Music Magazine

Leonard Cohen
O2 Arena, London
Thursday, July 17

I figured it out last night. Leonard Cohen is God. No, I don’t mean that in the way Clapton was God or Thom Yorke is God - I’m not trying to emphasise the genius of the man or declare myself the ultimate fan – I mean that as I sat watching him on stage in London’s superhangar of air-conditioned entertainment, this 73 year old man, dressed in a double-breasted tailored Italian suit, sporting a dapper borsalino fedora, and wryly intoning the apocalyptic checklist lyrics of Everybody Knows – “Everybody knows that the Plague is coming/Everybody knows that it's moving fast/Everybody knows that the naked man and woman/Are just a shining artifact of the past” – I got it. Forget the '60s love songs like Suzanne and So Long Marianne, the real genius of Leonard Cohen was in his ability to dryly itemise the miseries of our modern end-of-days world and - like Milton’s wearied God, come back to earth to admit, yes, he’s screwed up - make us see the beauty anyway, pointing out that, as he sings on 1994’s Anthem, “There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in”. Plus, like God, Cohen has a sense of humour. “It’s good to be back in your country,” he said by way of introduction, in that voice of his, all conspiratorial warmth and grave intimacy, “I was last here 14 years ago… 60 years old… just a kid with a crazy dream.”

Pretty much everyone in the O2 last night knew the real reason Cohen was there. In 2005 the singer alleged that his former manager, Kelley Lynch, siphoned off $5 million from his retirement fund leaving only $150,000. Despite being awarded $9 million in a civil suit Lynch failed to cough up. We were there to resurrect Leonard Cohen’s retirement fund and happy to do so. The tale somehow added weight to the litany of mordant visions that made up the majority of Cohen’s songs yet despite such blatant financial imperatives, the mood in the O2 was surprisingly cozy and intimate. Repeatedly thanking the audience for their applause and ovations (“You’ve very kind”) and forever introducing and praising the members of his mafiosi jazz band (“Bob Metzger on the guitar” etc), Cohen has taken to old age well. He moved with a regal grace and hushed politeness, smiled with child-like joy, and sang with a more battered baritone far better suited to such black classics as Who By Fire’s roll-call of death (“Who by brave assent/who by accident”), lending a grand, omniscient power to Cohen’s most profound moments, like that point in There Ain’t No Cure For Love where Lenny walks into an empty church and “the sweetest voice I ever heard, whispered to my soul/I don't need to be forgiven for loving you so much”.

Whatever he was searching for at that Buddhist retreat, Leonard Cohen at 73 seems to occupy a space that not even the likes of Dylan has access to, an eyrie of profound enlightenment whereby he’s no longer just singing these songs about himself but appears to be speaking for, you know, humanity as a whole, just like the Big Guy himself. And if you were in any doubt of Leonard Cohen’s ability to meld the human and the spiritual, the personal and the deific, then last night’s astonishing redemptive performance of Hallelujah would have been the convincer. Cohen reclaimed the song from the sentimental schlock of yer Buckleys, Shreks and O.C’s and restated it as a grand and tragic affirmation of the pain of our existence, but still showing us the cracks in the world, simultaneously giving us the awful insight and letting the light shine through.

So, that was it all settled then; Cohen as God. Then, after three hours, one interval and three encores, with a thoroughly terrifying performance of his megalomaniac battle-plan First We Take Manhattan, you realize that Cohen has got a pretty good line on the Devil too. Then he goes and ends with that Old Testament benediction “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” You see, I’m on to something here!

Leonard Cohen returns to the O2 on November 13.

He is coming!

The Setlist

Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain’t No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Anthem
[Interval]
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I’m Your Man
Take This Waltz

Heart With No Companion
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Closing Time