Cohen Still Going Strong At The Age of 74-Hamilton Spec.com)

[sturgess66]

COHEN Still Going Strong at the Age of 74

May 16, 2009
Graham Rockingham
The Hamilton Spectator
(May 16, 2009)

"I'm what I am, and what I am

Is back on Boogie Street"

- Leonard Cohen, Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen is a most unlikely superstar. At 74, he has a voice that groans more than it sings and a sense of rhythm that makes the slowest dirge seem like a sabre dance.

He has the practised humility of a small-town haberdasher and a slight stoop to his stance that offers description to his age.

Yet the Canadian minstrel poet has never been more popular. His remarkable and seemingly never-ending concert tour started modestly a year ago in Atlantic Canada and snowballed into an international must-see. According to Cohen's website, the tour sold some 700,000 tickets last year in 84 venues, picking up 80 five-star reviews along the way.

First he took Fredericton (May 11, 2008), and next he'll take Berlin (July 2, 2009). Somewhere in between was Manhattan, where, the New York Times wrote, Cohen "basked in the rapture of the crowd, artfully courting adulation."

Within a year, Cohen had turned into some kind of rock 'n' roll Yoda, the pen his light sabre, Zen Buddhism his force.

Last year, Hamilton Place was host to two of those sellout early shows. Despite strong competition from Springsteen and The Who, Cohen's performances were by far the best this city saw in 2008.

His always-tenuous voice was stronger than it had been in years, his band superb and his self-deprecating between-song patter often hilarious.

On Tuesday, Cohen returns to Hamilton a bigger star with top ticket prices ratcheted up as high as $250 apiece. Instead of the comfort of Hamilton Place, he'll be performing to some 7,000 fans in the colder atmosphere of a hockey arena, Copps Coliseum.

With no Toronto appearance scheduled for this leg of the tour, the Copps' show was in great demand from the outset.

It even caused a front-page controversy when some tickets mysteriously appeared at scalpers' prices on Ticketmaster's resell site, TicketsNow days before they went on sale to the public. The anger of Cohen fans was cited as one of the reasons Ontario introduced new legislation recently to help combat online scalping.

Call it Cohenmania.

In England, where all things old seem to be recycled into the latest trends at the drop of a felt fedora, Cohenmania has reached the highest levels.

Last year, three versions of his 1984 song Hallelujah were in the U.K. Top 40 at the same time. A version performed by Alexandra Burke, winner of the TV talent show X Factor, hit No. 1, while Jeff Buckley's older cover trailed at No. 2. Cohen's original sat at No. 34.

So England seemed to be the obvious place to record a live CD of the tour. Last month, a two-disc album, Live In London, was released by Columbia/Sony records. The album is a complete three-hour concert, recorded July 17, 2008, at London's O2 Arena. It was released to rave reviews. In the eyes of the critics, Cohen could do no wrong.

The Montreal poet's new-found stardom has even resulted in publisher Blue Door re-releasing Cohen's two novels -- The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers -- to eager British audiences.

Cohen's extraordinary rebirth is all the more remarkable considering that three years ago, he was in a nasty legal battle with his former manager after discovering that the millions in his "retirement fund" had dwindled to $150,000. He won a $9.5 million judgment against his manager, but has been unable to collect.

The loss of financial security threw the reclusive Cohen back into the spotlight and forced him back to work. He published a new book of poetry and reluctantly put together his first tour since 1993.

In a rare interview, Cohen recently said he had stopped touring partly because he was drinking "too much red wine" between shows.

There is talk of an album of new material in the works, but the 2008 shows were basically a slickly produced greatest-hits tour, a walk through Cohen's lengthy catalogue including Suzanne, Sisters Of Mercy, So Long Marianne, First We Take Manhattan, Hallelujah, Bird On The Wire, Democracy, I'm Your Man, Boogie Street, Ain't No Cure For Love, Tower Of Song and Closing Time.

It would have been easy to write this tour off as a quick and dirty money grab. But Cohen has obviously invested much more into it, choosing to use it as a platform for a lifelong legacy of poetry.

Cohen is nine years older than Mick Jagger -- a performer who probably should have hung up his dancing shoes when he reached 60. But no one is even suggesting that Cohen is too old for his return to Boogie Street.

In the few interviews Cohen has allowed this year, it seemed every interviewer was anxious to know what secrets Cohen had learned during his years of monastic life during the '90s.

They got a simple answer from a complex man.

"The first and most discernible lesson is to stop whining," Cohen explained to the L.A. Times. "And I don't really need to go much beyond that."

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331

Click below for article - and 3 great pictures:

http://www.thespec.com/go/go_at_home/article/567177