Concert in Berlin
Leonard Cohen Takes The Stage Into The Forest Revel
Thursday 19 August 2010 09:46 -
By Peter E. Müller
With 75 years of Leonard Cohen is touring again - also because he needs the money. But rarely saw 12,000 fans in Berlin's forest stage a concert with such emotion, such finality, such veracity. And more than three hours.
Like a good whiskey - wlird getting better with age: Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen - Photo: picture-alliance
In the end, something wonderful happens. Six encores Leonard Cohen and his band have given already. And then after three and a half hours of that song he plays all too often live, the piece that had given him in 1974 his only German Top Ten hit, "Lover Lover Lover". A ballad that reads like a light love song, and also generally understood to be, even though it has the conflicts of a believer with God to the content. He plays the song often, but here, on Wednesday evening in the forest with around 12,000 visitors filled stage, he is the finale of a stunning concert with one of the most moving song poets of our day. And Amphitheaterrund vibrates with enthusiasm and gratitude.
For two years, Leonard Cohen now back on tour. In September he is 76 years old and he has, even though the circumstances were not happy at first, found the way back to his audience. When he was in the mid 90s in the Buddhist monastery in Mount Baldy wry California, he appeared for the earthly Entertainment permanently lost. But his manager and sometime partner in this time of meditation has squandered all his property, his pension was gone. More than five million U.S. dollars, so they say. All gone. Leonard Cohen needed money to finance his retirement. Such profane were the reasons for his return. But the infamous raid the wrong girlfriend was ultimately a good thing. Because we rarely experienced today a concert by such emotion, such finality, such veracity.
Cohen calls audience "my friends"
It is the third to give Berlin-guest performance, which Cohen and his excellent band now in the context of this tour. The program is almost identical to that in the O2 World in 2008 and 2009. And yet even this evening in the forest stage something unique, so pathetic. It is always about the last time to say goodbye to surrender to the quarrel with the existence and the struggle against the resignation - but also about hope. "My friends," he calls his audience again and again and bowed almost reverently, before the fans to the musicians, in the songs.
The bohemian, who roamed the New York of the 60s in the environment of Andy Warhol's Factory, the excessive drinker and womanizer, the encrypted his affairs to songs and poems, the seeker of God, who found his salvation in Buddhism is to a great wise man has matured, animated the subsequent generations of musicians and inspired. It brings children, parents and grandparents before him, if he sings like a preacher all his great successes in subtle arrangements. With "Dance Me To The End Of Love" begins the song dance, inspired by the Holocaust that song of love that tells death survives. "Bird On A Wire" "So Long, Marianne", "Take This Waltz," "Who By Fire", "First We Take Manhattan (Then We Take Berlin)", "Famous Blue Raincoat," "Suzanne" - there are century songs that have taken anything from popular music of their arbitrariness and gave them dignity.
Refined by angel voices
Cohen, in a dark suit, with hat and bolo tie for the gray-collar, has felt fun in the middle of his music, he dances, going to his knees, pulls his hat again and smiling. He can rely on his musical High Mass on a great band. His longtime companion, bassist Roscoe Beck is the musical director of the company. The bluesbeseelte guitarist Bob Metzger is at it again. The Spaniard Javier Mas played with Andalusian flamenco flair sounds and twelve string, Neil Larsson the heavy Hammond B3 organ, sax player Dino Soldo and drummer Rafael Gayol complete the band, which is refined by three wonderful angel voices: from the soulstarken Sharon Robinson, the also co-author of several Cohen songs, and of the heavenly Webb Sisters, Charley and Hattie, which provoke the encore with a stirring version of Cohen's "If It Be Your Will" goose bumps.
Songs for eternity
Writer was to be his goal. Several books of poetry and prose published by Cohen, the first book "Let Us Compare Mythologies" was released early as 1955. But only after 1968 was published with "Songs of Leonard Cohen" the first LP, is a curious hippie generation began with the literary work to employ, such as the 1964 published book of poetry "Roses for Hitler" or the cryptic novel, "The Favorite" . Leonard Cohen was loudly protesting Rock business, the rebellious, brooding, questioning counterpoint. And he created songs that are made for eternity, folk songs in the best sense.
Cohensongs are memory songs. An early love affairs, dangerous at nights, to disappointment, which could alleviate a single song. Everybody in this audience has its own special Cohentitel in the heart. And she sings all the master, with deep, roughened voice, kind gesture, with a light show at a glance. Now and then converts the worship atmosphere, where for example, "First We Take Manhattan" is a rocking dance beat rattles through the forest stage - that there are probably only in this city - thousands of voices to the chorus, "Then We Take Berlin sing" . Cohen takes it visibly pleased to note.
In "Hallelujah" revels all Walbühne
In "Hallelujah", this playing with Biblical elements, Love Song, Cohen adds back the line "I did not come all the way to Berlin to fool you one." It is one of his most gecoverten pieces, there are versions of John Cale, Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, Bob Dylan, and even Berlin We are heroes had "Hallelujah" in the repertoire. This revels the whole forest stage, sparklers flickering, everything sings with reverence. In the superficial ease, but always with a toned swing in a minor key melancholy. For Cohen tells in his shrewd observations, above all, of the finitude of life, of setbacks, threats, fears. As in "The Future", which states: "Give me back the Berlin Wall, give me Stalin and St Paul I've seen the future brother, it is murderous."
You can thank the venerable old man was not enough that he is the strain such a lengthy world tour exposes. That he again live on stage and share his great art can. As Leonard Cohen for "Lover Lover Lover" cedes to actually have something definitive. The prolonged applause resonates with the hope that it may still possible to return often. Hallelujah!