Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Leonard Cohen's previous album (January 2012)
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Wybe
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Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by Wybe »

I've got a mail from Iris and she asked me to put a link of this good article in "De Volkskrant", made after the promotion session in Paris.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3380/muz ... tofu.dhtml

Wybe
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TineDoes
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by TineDoes »

Wijbe,
Thank you for posting this article.
There is also a writing up on Leonard Cohen in todays' saturday 28th - the Dutch Newspaper NRC - page 10 culture section.
Cannot find it on line. But will post if I do.
Tineke
"There’s no forsaking what you love ...."

Rotterdam 2008; Antwerpen, Dublin 2009; Gent 2x, Lille , Las Vegas 2x 2010, Gent, Amsterdam, Dublin 2x 2012, Antwerp, Berlin, Rotterdam 2013
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TineDoes
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

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Wybe wrote:I've got a mail from Iris and she asked me to put a link of this good article in "De Volkskrant", made after the promotion session in Paris.http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3380/muz ... tofu.dhtml
Here my humble offering of a translation of above article. LC Quotes are translated from the article, so may not be LC's exact words :)

"Leonard Cohen: My songs are like tofu
Menno Pot −26/01/12, 07:29 – Volks krant

Leonard Cohen, 77 years old (!), as always in suit, launched his beautiful new cd in Paris. Menno Pot, Journalist for the Volkskrant, talked with the singer.

Leonard Cohen’s entrance in the Salon des Aigles, a small golden Hall with posh chandelier on the Place de la Concorde in Parijs, unintentionally recalls the memory of his coming out on stage Amsterdam Westerpark on 12th July 2008, a concert that would become as it seems: unforgettable.

Suddenly he just stood there, as he did then, as if he was just accidentally passing by: no introductions, no large gestures, loudspeakers still humming soft background music. Cohen, a small man, 77 years old, lifts his stylish black fedora while asking for a microphone so that he can welcome the European Journalist who had filled the hall.

‘Hallo Friends’ , he says in his bass voice, a voice that is far darker and lower than one remembers it. ‘Thank you for coming. I am not going to stay sitting here before you while we listening to the album later on, because I do not want to monitor your expressions of approval or disapproval. So please react as your heart bids you do.’
And there is the sound of Going Home, the opening song of this beautiful new Cohen-album Old Ideas. It is his twelfth studio-album since 1967, the first since Dear Heather (2004), and the opening sentence is full of humor: ‘I love to speak with Leonard / He’s a sportsman and a shepherd’ / He’s lazy bastard living in a suit.’

This ‘listening session’, is what they call an event in the music industry. After the event there is the opportunity to ask questions: a kind of press conference, really. A few days later a similar event will take place in London.

We have to take it in our stride, because the Canadian cancelled nearly all his interviews, even the greater part of the planned talks with the larger British and American newspapers. The whys and wherefores are not dwelt upon, and that isn’t so because that question may not be asked. Cohen likes to talk about everything: about the new record, about old age, about himself. He speaks in flowing sentences and often shows himself to be both funny and quick witted/smart.

The album is called Old Ideas because the songs on this album cover ‘the old en lasting subjects that concern us all’: love, death, loss, sexuality, religion; the same subjects that he has with some success written about in the sixties as a young bohemian, romancer and poet, and from 1967 onward (with more success) as a songwriter. With this title he does not mean to say that the songs have been lying about on a shelf for a long time: they are all attractively fresh.

And the notable cover photo, on which we see Cohen sitting on a wooden chair in a sundrenched garden? He tells us that the photograph was made by a Turkish (girl)friend. ‘I designed the cover myself. You can see the shadow of the photographer beside me on the lawn. I brought the shadow forward, so that diagonal lines were created that give a mysterious effect. How? Photoshop’.

Glorious
He may look fragile, the 77 year old from Montreal, but he seems yet to have plenty of energy. He tells us that he has many more songs written and that he is working on a next album that, ‘God willing’, could appear in about a year’s time.

And a Tour? There are not any concrete bookings planned as yet, but he would be very willing, because he experienced, as everyone has witnessed, his great comeback tours of the last few years (from 2008, when he had not performed for fifteen years), as ’glorious’. He has also sorted out his financial situation, after his ex-manager had, as rumor has it, swindled him for millions.

But be aware: “We never just performed. We never played lightly. Every performance was an intense experience.
Which great artist makes such a good record as Old Ideas when he is 77 years old? What is Cohen’s secret? Is it really as simple as he sings in The Darkness: ‘I don’t smoke no cigarettes / I don’t drink no alcohol’?

Such a life style helps, but Cohen would rather refer to his stay, half way during the 90’s, at the Buddhist Zen Centre Mount Baldy in California, where he got to know his teacher who is now 104 years old, but never talks about this, who also ’refuses to make any concession to something as trivial as age’. ‘ He taught me the personal discipline that I never had as a young man. It is not a religion. There isn’t a belief, nor a dogma, no worshiping. Only study and activity. Music? No, there was none on Mount Baldy. But I was allowed to hum to myself’ .
A French journalist remarked that Cohen always speaks and writes so very measured (thoughtfully), choosing his words very carefully, and wants to know if he learnt that on Mount Baldy. Or is he just a question of age?

Cohen says it is the latter: ‘Certain brain cells that can cause excitement, die off. At a certain moment you can only write thoughtfully. A writer is hostage to his own nerve cells.

Stupidity
Yet the complacency of which he has often been accused, has decreased these pas years rather than increased, or rather has altogether disappeared. For that we may also thank the teachers of Mount Baldy: the turning or breaking point in Cohen’s life. What they taught him? ‘That one can never be relieved from one’s own stupidity. The examples of one’s own incompetence and ignorance present themselves constantly’.

Some songs on Old Ideas sound noticeably free(loose). The song in which he casually touches on his total abstinence, The Darkness, is a relaxed, J.J. Cale type bluesy song with an in ignorable optimistic sway. Cohen doesn’t often admit to a genre, but determines now that Old Ideas ‘counts at least three blues songs, maybe more’ .

‘For a long time I thought I did not have the right to sing the blues. I felt I had to stay away from that tradition. But along the way I overcame this feeling. But I became so cheeky because I interpreted the fact that these songs came to me as permission for me to also sing them.’

Depression
That The Blues befit him well is not surprising. Based on the first song from Old Ideas that were voiced on internet , he was again much referred to as an old misanthrope, who’s whole oeuvre can be interpreted as a manual for living with defeat, just as he himself put into words in Going Home.
With a thoughtful grin: ‘ I would yet say that I was in a rather good humor when I wrote that song’.

He realizes very well that the darkness is sticking to him. He talks about the depression that had a hold on him as a young boy/man (a real clinical depression, other than being fed up over a failed date) and how he rid himself of this ‘thanks to the right medical coaching’. Leonard Cohen a depressive person? He would rather not use that description.

‘Do you know what it is? My songs are like tofu: they take on the taste of the gravy that you soak them in’.
And he knows it: the voice, that developed from a baritone to a deep bass in the seventies an eighties, is a forceful gravy.

And yet, the gloom lies not only in his timbre. In The Darkness we hear: ‘I’ve got no future / I know my days are few’ and that surely is not the only reference to the end. ‘I write a lot about death, I have studied death for a long time’. Grinning: ‘I have come the conclusion that I will die at some point’.

The paradox in Cohen’s recent work: death is coming nearer literally and figuratively, but more than ever there is room for a laugh. The Portuguese lady journalist who may ask the last question, forms a rather intricate theory about: the ladies’ man who took himself very seriously, but at a later age emanates more ability for relativity. How does he think about humor?

While he listens to the question, the ever young Cohen the charmer appears, flirting with the word seeking Portuguese.
‘I can tell you this: to typecast me as a ladies’ man at my age, requires a large dose of humor’.

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas. Columbia/Sony (appears 27 January)
Leonard Cohen is an album artist: he had no top 40 singles in The Netherlands till 2009. That his Hallelujah (1984) got to number 1 in 2008 and 2009 in different countries, was thanks to the winners of talent scouting programs such as X-factor and Pop Idol: Alexandra Burke (Great Britain, Kurt Nilsen (Norway) en Lisa Lois (Netherlands), who all copied Jeff Buckleys cover version from 1994. Not Cohen’s original that reached the hit lists in the Netherlands for a while on the wave of this success. The number ‘ 27’ was the only noting hit parade in the Netherlands."
-----
(NB. I believe he had a small hit with Lover, Lover, Lover in the early 70’s. Tineke)
"There’s no forsaking what you love ...."

Rotterdam 2008; Antwerpen, Dublin 2009; Gent 2x, Lille , Las Vegas 2x 2010, Gent, Amsterdam, Dublin 2x 2012, Antwerp, Berlin, Rotterdam 2013
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by mutti »

Thank you Wybe and Tineke for posting this.
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

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"Music? No, there was none on Mount Baldy. But I was allowed to hum to myself’ ."
Hilarious
...I ..... .... ....... made . ..... ...... by ....... music .. ..... .. ......
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Wybe
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by Wybe »

An other wonderfull article in "De Volkskrant" (in Dutch)

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/6352/Pop ... ohen.dhtml


Wijbe
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by iris »

Thanks Wijbe, great article from a newborn fan!
here is your love for all this
2008 amsterdam/rotterdam, 2009 antwerpen, 2010 gent/dortmund, 2012 gent/amsterdam, 2013 antwerpen/oberhausen/rotterdam/amsterdam
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Re: Old Ideas in De Volkskrant (Dutch News Paper)

Post by MaryB »

TineDoes wrote:
Wybe wrote:I've got a mail from Iris and she asked me to put a link of this good article in "De Volkskrant", made after the promotion session in Paris.http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/3380/muz ... tofu.dhtml
‘I write a lot about death, I have studied death for a long time’. Grinning: ‘I have come the conclusion that I will die at some point’.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Bless his heart, he always keeps me laughing.
1993 Detroit 2008 Kitchener June 2-Hamilton June 3 & 4-Vienna Sept 24 & 25-London RAH Nov 17 2009 NYC Feb 19-Grand Prairie Apr 3-Phoenix Apr 5-Columbia May 11-Red Rocks Jun 4-Barcelona Sept 21-Columbus Oct 27-Las Vegas Nov 12-San Jose Nov 13 2010 Sligo Jul 31 & Aug 1-LV Dec 10 & 11 2012 Paris Sept 30-London Dec 11-Boston Dec 16 2013 Louisville Mar 30-Amsterdam Sept 20
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