Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970
Nearly 40 summers ago on August 31, 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen was awakened at 2 a.m. from a nap in his trailer and brought onstage to perform with his band at the third annual Isle Of Wight music festival. The audience of 600,000 was in a fiery and frenzied mood, after turning the festival into a political arena, trampling the fences, setting fire to structures and equipment - and stoked by the most incendiary performance of Jimi Hendrix's career.
As Cohen followed Hendrix's set, onlookers and (fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood sidestage in awe as the Canadian folksinger-songwriter-poet-novelist quietly tamed the crowd. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner (From Mao To Mozart, Festival, Message To Love), perfectly captured Cohen's performance.
Member Reviews
The Magic Was Always There - muso
This is a brief concert film - 64 minutes and not all of it is music. It is taken from Cohen's now legendary set at 4 in the morning (yes the resonance with Famous Blue Raincoat is clear) at the Isle of Wight Festival. From all accounts it had been a fractious, incediary festival with acts being booed off the stage, mini riots etc. And then comes Cohen with his Army - the requisite ethereal women with long hair, flowing dresses and beautiful voices and a coterie of musicians in the back, including Charlie Daniels on fiddle, but it is Cohen's show.
Not one to pander to his audience, he repeatedly says of the somewhat inchoate change that people seem to be advocating,"We are not strong enough yet, we are not ready yet" a message that many would find hard to deliver on that night to that crowd, but he does and, it appears, they listen.
The material comes from the early albums, Suzanne, Patriot Song, Bird on A Wire, So Long Marianne, One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, Seems So Long Ago Nancy etc., and while most of them are seared in our memories now, they were still new to Cohen then and he plays with the tunes. the words and fits them to the moment. That this quirky muisc, not your standard 1970 singer-songwriter fare, in many ways of another time that is a bit hard to place, managed to win over hundreds of thousands of people in its own uncompromising way is a tribute not the legend of Leonard Cohen but to the power of his song at the start of his career.Cohen better in 2009 than 1970 - esperanto41
Leonard Cohen is another of my acquired tastes. When I first heard "Suzanne" 40 years ago I hated it for its pretentious poetry. But the song (and Cohen) have grown on me, even though I still don't like surrealistic poetry, nor the majority of his songs which are too slow and draggy. However, his best (including "Suzanne") outweigh the rest.
This "Isle of Wight" DVD came out in 2009, of his performance at a raucus, Woodstock-scale event in 1970. Meanwhile, I had just VCR'd a 2009 Cohen concert from PBS, "Live in London": a 39-year difference. Cohen is far better in his old age! The polish; the instrumentation; the stage presence (except for the ugly fedoras everyone is wearing): what an improvement, even though the words and melodies are much the same.
Still, one can enjoy the Isle of Wight DVD, albeit mainly as a contrast to the so much smoother, mellower 2009 Cohen.
(I likewise notice that the later-years Victor Borge is much better than his younger version.)
(PS: Charlie Daniels plays a fiddle riff with Cohen at Wight, but I'd never have guessed that's who it was.)
Zip should now acquire the "Live in London" DVD.
Member Reviews
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The Magic Was Always There - muso
This is a brief concert film - 64 minutes and not all of it is music. It is taken from Cohen's now legendary set at 4 in the morning (yes the resonance with Famous Blue Raincoat is clear) at the Isle of Wight Festival. From all accounts it had been a fractious, ...Cohen better in 2009 than 1970 - esperanto41
Leonard Cohen is another of my acquired tastes. When I first heard "Suzanne" 40 years ago I hated it for its pretentious poetry. But the song (and Cohen) have grown on me, even though I still don't like surrealistic poetry, nor the majority of his songs which ...