Songs of Leonard Cohen, 17/07/08

Good morning my little Birds on the Wire! Here, to the best of my memory, is a list of the songs he did. If I find a better one I will post a link.

First Half

Dance Me to the End of Love (a good opener, sung to the guitarist in a crouching position)

Everybody knows

In my Secret Life

A Thousand Kisses Deep (spoken, with some different verses)

Bird on the Wire (could there be a concert without this one?)

Who by Fire

There Ain’t No Cure for Love

Back on Boogie Street

Second half

(a lot of the songs were introduced by Leonard first spaking some of the lines)

Tower of Song (joke – “I wouldn’t want you to worry about this” – ie the keyboard in front of him – “It goes by itself”)

Hallelujah

Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye

Take this Waltz

Suzanne

So Long Marianne (chorus sung by 15,000 voices)

My Gipsy Wife

Ring the Bells

– plus one from Dear Heather, I can’t remember which

Encores

First We Take Manhattan (he saved this one up!)

Democracy is Coming to the USA

I’m your Man

Closing Time

I Tried to Leave You (after going off stage and being called back twice)

Sisters of Mercy

If It Be Your Will (introduced by Leonard but sung by the backing singers. They have come in for some criticism and I have to say I found their voices quite high and breathy. I was disappointed that Leonard didn’t sing “If it be Your Will” as this is my favourite song. But it shows his generosity to the band. He gave all of them space and introduced them, not once but many times, without ever abdicating his own responsibility for the show.

They finished with the whole band (17 in all) on stage singing together some words from the Torah:

“Whither thou goest I will go/and your people shall be my people” – very moving. I can’t think of a better way to end the concert.

I shall carry with me always the image of him skipping off stage after his encores.

Jokes:

“14 or 15 years ago I was just a 60-year-old with a guitar and a crazy dream”

“I’m thinking back to all the drugs I’ve taken in recent years – Prozac, Ibruprofen, Aspirin…”

plus a lot of jokes about being old. Which he is. But by god, the man is an inspiration. 74 years old and on stage for 2 ½ hours; in good voice the whole time and skipping off at the end of it. Plus, look at the tour dates he’s doing – and they’ve added some extra ones in November. If we have the money I’ll try to catch him in Birmingham. Please send donations to….