Old News

[jemtreadwell]

For anyone interested in some old news, I've scanned some old press cuttings I collected from the UK music press during the 70's, and posted them at http://www.jemtreadwell.com/cohen/scrapbook/. I collected everything I saw with Leonard's name, no matter how big or small - the larger articles are already posted on Jarkko's site in the Back to the Seventies area, but I thought there might be some interest in these fragments too.

Some of them are pretty funny, and I'm not sure if there's a single review that gets all the names correct - who are Roy Cornelius, Donna Warkburn, Jennifer Ward & Diana Washburn?

Enjoy, and if you'd like to see more just let me know.

- Jem

[friscogrl]

Jem, thanks for posting these articles from your scrapbook and sharing them with us. I really enjoyed them and of course would enjoy seeing more of them if you'd like to post them.

Thanks, Marsha

[jemtreadwell]

Thanks Marsha - glad you enjoyed them! Time's a bit tight, and I'll be at the show in Philly tomorrow, but I'll post some more by the weekend, and let you know when they're there.

- Jem

[jemtreadwell]

I've posted more today -- there are now 14 pages, including a classic movie review that got caught up for no particular reason . I think I've posted all the small fragments now, but I still have quite a few larger features and other stuff left to post, so if you enjoy reading these check back in another week or so and I should have some more done. You'll find them at:

http://www.jemtreadwell.com/cohen/scrapbook/

- Jem

[burningviolin]

Really enjoyed the posts Jem I would have loved to catch one of his concerts back in the 70's, seems anything could happen. Funny to see complaints about the ticket price of the time of £6, probably a large sum back then but its amazing how some things never change! Thanks again for the posts!

[jemtreadwell]

Thanks bv; glad you're enjoying it. Yeah, I really like that rant... along with the "Oh Lenny, what ails you?" intro One of the things I'll post this weekend is my ticket for LC in Brighton, Sept. 16 1974 - price £2.00 (including VAT). I'll post with it some tickets for various other artists, including Ralph McTell at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, in November 1974, for £0.80!

It's hard for me to think of the seventies as being that long ago, but the prices do help to put it in perspective - along with the faded pieces of paper and the stacks of vinyl. I do still have a record player - but it's in the attic.

- Jem

[MaryB]

Jem - thanks so much for posting your scrapbook. What a precious archive. LC has come such a long way judging by those old concert reviews. He is so disciplined and polished now in his performances and I think it's safe to say that, yes, it is likely now that we could well read 'Cohen Mania Hits New Peak' (Scrap 7). Your 'scraps' were an utterly delightful read.

Best regards,
Mary

[friscogrl]

These scraps are great jem. Keep em coming!

Marsha

[jemtreadwell]

Mary/Marsha, thanks for your comments - glad you're enjoying them... I've posted Pages 14-18 now, plus the program from the 1974 Brighton concert.

Page 18 is a composite of four scans, and will require some scrolling. When I have some time I'll try scanning it again at a lower resolution - if it's readable I'll post it as an alternative. Most of the remaining articles are bigger than my scanner bed, so I'll have to build them all up in the same way.

More next weekend...

- Jem

[MaryB]

Jem,

Just caught up on your most recent postings. Articles, such as the one by Mick Brown, are such an enjoyable read because it is not merely a review of an album, but includes a interview with the man himself. I love reading these old interviews. They bring up so many questions - does he still feel this way.......? Loved the picture of LC 'upended' .

You have a true treasure in the Brighton '74 Tour Book! I was so surprised to read that LC had said that he wanted his music to be available in jukeboxes - seems so 'un-Leonard Cohen'. I would have thought he wouldn't have cared .

Wonder if anyone knows if there are still copies of the 'Bird on a Wire' concert available for purchase or viewing.

Thanks so much for these additional scraps! Hope more will be coming.

Kindest regards,
Mary

[jemtreadwell]

Thanks Mary - I just posted pages 19-23, all still randomly ordered. These are all full-page scans, which I have to do in pieces as they don't fit on my scanner, so you have to scroll around them to view them. Once I've done a first pass of everything I have I'll try re-scanning some of them with a lower resolution, so they'll fit better. I'm not sure how readable that will be, and I don't have a lot of time to do this at the moment, so I'll just continue doing everything at 200dpi for now - but this is why mouse-wheels were invented.

I think LC's comment about the jukebox (page 5 of the Brighton program), which looks like a quote the program-writer dug up from somewhere else, was an oblique way of saying that the objective of folk music is to bring "the word" (presumably meaning important social-conscience topics??) into people's lives through a medium they enjoy listening to.

I did see Bird On a Wire when it was shown in Leicester Square, and I picked up a copy of the bootleg VHS tape on eBay a few years ago. I didn't know at the time it was a bootleg, and it's very poor quality VHS. I don't see it on eBay now, but apparently there are clips of it on youtube. There's a discussion about it at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9708&start=0&st=0&s ... a+wire+vhs.

- Jem

[tomsakic]

Excellent!

The funny note - already in 1972 the Dublin was first to sing along - the others needed 36 years to catch on!


Also, the first sentence of the first review sounds like it was written during this tour in 2008/09... and in further cuts, words like "spellbound audience", "the show of their lives", "technically near perfect" ... Obviously his shows always had the same quality, but it needed internet and old age to become widely accepted fact.

It's interesting and sad to follow how it changed around 1972. Suddenly everything he did was not worth. And all those stories about retiring, and then return with New Skin... And reviewers falling to see the renewal. But angry letters to NME were quite funny and rightful.

Maybe somewhere at that point, in 1972-73, somebody made a mistake. Would his career be totally different if they released i.e. the full show from RAH or Paris in 1972, instead of Live Songs? Cohen needed almost ten years to come back, despite he released superb albums like Recent Songs and had mesmerizing tours in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1979 and 1980, each one being bigger than the previous.

[MaryB]

Wow Jem,

The Tom Tyler review on page 23 . I have never read a scathing LC review before .
I just love what you're doing here. Thanks again!

Best regards,
Mary

[tomsakic]

Hi Jem,

is there a chance that you have some cuts from 1977 (Spector album) or Recent Songs, 1979? That interests me mostly as it seems Cohen fell into some kind of press lacuna then, and I didn't read much articles from those years.

Early 70s stuff is amazing, thank you.

[jemtreadwell]

Hi, sorry to have gone quiet on this thread... it's been a few weeks since I had time to scan anything else, but that's why it took me so long to post all this stuff in the first place - too many things going on!

First, I've just posted Pages 24-27. Page 25 is the infamous Roy Hollingworth "Cohen Quits" article. For anyone reading for the first time, the articles are all at http://www.jemtreadwell.com/cohen/scrapbook.

Mary, I guess some of these newly posted reviews are also fairly scathing. That wasn't especially surprising, as in my experience the real LC fans were a very small minority, at least in the UK, and that was probably true of the music reviewers as much as anyone. I wasn't paying much attention to music until around the time of Songs of Love & Hate, when I was about 15, and I guess until Live Songs came out the only reviews I saw were for concerts - and those were generally good. Live Songs was a trigger for some of the negative stuff, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I was at a boarding school, and we all read just about every word in MM, Sounds and NME every week, so opinions were all over the place.

Today, anyone reading about LC is most likely to be doing it in this forum, or in a review of the tour, and you're really not likely to find too much negativity. But these guys were writing from first impressions, and often writing several reviews in each edition of the same weekly paper, so there was nothing particularly special about any particular album or artist. Over time, people who don't care dropped out of the conversations, and for the people who do care all the albums became classics. But the reviews are part of the whole experience, and in my mind they're classics too.

Tom, thanks for your comments too. I don't know, I've always liked Live Songs (other than Queen Victoria). I'd hate to think that we could have missed Passing Through if LC hadn't released that album! All this talk of Live Songs remind me that I haven't heard it for years, as I only have it on vinyl, so I just ordered the CD. Looking at the reviews now on Amazon.com, there are certainly people who love Queen Victoria (I"ll listen to it again when my new copy arrives, but I think after all these years I'm probably too prejudiced against it to give it a fair shot!), and there are some who don't like Please Don't Pass Me By. What's wrong with these people???

And regarding any later material, sorry - my stuff is pretty much rooted in the early 70's. I have one more 1971 article, and a NY Times article from 1995 that I'll post soon. I guess I got distracted from music by the usual things around the eighties, and actually didn't even see much of the music press once I moved to the US in '88. I did manage to track the albums, but I no longer knew in advance when they were coming out - I just used to check the Male Vocal section in CD stores to know what was going on. It was always surprising to me that every store had a few Leonard Cohen CDs, even though almost nobody here had ever heard of him! But eventually I found Jarkko's site around '96, and that's when I really started paying attention again.

Anyway - I'll try to post the last couple of articles next weekend, and I have a couple more programs to scan. Stay tuned, and keep the comments coming. It's nice to know that people are interested in seeing this stuff

- Jem