Pre-concert article, Moscow, Kremlin Palace, Oct 7, 2010

[bridger15]

http://www.elementmoscow.ru/main.php?article=1730

living legend

Canadian poet, actor, singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen will finally make it to Moscow this fortnight for a concert at the Kremlin Palace. Michael Holmes explores the legendary artist’s various creative endeavors and controversies.

TEXT MICHAEL HOLMES feedback

Leonard Cohen first found his way onto my clunky 1980s Sony Walkman in a roundabout fashion: moody feed-back-friendly noiseniks, the Jesus and Mary Chain covered (rather tediously) his epic “Tower of Song.” A couple of Sisters of Mercy albums led me obliquely to the track of the same name, but it wasn’t until stumbling upon Nick Cave’s absurdly over-the-top remake of “Tower of Song” that I really got excited. For one thing, Nick Cave is not a man whose opinions should be taken lightly and when he reckons an act is worth devoting studio time to, it’s worth sticking them on the playlist. For another, it’s a brilliant song, alternately dark and hilarious and lending itself readily to any number of assaults from other hands. Even, at a pinch, the Mary Chain’s.

But there’s rather more to Cohen than any one song. After all, having started out in the folkrock hippy-infested scene of the 1960s, flirted with the fringes of Warhol’s factory and re-invented himself via Phil Spector’s wall of sound and intermittent dabbles with synths, there’s not much he hasn’t tackled in 50 years in the business. Throw in an affair with Janis Joplin (see “Chelsea Hotel #2”), a musical encounter with a pair of “Sisters of Mercy” in a hotel room in Edmonton and a string of tales of the outsider and the underdog (“The Partisan,” “The Old Revolution”) and Cohen is, indeed, your man. And if a discography of 11 studio albums seems like a small return for five decades of music making, there are also a dozen published books to be taken into consideration, not to mention screen work which veers from a villain in Miami Vice (because we all have to eat) to narrating a documentary about the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (Cohen, somewhat confusingly, is a practicing Jew and a Buddhist monk.)

In the middle of all this, Quebec-born Cohen did a stint with the Israeli ministry and even saw active service as an airline pilot over Egypt. And that leads to the greatest controversy of his career — his complex relationship with the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the one hand, a practicing Jew who observes the Sabbath and volunteered for Israel’s forces seems to tick all the boxes a Jerusalem Zionist could want from a prospective son-in-law. Yet songs like “Lover, lover, lover,” allegedly written in the aftermath of those aerial sorties above Egypt, paint a more complex picture.

The row threatened to engulf the current tour: A scheduled gig in Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank and one of the flashpoints of the Middle East’s most intractable conflict, was scheduled then cancelled. The issue, apparently, was Cohen’s appearance in Tel Aviv, which breached a cultural boycott backed by the Palestinians. Palestinian cultural officials accused Cohen of trying to “whitewash Israel’s colonial apartheid regime.” Come the day of the contentious event and Cohen used the stage to promote the work of NGO “Bereaved Parents for Peace.”

Politics aside, his current activity revolves around completing this epic world tour, much delayed through back problems and an outbreak of food poisoning. Indeed the living legend caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth when his original Moscow date was cancelled earlier this year. But, as promised, he’s on his way back with a tantalizing promise of some new material. Reports from earlier in the tour say at least three new songs are likely to get an airing, teasing audiences with the prospect of a new album in the near future.

Leonard Cohen plays at the Kremlin Palace on Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. Seats start at 2,200 rubles on parter.ru.

[mirka]

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http://www.elementmoscow.ru/main.php?article=1730

Leonard Cohen plays at the Kremlin Palace on Oct. 7 at 7 p.m.

Again - the end of the world must be close....