http://www.thefreelibrary.com/HALLELUJA ... 0232331175
Nice article - and - I'm fascinated -
"Although the favourites like Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat will certainly feature in the sets at Lissadell, Cohen has hinted that there might also be a move towards new material." HALLELUJAH IT'S COHEN; LISSADELL HOUSE CONCERT WILL BE A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE FOR VETERAN SINGER LEONARD..AND HIS FANS.
Anyone who managed to make it to Leonard Cohen's shows at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham a couple of years ago will know that seeing the great man in the great outdoors is akin to a religious experience. So when he plays Lissadell House, Sligo, about which his great hero WB Yeats wrote so often, it could veer to the transcendental.
And at 75 Cohen said he is grateful for the reception his return to the road has been given - even if his hand was forced by money mismanagement.
He explained: "The response has been very, very, very hospitable, and it's been a generally very nourishing experience.
"We've been all over the world, and you know, one is never sure that it's going to work again. You're never sure from concert to concert, actually, because there's some part of it you don't command."
As well as Lissadell and IMMA, Cohen has also performed at Dublin's O2 and the gigs he says were performed more out of necessity. Speaking to a number of American newspapers recently, Cohen revealed he is on on the road again to rebuild a multimillion-dollar nest egg Nest Egg he alleges was lost through the mismanagement of others.
He said: "I was spending enormous amounts of time in lawyers' offices, tax specialists' offices, accountants' offices, detectives' offices. In fact, I was spending all my time in offices, and I had to say to myself at a certain point, 'If God wants to bore you to death, I guess that's His business'.
"It was an enormous... 'distraction' hardly begins to describe it, because what happened was, my own work became a distraction.
"I had to take care of the matters at hand, they were urgent, and the situation was dangerous at certain points."
Of course, his songs have been covered by everyone from Jeff Buckley Jeff Buckley to Alexandra Burke and Cohen said it is a result of his lack of attention to detail. He said: "My sense of ownership with these things is very weak. It's not the result of spiritual discipline; it's always been that way. My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs."
Although the favourites like Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat will certainly feature in the sets at Lissadell, Cohen has hinted that there might also be a move towards new material.
He said: "The clear sense that you know you're in the homeward home·ward stretch is a very compelling component in writing. A lot of other things fall away that you hope would satisfy you like human life, and your work becomes a kind of haven, and you want to go there, and you're grateful when the time opens in such a way that you can actually sit down and work at your own work, because everything else somehow has failed.
"I'm speaking not just for myself. Somehow, just in the nature of things, you know, the disappointments accumulate, and the obstacles multiply and you sense the destruction of your body, and your mind, and you feel here is the last arena, 'arena' is too big, the last boxing ring, or the last Ouija board, where you can examine some of the ideas that have intrigued you. That have seized you, really."
Cohen plays Lissadell on July 31 and August 1 and on July 30 the stage will be filled by Westlife. It's got to be a scary event for the lads - not only are they preceding a legend but they are also playing a massive gig in their home town. Shane Filan said: "It is special for us because it is at home and we are really looking forward to it."
Some tickets for all shows have just been released on www.
ticketmaster.ie but you need to be fast.
