Push the BBC to show and release "Songs from the life of .."

[Warthog]

I recently contacted the BBC via their web site to ask if they would broadcast the 1988 Omnibus programme "Songs from the life of Leonard Cohen" and received the following replies

Thanks for your e-mail regarding 'Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen'.

I can certainly pass your request for the programme to be repeated on to our audience log. This is an official document circulated around BBC staff including senior management, and the feedback provided by it helps in making decisions regarding future programming and improvements to the service.

I am also pleased to be able to tell you can request a commercial release of the programme by writing to BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. Their address is listed below:

Programming & Acquisitions Dept
2 entertain
33 Foley Street
London
W1W 7TL

Regards
Calum
BBC Information

------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for your e-mail.

I was interested to read your comments regarding 'Songs from the life of Leonard Cohen'. I understand that you feel, what with his forthcoming tour, that a repeat of this programme would be appreciated by many people and be a fitting reminder of the musician's talent.

Although, there are no current plans to show this documentary in the near future, please be assured that all of your comments have been registered on our daily feedback log, this is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

Thank you for taking the time to contact the BBC.

Regards
Robert
BBC Information

So, maybe if enough of us contact the BBC they will broadcast the programme again, or even better, release it on DVD

Here's hoping.
Warthog

[gremmy]

I'd rather see the 1968 (?) session he did for the BBC, if it still exists in the archive (they trashed a lot of stuff in the 70s...)

[gingermop]

I borrowed a copy of this from the archives as I'd never seen it (I work for the Beeb).
Unfortunately I think there are two issues prohibiting any kind of release in the near future. One, the copyright is either owned or shared with the National Film Board of Canada.
Secondly (and far worse), I'm told the master tape went 'missing' (presumed stolen) a few years back.

I didn't do it

G

[jarkko]

Gina, about the stolen tape: are you referring to the version BBC aired?
Then there was the other version released by Sony on home-video with permission from BBC.
I don't know how NFB could be involved in this??

[Mollydog]

You probably all know this, but it is on Youtube in 9 parts.

[jarkko]

Yes, but YouTube has only a "hopeless little screen" - at least I'd love to get that film in good quality on a DVD.
(I have the original home video released on VHS cassette by Sony, and have converted it onto DVD for my personal use,
but a commercial release made using the master film would give much better result!)

[gingermop]

I can't recall exactly, but if the NFB provided some footage (wasn't there extracts from "Ladies and Gentlemen: Mr Leonard Cohen" on it?), then that's probably what the BBC Archives mean by "Copyright Source" being the NFB. This probably wouldn't be a barrier to releasing it.

Since the documentary is 20 years old anyway, a better idea would be if the BBC or other terrestrial broadcasters got the right to air one of the recent concerts. Now that would be good.

G

[jarkko]

Gina, the documentary is very interesting, like all those moments filmed on Hydra - Leonard returning to the island after many years, with Perla and Julie -, concert footage from Lycabettus in Athens in 1988, and so on.

[John Etherington]

Gina said: Since the documentary is 20 years old anyway, a better idea would be if the BBC or other terrestrial broadcasters got the right to air one of the recent concerts. Now that would be good.

Like "Glastonbury"! (ideally as part of a Leonard Cohen night on BBC2, if they still do such things).

John E x

[DBCohen]

I would very much like to see this wonderful film come out on DVD.
Whom should we contact in the BBC?

[Paula]

Songs from the life is in my opinion the best documentary I have seen on Leonard if the BBC still have the original footage it would be great if they could replay it or bring it out on DVD.

[UrPal]

Thanks for bringing "Songs from the life of..." to my attention. I hadn't previously been aware that a BBC documentary had been made about LC in the late Eighties, and, since that's when my prior unfocussed admiration for LC turned to serious fandom, it is more interesting to me than, say, the BBC Sixties sessions etc (which have the disadvantage of B&Winess in sight and sound, as well as LC's then one-manbandiness in delivery). I watched it in YouTube-sized chunks (ten of them) last night.

Jarkko's summary of the benefits of the documentary is an excellent summation. It's a cracking documentary, though perhaps slightly dated - and fixed in a decade which was not humanity's finest moment.

It's particular benefit for me though was in terms of providing the opportunity to compare LC's live performance at what I would have envisaged to be his creative peak then as against those I witnessed delivered this year on the present tour. I would have expected that at the time of the IYM & The Future tours an LC gig would have been an even more convincing occasion with the benefits of a younger and more powerful prime-of-life performance from LC supported by original backing from “A-teamers” Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla.

Whilst the songs featured in the documentary are excellent in their own right, the "lost years" on Mt Baldy have, in my opinion, added to LC's "caché" rather than withered it. I found some of LC's vocal "mannerisms" featured in the documentary occasionally distracting or even suggestive of insincerity/lack of conviction/involvement in the moment (not that I'm suggesting LC did lack those things at the time, just that that's how it "comes over" (perhaps due to his then greater insecurity as a performer?)) and for me that detracts from the force of performance. Whilst the backing vocals are always first rate, the backing band’s instrumental contributions and most of the song treatments are also weaker (despite the fact that they were then presumably louder than the present “quietest live band ever” line-up). Leonard also somehow better “embodies” his songs in his present physique and persona than the more Tom Jones-like character of yore.

Before watching the documentary, I would have forever been grateful to have had the chance to see LC live (something I didn't think would happen) but still assumed that I'd missed him at his best. I'm now reassured that I've had the privilege of both seeing him and having done so whilst at his very best (repeatedly).

It would be good to have this broadcast. A present tour performance as part of an "LC night" also featuring this and other odds and ends would be a better propaganda event.