Remembrance of the "First" Time

[Lilifyre]

I'm not really sure where to post what I want to say, therefore I'm starting a new thread here. The meaning of my topic is to state some of the most vivid memories of my first time seeing Leonard in concert while those memories are still fresh.

Only a few days ago I attended the concert in St.Louis MO. It was truly a magical experience. I had agreed to give a ride from Nashville to St.Louis to another fan. I'm a native St.Louisan living in Birmingham, AL. I could have chosen to see Leonard in either Atlanta or Nashville had I wanted the closest venue, but I chose St.Louis because it is "home". Meeting my guest/rider for the first time as she climbed into my small SUV, we talked and sang as Leonard blared from my CD player. She was the seasoned fan, I was the "virgin". Of course, our conversations were primarily about Leonard, his music, his poetry, his philosophy, the forum, and such. It made the drive much more endurable for me. I love to drive, but I also love having company when I drive. Finally, much later than expected, I deposited her at her hotel and we made arrangements to meet before the show the next day to continue this adventure. (We had run into a major traffic jam in Illinois caused by an incompetent truck driver.)

Not much sleep that night due to excitement, an unfamiliar bed and an aging body rebelling after long hours on the road. A few hours before the show we met up with several other fans from this forum at a restaurant across the street from the theater. A marvelous comraderie developed. Food was a secondary priority. Talk of the concert, reports of previous concerts, sharing of stories was the highlight of the gathering.

Finally, we were able to cross the street, pick up our tickets and enter the lobby to check out the various items offered by the vendors and meet more fans. Due to some miscommunication between the theater and the band, only Roscoe Beck was on hand to meet and speak with fans. Hey, that was fine by me. Remember, I was a virgin and any contact with "fame" was a treat. I must say that Roscoe is a very gracious man. He treated each person, whether he had known them from previous stops on the tour or from communication with them thru the forum or other internet contacts, or meeting them for the first time, as personal friends. He eagerly signed autographs, listened to each person with a comment or question, and seemed like a long time friend within seconds.

When allowed into the theater itself, I quickly found my seat....4th row center, thanks to my traveling companion. I easily engaged in conversation with the others seated around me. I was astounded to find that this Native of St.Louis, coming from Birmingham, AL for the show was seated next to a Native of Birmingham, AL who came to this show as a birthday gift from her son who was now living in St.Louis. I wonder just how many people were there to celebrate a birthday? This was my birthday gift to myself and I heard about at least 6-10 others just in the Pit area.

Once The Man jogged onto the stage I was totally mesmerized. Every nuance of body language, every facial expression, every intonation seemed to be meant just for me. The smiles, the looks, the devilish grins....I missed nothing. I watched in fascination as Leonard flirted with Javier as the 2 of them engaged in musical conversation. The little Spaniard's eyes sparkled with an impishness as he responded to Leonard with a rift from his Archelaud. I saw the gleeful banter of expressions between Leonard and Dino, the younger man quivering with the intensity of the music as he played his various "instruments of wind". He moved effortlessly from a Klezmer style clarinet to a jazzy, sexy, smokey Sax. The steady, reliable Bob Metzger brought forth voices from his electrical guitar and "peddle steal". Raphael, that "timekeeper" was one with what at times seemed thousands of drums. Neal Larsen was magical with his "Hammond B3", keyboard and accordian. I noticed that he is no longer coloring his hair but has allowed it to revert to a natural grey-blond. It makes him look years younger. The Webb sisters, the "babies", some would say "babes" of the group were right on no matter what the song. Their cartwheels were a lovely surprise. Sharon Robinson, the consummate lady of Soul, brought the house to their feet with her heartfelt version of "Boogie Street". And then my new friend, Roscoe Beck, ever the cool coordinator. He just sends shivers up my spine when he carresses the standup bass to bring out sounds that touch the very soul.

Yes, Leonard is the MAN! He is the one we all came to see and hear. His love, wit, wisdom, sense of duty, all shine thru like a beacon in the darkest night. "You can add up the parts, but you won't have the sum...." unless those parts include ALL of the ones I described along with the nameless beings in black suits and hats that move effortlessly in the background rearranging instruments and audio equipment, and the ones you don't see working lights and turning dials and pressing buttons. Each one is dependent on the others. Together they present an "Anthem" for the whole world to see.

If you get to experience this, then you are blessed as I have been. RING THE BELLS................

[seadove]

I met him first time at a concert in Tel Aviv in 1972. To be precise it was in the Tel Aviv basketball stadium, it now has a new name, The Nokia stadium.

Of course as usual I was sitting far away but it damn has better seatings than the Ramat Gan football stadium, because it's smaller. But the acoustics was terrible. Yet my brains processed what I heard so I'm not complaining. Leonard came in simplicity, only himself, his guitar, three chorus girls (all blondes, so I noticed) and maybe one or two other guys in the band, I can't remember exactly. It's funny how you remember the blondes but not remember the other guys, lol.

And of course, you must have read somewhere, there was a fight in the audience. Something to do with better seating arrangements, or maybe someone was sitting on seats not his own. So a brawl started, and the ushers came in to sort out the argument, but that was not enough so a couple of cops came into the scene. That, of course, stopped the concert and Cohen begged the audience (and the brawlers) to settle down. That did not help. There was a bit of pushing and a small boxing match started. Cohen took off his guitar, placed it on the stand behind him and joined the match. Lol.

Altogether 45 minutes had been wasted on this but that event was carved on my brains like it happened yesterday. And finally the music started again and I settled down on my seats to absorb Suzanne, So long Marianne and Hey that's no way to say g'bye.

Extasy. Utter extasy. People don't understand me here. They say "Why can't you like Hulio Eglisias like everyone else?" I tell them that he does not touch my perfect body with his mind. Only Leonard Cohen can.

[Lilifyre]

What a wonderful story, Seadove. And your description of the fight over the seats reminds me of a small Orthodox shul I used to attend. Perhaps it's a "Jewish" thing to argue over seats? I can almost hear the disputing parties yelling at each other, "My GRANDFATHER sat in that seat! You can't sit there!"

I can also relate to others not understanding the devotion of Leonard's fans. Here in Birmingham AL I get "Leonard WHO?" or "Who's that?" from people not sure if I'm talking about a singer or a lecturer of some sort. The only ones who seem to register any signs of knowing are the handful of Canadians who have settled here. From them I have gotten, "Are you from Canada?"

He has truly touched my (im)perfect body, along with my soul, with his marvelous mind.

[holydove]

Lili and seadove, I love both your posts. Ever since this tour began, I've been thinking about the first time I ever saw The Master in concert, and trying to remember as much as I can. Now I get a chance to share.

It was in 1970 at my college, Stony Brook University (in New York). I was either 16 or just barely 17 yrs. old (I don't remember what month it was). He performed in the gymnasium (where all the concerts were held), and there were probably about 150 people there. I remember that he walked on & off stage with his female singers on either side of him, arm in arm. We thought it looked like the women were helping him walk on & off the stage because he was too stoned to walk by himself (it could have just been affectionate comeraderie, but that was our interpretation; everyone was pretty stoned in those days). Stoned or not, his performance was spectacular as ever, of course. I also remember vividly that between songs, Leonard kept saying, "There is a humming in the room. . . I hear a humming". Someone might have yelled out, "we hear it too!", but I'm not sure; if noone did, someone (or all of us) should have! I also remember standing in line to get into the concert, and a woman in front of me was quoting the verse from Marianne, "for now I need your hidden love. . ." to her companion.

During Lady Midnight, the audience sang along with the part "you've won me, you've won me, my lord. . ." And he did Tonight Will Be Fine in the upbeat, fast, country-like way that he did it at Isle of Wight - very different from the album version. He did many songs from his first and second album, including Suzanne, The Partisan, Marianne, Stranger Song, etc.

Again, like seadove's account, it was just Leonard with 2 female singers, and 1 or 2 other guitar players. I remember how excited my boyfriend and I were that we were going to see The Man in person. We had both been listening to him since 1969 and we both adored and worshipped him. He mesmerized me then, as now. I've been saying that if I could go back to one night in my life and stay there, that would be the night. But, ideally (since I'm dreaming anyway), I would like to go back with the awareness that I have now; although I loved him madly him even back then, I obviously wouldn't have had the same perception and understanding that I have now (at least something positive comes with age!). But that's how life is, isn't it?

Anyway, being in the presence of Leonard Cohen is always a sublime, magical, mystical experience, and I am eternally grateful for it. We are all so blessed to have him in our lives.

Lili, I am so happy for you that you got to be there with Our Man in St. Louis.

Seadove, I would love to know in what manner Leonard joined that brawl. What exactly did he do? Your story is hilarious.

[seadove]

Holydove wrote:
Seadove, I would love to know in what manner Leonard joined that brawl. What exactly did he do? Your story is hilarious.

Some silly idiot sat on another guy's place, assuming that he would not appear for the concert. Little does he know that it's a habit here to come late to concerts. Lol.

And it appears that the guy refused to leave the seat and go back to his own, so the rightful owner approached an usherer who, at first requested him to depart from the seat, but that did not help.

Due to the fact that Cohen always starts his concert on time, he was in his 2nd song, I don't remember which it was, but then the other people in the audience requested silence because they could not concentrate on Cohen. The usherer eventually brought two cops to drag him out of there and that was the start of a brawl.

In the meantime the concert was stopped and Lennie started to request that people settle down so he can resume the concert but that did not help. One person insulted the other, the other insulted the third, and there was a fist fight, sort of a boxing match. Lol.

Then Cohen, having being ignored from his requests to calm down suddenly ripped off his guitar, put it on the cradle behind him and marched his way toward the browl, against the advice of one of his female vocalists. I could see him trying to stop the browl, the police panicked when they saw Cohen in the fight so one of them called for other cops to come in. Within seconds cops were all over the place and within some 7 minutes the trouble maker was ushered out by the police, Cohen went back to the stage and took his guitar. He apologised for the inconveniences. The music started and everyone was happy thereafter.

Altogether some 45 minutes of the concert was wasted but we were compensated of course. We did not lose any Cohen material, only some sleep of the night.

[holydove]

Seadove, lol is right - you cracked me up again! But how interesting that even from day one, Leonard was willing to engage so fully, and put himself right in the middle of it, for the sake of others and to settle the conflict. I don't blame the police for panicking when they saw that. Our Leonard was born, not only with a golden voice, but with a golden heart too! And how characteristic of him to not deprive his audience of the full setlist because of that "inconvenience" (lol), (that HE took upon himself to apologize for!), regardless of how late it was. I am endlessly in awe of The Man's spaciousness and generosity.

Beautiful story, seadove, thank you for your response.

[lizzytysh]

I'm reading this thread for the first and didn't complete it [will return later for that]... however, DID read and laughed continuously throughout seadove's. What a TRIP!


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

And your description of the fight over the seats reminds me of a small Orthodox shul I used to attend. Perhaps it's a "Jewish" thing to argue over seats? I can almost hear the disputing parties yelling at each other, "My GRANDFATHER sat in that seat! You can't sit there!"

This was TOO funny, too !!!

Lilifyre ~ Thanks for your lovely account. It sounds like you really had a great time. I love your name.


~ Lizzy

[John Etherington]

What a good idea for a thread...a very obvious one, actually, but I can't remember it coming up before. Like seadove, my first concert was 1970, and in my case the Royal Albert Hall on May 10th. What amazes me, is that I actually remember very little about it, but much more the circumstances around it. I had got into Leonard's music at Christmas 1968 when I heard "Sisters of Mercy" on "The Rock Machine Turns You On" album. As an instant devotee, I bought "Songs From a Room" on its release and "Songs of Leonard Cohen" shortly after. I also bought "Selected Poems" which I found intriguing, even though much of it was mysterious and indecipherable to me. I regarded Leonard the singer and Leonard the poet as two very different people, yet somehow embraced both.

In those days, a year was a long time. Thus, when I heard that Leonard was appearing at The Royal Albert Hall, the concept of this revered singer/poet coming to these shores already filled me with a great sense of occasion (I was prepared by Dylan's visit to the Isle of Wight the previous year). When I purchased my tickets, they had already been on sale for a few days, so I had to accept tickets about twelve rows back, towards the right hand side of the arena! (I believe they were fifteen shillings each). I also enquired about Leonard's poetry reading at the I.C.A. the following day, but tickets were sold out. At the time, I was working in my second job at a shipping office in the city, after being kicked out of insurance some months previously. I invited a girl named Anne from the office who was into Simon and Garfunkel and Peter Sarstedt. I was filled with nervous apprehension about how the date would go, and thus didn't build up to the event in the way that I might have done. At the time, my main topics of conversation were astral travel (based on a book I read called "The Mind Travellers" by Brad Steiger) and LSD (based on reading "The Politics of Ecstasy" by Timothy Leary). I was living at with my parents and had only tried marijuana once, but had developed a habit of telling people that they should "tune in, turn on, and drop out". As I recall, this didn't go down too well with my date, and the conversation was a little awkward when we shared a drink in the bar at the Albert Hall.

The description given by Nick Logan in the NME of "a slightly hunched finger in a safari jacket" fits my memory of Leonard well. I wished we had been sitting closer, even though the seats were actually pretty good. I remember there were two female singers and a few other musicians, but had little memory of what was played until I checked Jim Devlin's "Is This What You Wanted" listing. As it turns out, the set was pretty similar to the Isle of Wight, albeit in a different order. Leonard recited two poems which I already knew ("Dead Song" and "For E.J.P"). Surprisingly (in retrospect) he sang three songs from his as yet unheard of third album Thus, we had previews of "Avalanche", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Joan of Arc". I largely forgot about these, even though I remembered that Leonard had sung a new song about “Joan of Arc”. Thus, they all came to me as totally fresh when I heard them on “Songs of Love of Hate” the following year.

Overall my memory of the event is that it was a very serious one, with maybe a hint of droll humour. The audience were totally respectful, as was the case in those days. For me, the truly unforgettable part was Leonard performing “Please Don’t Pass Me By”, and I remember joining in on this. As Leonard sang “don’t be the person that you came with”... I strongly felt the potential for personal change that he was invoking. And that was that...I might have read a couple of brief reviews in the music papers, but hardly anyone was into Leonard in those days, so discussion of the event went no further.

[Lilifyre]

Thanks Lizzy and everyone who posted here. I certainly hope that the next tour....or is it a continuation of the current tour?????...... ends up somewhere close enough for me to attend. Once is NOT enough when it comes to seeing Leonard in concert. As I posted elsewhere, Leonard Cohen is a drug....a VERY good drug! I'm hopelessly addicted.

Lili

[B4real]

Well this is my number 100 post and I wanted to make it something special so here it is.

I have been thinking about posting in this thread since lilyfyre started it but wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to tell my story. Reading Arlene’s moving experience on another thread has prompted me to do it. You see, it’s not so much about the first time I saw Leonard in concert but what forces actually led me in that direction. I’ll try to keep it as brief as I can, but trust me, it has been quite complicated.

In 2004 I had a heart attack. Totally unexpected because I was a vegetarian, fit, healthy, normal weight, didn’t drink or smoke and looked at least ten years younger. Two years went by with incessant trips and unexplained symptoms to the doctor and still no explanation as to what and why this happened. Then the unthinkable, I had a second heart attack - still no answers as to why - very lucky to have survived both episodes. It was only by my insistence to humour me and do yet another round of tests that finally led to me being alive today.

I was accidentally diagnosed with an extremely rare tumour - 1 in 3,000,000. That’s right; only one person in 3 million has been discovered alive with this. Most are found in autopsies or by accident in live people – the latter is what happened to me. It seemed I didn't have much choice. If I didn't have an operation I was going to die and there was every chance I was going to die during the operation. Dammed if I did and dammed if I didn't. I survived the complicated surgery and have to be checked out with tests as long as I live. I feel fine now.

Back to the main thrust of this thread – while this tumour was growing inside me and I didn’t know it, I was watching a TV programme “House” which was about this person who had the same rare tumour as me. The episode was called “Acceptance”. You can read the life you’re living, but you can’t change a word. At the end of the programme a song was playing which I thought I hadn’t heard before but sounded vaguely familiar. It was “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley.

Leonard once said that if he had made a difference in just one life he would be pleased. He has inadvertently done this with my “new” life so my spiritual connection to him is sealed.

The direction of your life’s journey is pre-determined. Nothing is a coincidence. The mouth of time shall have its way. One thing led to another and I rediscovered Leonard with a passion unlike I had all those years ago. I was satisfied with this – then I discovered this forum and found that he was actually coming to Australia. I was beside myself. I rang up locally here and managed to get centre second row seats.

There are no words I can use to describe how I felt. You all know the feeling. I was liquefied into his words. I couldn’t actually believe I would ever see him in person, not way over here. The three hours went by so quickly. I thought I would never see him again but as is it pre-determined, I can hopefully relive that experience again sometime this year..........seems like the first time is now in danger of being replaced with the second time.

[GinaDCG]

Wow! What stories! My first concert experience, while personally great, is so tame in comparison.

B4Real -- glad you got your diagnosis. I have a rare disorder, but it's not THAT rare -- and treatment consists of swallowing a pill every day. Again, congratulations on the diagnosis. That's half the battle, or more like 3/4s of the battle, when you are a medical "zebra." (You know the truism they teach in med school? If you hear hoofbeats in Central Park you should think "horse" and not "zebra." Which is just fine if you're one of the horses."

[MaryB]

I'm always fascinated by the stories of how others discovered LC. Some are touching, others spiritual, some poignant, others life-saving, some are funny. We see all this range from all of you, Lili, seadove, Rachel, John and B4real, here. Whatever feelings LC evoked from people, these are feelings that many of us here totally understand.

There have been a number of threads that are in the same realm and are just as interesting, for example
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13243#p150160
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5410

I so appreciate you all sharing your experiences here - thank you!

Warmest regards,
Mary

[bridger15]

while this tumour was growing inside me and I didn’t know it, I was watching a TV programme “House” which was about this person who had the same rare tumour as me. The episode was called “Acceptance”. You can read the life you’re living, but you can’t change a word.

B4real, thank you for sharing your amazing story, especially as it was your 100th post. You mentioned on another thread that I sparked you to write this particular post. Well, we have another connection. My son, whose name is Leonard, was a writer on HOUSE form 2006-2009. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0225272/film ... #tt0412142
Although he did not write the episode you mentioned, I still think this is an interesting connection.
---Arlene

[B4real]

Oh Arlene,

This continues to be a remarkable set of circumstances! If your son Leonard had actually written that episode, it would be totally unbelievable! You must be very proud of him for doing what he does.

This story seems to be a thousand words deep. I might be sitting down, but I'm standing up on the inside.

I think you could safely say that our stars are somewhat aligned.