Leonard Cohen, Academy of Music, May 12th [Photo by MICHAEL T. REGAN]
To the delight of his legions of fans, Leonard Cohen will once again return to the U.S. this fall for the final leg of his critically acclaimed 2009 World Tour. Since taking the stage earlier this year at New York’s Beacon Theatre — his first stateside performance in more than fifteen years — Mr. Cohen has enchanted audiences, earning rave reviews and sold-out concerts across the globe. While the acclaimed singer/songwriter/poet is currently dazzling crowds across Europe, his fall return to the U.S. will mark the final engagements of the intimate, superbly crafted concert tour. Encore performances have been added in a number of cities including Philadelphia on October 22nd for one of the last concerts ever at the soon-to-be-closed Wachovia Spectrum. Tickets for the newly added concerts will go on sale beginning Monday, August 3, 2009. Additional tour information is available at www.LeonardCohen.com and www.AEGLive.com.
PREVIOUSLY: The Great Man glides onstage in black pinstripes and a fedora like a gangster cantor, double-breasted and tie-less, his crisp creamy blue shirt buttoned-up to the neck David Lynch-style. He seems to walk on air. He was born like this, he had no choice, he was born with the gift of a golden voice. Now his friends are gone and his hair is grey, he aches in the places he used to play. After all these years, he’s still crazy for love but he’s not coming on. At 74, broke and hat in hand, he is still paying his rent every day in the Tower of Song. For the next three hours, he dispenses what amount to be prayers and we will need them where we are going. For he has seen the future, baby, and it is murder. Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor. And, he says, there is a mighty judgment coming, though he might be wrong. But this much is true: we may be ugly, he insists, but we have the music. Because everybody knows the rich write history, but the poor write the songs. His mind is still sharp as a razor blade and he remembers them all: the one who gave him head in an unmade bed, the sisters of mercy with dew on their hem, the one in the famous blue raincoat who was gonna go ‘clear,’ the bird on a wire, the drunk in the midnight choir. All of them, the Great Man included, have tried in their own way, to be free. MORE
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Patron saint of life’s beautiful losers. With a lyrical acuity far beyond those of 
mortal men and a baritone that sinks lower than the submarine in Das Boot, Leonard Cohen has forged a craggy reputation as the quintessential singer/songwriter’s singer/songwriter–not bad for a guy who, technically speaking, can’t even sing. […] Having established himself in the literary world, Cohen began seeking entree into the music scene. The timing could not have been more perfect, with Dylan having opened the door for poets to be pop stars and conversely raising the songwriting bar to the degree that pop stars now had to be poets. MORE