| Main Performers | Leonard Cohen - vocal, guitar |
| Secondary Performers | Guitarists,
Two female backing singers |
| Set List | 'Bird on the Wire' ,Judy Collins,
'So Long, Marianne',
'You Know Who I Am',
Poem, 'Dead Song',
'Lady Midnight
'One of Us Cannot Be Wrong',
'The Stranger Song',
Poem, 'For E J P',
'Avalanche',
'Joan of Arc',
'Tonight Will Be Fine'
INTERVAL
'The Partisan',
'Sisters of Mercy',
'Diamonds in the Mine',
'Story of Isaac',
'Famous Blue Raincoat',
'Sing Another Song, Boys',
'Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye,'
'Suzanne',
'Please Don't Pass Me By' |
| Performance Notes | Debut Royal Albert Hall performance by Leonard Cohen.
The event was recorded.
"Leonard Cohen is a poet whose lyrics read as well as they sing and it would be tempting to regard the acclamation with which he was greeted at last nights Albert Hall concert as an indication that the Continental tradition of the poet-songmaker is striking roots in the English speaking world. How much his reception was due to Cohens status as new-found cult figure for the adolescent versions of the audience that applauded Frank Sinatra last week is hard to establish.
Certainly his appeal is not purely literary, and the pretty girls in his audience no doubt found something stimulating in his world-weary stance of the man who has seen and done so much more than they reflected in the tortured Jewish-Christian metaphors of his erotic songs.
At their most facile, his verses are special pleading verging on the specious, but nevertheless his images compel attention to his recurring theme of our interdependence, even as we savage each other, the repetitive nature of his almost banal melodies forces us to listen to the detail of what he is singing so that the words stick in the memory more persistently than any other singer-songwriter - at least, on this side of the Channel."
(The Times, 11 May 1970) |