During the age of confusion called 1960s, the songs of Leonard Cohen were a source of poetic gravity. For me he was the greatest poet to emerge from the era’s music, and while not the most influential, certainly the most consistent. The aura of having traveled the road of experience to the end of the night shone in the performance documented on the DVD-CD set Live at the Isle of Wright 1970 (released by Columbia Legacy).
The Isle of Wright Festival was England’s answer to Woodstock, but where some particle of organization within the apparent chaos kept the upstate New York event from spinning out of hand, the Isle of Wright was the sort of debacle that gives anarchy a bad name. The mostly spoiled, middle-class hippy audience decided it didn’t want to pay to see the bands and broke down fences, set fires and disrupted performances. Cohen, stepping on stage at 4 a.m. unshaven and disheveled in a safari suit, captured the audience with a bardic, childhood recollection and held them spellbound through such grave yet hopeful songs as “Bird on the Wire,” “You Know Who I Am,” “The Stranger Song” and “Suzanne.” Cohen was most spectacular when alone with his guitar or minimally accompanied by a pair of women singers. The large gaggle of musicians that occupied the stage with everything from banjo to ocarina, and numbering such unlikely figures as Charlie Daniels on fiddle and a hand-clapping Kris Kristoffersen, surrounded Cohen with a ragged hootenanny sound that brought him close to John Prine territory.
The CD includes Cohen’s complete performance. Along with showing parts of the darkness before dawn concert, the DVD includes interviews with some of the participants, including Cohen’s manager-reluctant keyboardist Bob Johnston, and scenes from the unruly crowed that fell into the poet’s hands.
