Still Your Man: Leonard Cohen Takes Back Manhattan

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Click here for more photos from Leonard Cohen's performance.

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On his first U.S. stage in 15 years, Leonard Cohen smiled in a gangster suit. He removed his fedora and bowed deeply—to the 2,800 fans who paid premium to pack into Manhattan's gilded Beacon Theatre, then to the admiring musicians around him who answered by launching into "Dance Me to the End of Love." Cohen fell to a crouch. At 74, was he finally too feeble to perform standing? Or was his body channeling the song's supplication—"lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove"?

Through the night, it appeared the latter. Cohen eschewed infirmity on all accounts, skipping on- and off-stage with youthful glee, singing poised on his knees, singing knock-kneed, singing tip-toed, singing curled sideways like an upside-down question mark. He soft-shoed a bit during "The Future," demonstrating its "white man dancing." He shadow-boxed for the briefest of moments. And he spryly took the night into overtime, with two extended sets and three encores—nearly three full hours of performance.

With so much time, the Montreal-born songwriter hit his bases. Of his 12 studio albums, only 1977's Phil Spector-produced Death of a Ladies' Man and Cohen's most recent release, 2004's Dear Heather, saw no love. (Which meant a tasteful snub of "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On"). Soul vocalist and Cohen's recent collaborator, Sharon Robinson, was on hand to sing "In My Secret Life" from 2001's 10 New Songs. And the show harkened all the way back to Cohen's first tune, "Suzanne," which chanteuse Judy Collins had to coax him onstage to debut almost 42 years ago.

The rest of the set careened like so, between older and newer tracks, with the band backing in production values reminiscent of the smooth, synth-laden I'm Your Man. Cohen found a friend in bandurria, laud and 12-string guitar player Javier Mas, who spun out busy Spanish tones over each song to great effect. Keyboardist Neil Larsen peeled paint with a few Hammond B3 solos, and when saxophonist Dino Soldo managed to keep his hips and vibrato in check, his lounge-blues breathiness did augment the mix. Cohen seemed taken with the players, introducing them with alliterative grandiosity twice over the night's course. And while Robinson and twin vocalists The Webb Sisters vamped on "Tower of Song"'s chirping background vocal line, "doo-dum-dum-dum-da-doo-dum-dum," Cohen entreated them to continue. "Please don't stop, we have need of you," he said. "You have the answer to the great riddle of suffering and existence."

Cohen made sure to hit crowd favorites like "So Long, Marianne," "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," "Sisters of Mercy" and "Bird on a Wire," which came through in swirling gospel throes. Resolute fans appreciated "First We Take Manhattan," "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" as well, not missing the chance to cheer references to New York's cold weather, Clinton Street and, yes, the once-tawdry Chelsea Hotel. When he strapped on a guitar, as he did for a handful of the older numbers, his classic singer/songwriter stance coalesced into rebirth, every time.

It was 10 songs in before Cohen finally took a moment to reflect. "It's been a long time since I've stood on a stage in New York City," he admitted. "I was 60-years-old—just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac." He went on to list a long catalog of prescription drugs he'd taken over the last decade and a half—as the audience laughed riotously—and he described his hard study of religion and philosophy, partially done in his retreat at the Mount Baldy Zen Center. "But cheerfulness kept breaking through," he said.

Which is the thing with Leonard Cohen. There is darkness with loneliness, desire into sin and salvation and struggle, Biblical loves that fail to love biblically—but always that uplift, breaking through. This was as evident at his comeback concert as ever before. "Hard times are coming," he said shortly before the intermission. "They say it might be worse than Y2K." He paused for laughter before coming to his Cohen-esque flourish. "So: 'Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.'" Slowly the crowd caught on. "'There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in.'" His band picked him up to enter into the song he had elliptically introduced, "Anthem."

Cohen certainly knows about hard times. An unspoken element of his vault out of retirement is financial trouble with a former manager, which left him without his monetary due. But even his low, rumbling voice by itself—if possible even lower and more rumbly than before, and still as full of soul as a tabernacle on holy days—cast off any fear that an ulterior motive might cast a shadow on his performance. And, thankfully for fans of Cohen's reemergence, there are to be 28 more tour dates, many of them in the U.S., starting April 2 in Austin, Texas.

The concert finally came to a halt after the third encore, with Cohen accenting "I hope you're satisfied" in a cheeky rendition of "I Tried to Leave You" and bringing all players to the microphones to chorale on "Wither Thou Goest." Under swooning harmonies, he thanked and blessed the crowd, who were on their umpteenth standing ovation of the night.

But even if the concert ended there, it echoes on. During his consummate performance of the oft-covered "Hallelujah," Cohen growled in spiritual tones. He sang it not like Jeff Buckley, or John Cale, or Rufus Wainwright. He sang it like its proginator—a supplicant, down on his knees, rising to sing the refrain's "Hallelujah" as light poured in on the stage. As the story goes, Cohen wrote reams for the song—he claims two notebooks' worth, over 80 verses total. When he recorded it for Various Positions, however, he ended with a verse that Buckley's, Cale's and Wainwright's versions skip (they sign off with "it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"): "Even though it all went wrong / I'll stand right here before the Lord of Song / With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!" It's a rising note to leave with, a man standing up to give what he has. Somewhere else, the rest of the verses reverberate, felt if not heard. But on Thursday night, the audience members were privy to what they'd been missing for 15 years: There is the light, and here is Leonard, opening the crack to let it in.

Set List:

Dance Me to the End of Love

The Future

Ain’t No Cure For Love

Bird on a Wire

Everybody Knows

In My Secret Life

Who By Fire

Chelsea Hotel No. 2

Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye

Sisters of Mercy

Anthem