“Hineni, Hineni” Yes, I'm here. I knew this sad news could get to me; but I'm not sure that “I’m ready” to receive it.
"Traveling Light", I could not find better words to translate it into Catalan (llum viatgera o viatjo lleuger, oi Bea?). Anyway, I feel that this light is still traveling with me, as for so many many years. His Work continues and will continue into me.
Many things have happened since I wrote the presentation of my website in 2005; Leonard has produced more works and came out for triumphant tours, I have achieved legendary concerts than I wished (Albert Hall, Wight and even Barcelona 1974), I have felt his presence in three more concerts and, over all, I have shared all with wonderful fans than I have met in Leonard Cohen Files and in my own city.
These days I'm restoring the site, it was very desolated. Now I see it as a fan's place more than a collector. It's a branch of my personal website, this part is written in Catalan and translated to English, the best than I know, for the people of Leonard Cohen Files.
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Because ofI said to a few friends that I would do for them a list of the things that I have of Leonard, as it was doing enough good, here you have it; in my personal Web. Speaking about supposed freaks attitudes and the questionable phenomenon of the fans, sometimes I think that the fact to collect will be a pathological characteristic, especially worrisome when it begins to have an appearance of obsession. If we paid attention, the things that I have were kept from the time in which they interested to me, I got them just at the moment. Now simply I documented it better, classified and kept all in a sacred sanctuary. Everything very natural. It is an unfinished collection. All you can see in red means that I do not have it and I'm interested, but I know already there are things that never I will be able to obtain, as the Albert Hall complete concert or the Isle of Wight of 1970, this is the time that like more. |
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The relationMy conscious relation with Cohen began by the 1972 when I listenedYou Know Who I Am from one CBS's promotion disc. Absolutely captivated I fell interested for the whole work of this poet. The subjects that he was treating and the way he was doing simply had impressed the teenager. He continues being for me guide who, a few years ahead, tells me my future. In the playbill of the 1980 I wrote the first phrase of Bird On The Wire and I hooked it in wall, in front my table, in order to remember me my commitment with my freedom, I was conscious of the impossibility to keep it. I put away it, with extreme care when, to linger a fatal moment, I betrayed to the Men of Action (The Traitor) for to create a place to procreate and to love for always more. Now the good one of Leonard already speaks to me about the end.. The relations not always have been easy I have not even been a faithful pupil. His hard critics to the prophets of the Age of Aquarius when he did what could in that time, the lack of a political commitment in the direction that I wished and, finally, my reading of The Future (1992) they led me to being absent to the 1993 tour. Time everything cures and a tender encounter came. I confess it, I was the one who excused by that bad-tempered attitude. |
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The presenceBreavman and Krantz went of hunting to communist meetings more interested in to know where the Tamara's long legs arrived that in the yankis bombs full of contagious mosquitoes. For some reason they were interested to living those meetings. Mon pays malhereux! What was doing an Anglophile Jew in that demonstration? Catched by the political or sexual collective excitation, it dosen't matter. He went to the Havana in April of the 1961 in full crisis of unforseeable consequences or to listed like volunteer in the war of the Yom Kippur to the 1973 where two peoples of long noses were clashed. The soldier of the life wants to be there, and to live it. Oh! What would give by having been in the Albert Hall that 20th May 1970 and to be dragged by the Please Don't Pass Me By! I was near him in concerts in Barcelona of 1980 and 1988, in a too big space for my liking and for him, approximately 8000 spectators, even so, his warmth and honesty moved to us deeply. Antoni Molist, ForYourSmile, Barcelona February 2005 |
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Photos: Albert Fortuny, interview by Constantino Romero Leonard Cohen, palabras y silencios for the magazine Vivraciones, November 1974, first Leonard Cohen magazine cover in Spain. Playbill for concerts of Leonard Cohen 1980, 16 November in San Sebastián and 17 November in Barcelona. |
In the Palau de la Musica Catalana, a modernist building designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1908), maybe the most beautiful Barcelona place, more if we bear in mind its social function. It is the home of the Orfeó Català, a lyrical association.
October 12th was Saturday, after the success of the first concert a second concert was hurriedly scheduled on Sunday morning (a matinee), October 13th.
Cohen presented his album New Skin for the Old Ceremony.
The band:
Jeff Layton, banjo, guitar, mandolin, strings
Johnny Miller, bass
John Lissauer, keyboards, saxophone, woodwind
Erin Dickens, vocals
Emily Binding, vocals
Years later Cohen has given us many surprises, but I personally love this time, this sound (that of John Lissauer), and these songs.
Leonard Cohen remained concentrate on his music in the first part surrounded for a warm public who recognised the songs.
Returning to the stage for the second part, he thanked the attention for his music and said the famous phrase: My guitar is come home. He spoke about the many social changes, expectations and dreams of those years. (Spain - in this moment still in a dictatorship - lived times of political transition, times of hope and fear in front a possible regression, many people had political commitments. Gigs as this were a gateway to the world). This changes and turbulent times were in the Chelsea Hotel too. He introduced the song mentioned a famous singer without giving her name.
In the second part he presented nearly every song, after the Sisters of Mercy introduced the band, then the song written for the soldiers of both sides: Lover Lover Lover. Before a beautiful Seems So Long Ago, Nancy, Cohen played some dots of Los cuatro muleros, a popular Spanish song recovered by Lorca. Federico García Lorca wrote the lyrics and he recorded it, playing the piano, with La Argentina. It's a song linked to the Spanish Civil War.
At the end he performed a heartrending blues, The Butcher and repeated as encore Bird On The Wire and The Partisan. When he reached the expected phrase "freedom soon will come, then we'll come from the shadows", the public began in applause, the applause was a demonstration of the longing for the freedom. Because the fascism was kept in Europe at the end of WWII.
On October 14 he performed in Madrid.
I could not be in this concert, although I lived it many times, thanks to GB, JA and unknown people that recorded it
My guitar is come home - Barcelona 1974 |
Los cuatro muleros - Barcelona 1974 |
