Everybody Knows

Everybody knows I have a list of what I consider my Top Five singer-songwriters of all time. I’ve been saying this to people for years and have even mentioned it in my classes a few times. They are as follows:

1. Bob Dylan.
2. Leonard Cohen.
3. John Lennon.
4. Hank Williams.
5. Johnny Cash.

These five men are the best ever, period, as far as I’m concerned. And the last three people on that list are dead and gone. Hey-hey, my-my.

So, yeah, I got me some tickets to see Leonard Cohen at Holy Heart of Mary auditorium. Leonard and I go a long ways back, see. When I was a teenager, Leonard Cohen supposedly was pretty passé already. He was famous for his days as a poet-singer-songwriter in Montreal in the Sixties and world-renowned for his sardonic, wry insights on the human condition—though mostly, I think, they were the Cohen Condition. No one sees the world quite like Leonard. To me, he was never passé. I don’t even care about passé. I don’t believe in it. But the one word that’s always been associated with Leonard Cohen, whether he was twenty or sixty, is “cool”. That’s just what he is.

I had several of his CDs by the time I was in my twenties. Many a-night when I was an undergrad I would sit up in my (or somebody’s) apartment late at night, sitting in the dark with just a candle glowing, drinking or whatever, gabbing about life and philosophy with whoever was with me, and Leonard Cohen provided the soundtrack. Bird On A Wire. Suzanne. The Future. So Long, Marianne. The Chelsea Hotel. The Sisters of Mercy. I could go on and on. Every one of his songs—every word, for that matter—carried more meaning than a thousand words from Kanye or Eminem or Tupac, or any others who followed in his footsteps. And don’t tell me it’s an unfair comparison. What those other strive(d) for was poetry; what came out was rhyme. Cohen is to modern poetry and songwriting what Neil Young is to Grunge rock. All others just pale in comparison.

When I heard that LC was inducted into the rock hall of fame a month or so ago, I said, “Well, it’s about bloody time.” A day later, when it was announced he was going on tour for the first time in sixteen years, I said, “Well, that’s another great show that will never set foot in St. John’s in a million years.” A week after that, it was miraculously announced that Leonard Cohen would, indeed, be coming to St. John’s.

You have to understand—for those who know what he’s about, this is like Jesus coming to Hollywood. It just shouldn’t happen because it’s just too weird and surreal. I’m not into hero worship of any kind, but I know a once-in-a-lifetime event when I see one. And this is one of them. People from Australia to Antarctica are pleading for him to come to their city, but he chose St. John’s, possibly because of the Feast of Cohen show at the LSPU Hall every December, which pays homage to the master’s songs and his vibe.

I’ve decided that I don’t want to just go and think how cool it is to be sitting there, listening to one of the greatest songwriting icons of our time so close up on that stage. It would be so easy to just get caught up in the bigness of the moment that you forget to be in the moment. I want to experience the Leonard Cohen experience. I want to go and listen to what he’s saying when he sings because that’s why he wrote those songs and why he still sings them—because he’s still got something to say that means something to him. And he says it like no one else.

And if that weren’t enough, just a few days later, I found out that Bob Dylan is coming to play on the same weekend.

I mean, freakin’ Bob Dylan! The biggest solo artist, and I do mean artist and poet and songwriter, of our lifetime, is coming to St. John’s.

I’m in heaven. Or at least knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Now if we could only get them both on the same stage, that would be something.