Pity the man who doesn’t travel with his own Persian rug. That was the first sign of Leonard Cohen at Coachella 2009—a deep red relic, unfurled carefully on a dusty side stage, then fussed over and rearranged by burly stagehands like waiters setting a banquet. Only a few hundred of us were on the field to witness the proceedings—most attendees had been snared by the tractor beams of the nearby dance tents, or were hopping blithely to Franz Ferdinand on the mainstage—and we were not a decorous crowd, with dirt streaking our sunburns and mouths lolling open.
When Cohen took the stage—ambling over, head cocked, as if intrigued into diversion by his own band—he stood squarely on this carpet, peering down at us. He seemed astonished to see even this meager, motley assortment. To the seamy guitar sway of “Dance Me to the Edge of Love,” he paced the rug’s perimeter, tipping his fedora flirtatiously to the backup singers. For “Bird on the Wire,” he gazed serenely over our heads, past the palm trees into some distant repose. To the doleful organ wisps of “Hallelujah,” he kneeled, eyes clenched shut as his baritone approached a quaking roar. To his penitent posture, we sang every word back; when his eyes opened, they were full of tears.
Cohen performs June 18, 2013 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Wolff/Patrick/Redferns/Getty Images)
Two months before Coachella, Cohen had played his first American show in 15 years, at the Beacon Theater in New York. The spring before, he’d launched a European and Canadian tour that wended through Spain, Greece, England, Norway, his native Montreal, and more. The performances felt like bequeathments from a visiting dignitary, serene and warm—Cohen finally seemed unfazed onstage, with no quivers of hisepic past stage fright in sight—they had desperate origins. In 2005, Cohen’s longtime manager Kelley Lynch was discovered to have embezzled over $5 million from the artist’s retirement account, leaving the then-71-year-old with just$150,000; Lynch had also surreptitiously sold many of Cohen’s publishing rights in the 1990s. To take Lynch to court, and extend itsincreasingly messy and humiliating proceedings, Cohen had to mortgage his house. The tour was Cohen’s only option to replenish the coffers, and it became a marathon—the juggernaut was extended into 2010, and dubbed “The Grand Tour” by fans and press (Cohen warmed to the title, too). All told, he performed387 shows between 2008 and 2013.
It felt strange during this trek, and wildly unjust, to know that Leonard Cohen was in this difficult position. In his music, he found questions beautiful—the real ones worth asking, about love and faith and purpose—yet he seemed preternaturally wise to the answers, and was patiently conversing with us as we straggled behind his pace. By this point in his life, he seemed above such mundane concerns, and even disinterested in music; he had steadily distanced himself from the business, even becoming ordained as a monk in 1996. But his certain reluctance for the tour was absent onstage; his performances were spry and generous, an about-face from his early reputation as a sullen performer; now he skipped across arena stages in a suit, intoning every marbled word of “Famous Blue Raincoat” and “Suzanne” with zeal. His sets lasted two-and-a-half hours on average, punctuated by half-hour intermissions in which misty-eyed audiences gathered their bags, then were shocked as intercom announcements implored them to stay. Two albums, Live in London and Songs From the Road, captured their applause, far and away more rapturous than on his previous tours. Seeing Cohen was an event again, and an understood privilege.
The great surprise was that this tour, this assumed valediction, begat an amazing last leg in Cohen’s career. The financial mess didn’t degrade his autumn years; it revitalized them. In 2012, he returned to the studio for the first time since 2004’s uneven Dear Heather; releasing Old Ideas, an album sharp and cathartic in its familiar melding of spiritual rumination, mordant wit, and elegant carnality. His shrugging nasal delivery of the ’60s, once the embodiment of the era’s casual bohemia, had deepened into a sobering thrum. Popular Problems, keenly experimental with nods to his country roots, arrived next. He published a pensive new book of poetry, Book of Longing. He opened his arms and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award fell in. His steady hand on the tiller had taken him somewhere beautiful.
Last month’s glorious new album You Want It Darker was prefaced by Cohen’s unsentimental admission of being “ready to die.” Not least for that, it was heard by many (includingmyself) as his last testament. Today, we know that was in a sense true; its perfect twining of religious open-heartedness and winking fatalism was a deliberate, curated parting statement akin to David Bowie’s Blackstar. It’s very hard to imagine any of this happening, with such intense vivacity and grace, without the Grand Tour reigniting his passion. It was just like Cohen to turn misfortune into poetry.