It was gone two in the morning by the time he finally got on stage after being woken from a nap in his trailer. Out front the mood among the throng โ€“ an astonishing 600,000 strong โ€“ was a mixture of blissed-out and fired-up after five days of music, ragged sleep and running battles between the organisers and the โ€˜free festival radicalsโ€™ occupying โ€˜Desolation Rowโ€™, the hill overlooking the site. Backstage there were jitters โ€“ already that night there had been an onstage fire, a wilful act of arson, during Jimi Hendrixโ€™s slot.

Unfazed, Leonard Cohen wandered onstage cool as an English summer. Shaggy, stubbled, tanned, and sporting a tightly belted safari suit (possibly the only time said garment has seemed dashing), he looked more film star than rock icon. At almost 36, he was, Miles Davis aside, the oldest act on a sprawling, stellar bill.

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Cohenโ€™s subsequent performance was remarkable for its poise, its passion and the way it defused the tension crackling in the air. Before he had even played a note Cohen had seized his moment by reminiscing about his childhood visits to the circus and getting the audience to hold up a lighted match (a gesture yet to descend into clichรฉ) and by singing, ad lib, โ€œItโ€™s good to be here alone in front of 600,000 peopleโ€.

When Cohen finally swoops into a solemn โ€œBird On A Wireโ€, the crowdโ€™s collective exhalation is almost tangible. Thereafter, Cohen never lets his grip slacken over 80 minutes, towing his audience through songs that were already causes cรฉlรจbres โ€“ โ€œSo Long Marianneโ€, โ€œSuzanneโ€, โ€œLady Midnightโ€ โ€“ and startling them withintroductions that are sometimes poems, sometimes narratives. โ€œI wrote this in a peeling room in the Chelsea hotelโ€ฆ I was coming off amphetamine and pursuing a blonde lady whom I met in a Nazi poster,โ€ is his lead-in to โ€œOne Of Us Canโ€™t Be Wrongโ€.

The confidential introductions and Cohenโ€™s tousled appearance lend proceedings a drowsy intimacy, though whether Lenโ€™s half-closed eyes and sleepy manner are due to his recent nap or the ingestion of some festive substance is unclear. In this early part of his career, long before the more detached and oblique commentator of the 1980s emerged, the confessional was, in any case, Cohenโ€™s default position, the sense of his nakedness enhanced by minimal backings.

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Here heโ€™s accompanied by a classy quartet of US session players (including producer Bob Johnston) whose acoustic guitars strum and ripple gently behind him while Johnston sounds hymnal organ parts and a trio of female singers provide harmony and gospel choruses. Incongruously, Cohen dubbed the group โ€˜The Armyโ€™.

The commanding presence, though, remains Cohenโ€™s voice, never a thing of supple beauty for sure, and prone to wander into the wrong key, but by turns sensual and fervid and always perfectly paced for lyrics that chime with poetic grace. The versions here of โ€œThe Strangerโ€, โ€œThe Partisanโ€, and โ€œYou Know Who I Amโ€, to mention just three, have a steely exuberance absent from the more mannered takes on his first two albums. Whether singing, reciting or talking, Cohen never misses a phonetic beat. At times even the band, who had just accompanied him on a European tour, seem as mesmerised by his spoken forays as the crowd.

Thereโ€™s a clever underlying structure to the set, too, that alternates a jolt or two of slow, lingering romance with more uptempo offerings. Hence, after โ€œโ€ฆMarianneโ€ comes a bounding โ€œLady Midnightโ€, while โ€œThe Strangerโ€ is followed by a countrified take on โ€œTonight Will Be Fineโ€ featuring banjo and fiddle, the latter by Charlie Daniels. In a wry preface to โ€œTonightโ€, Cohen sings of his โ€œsad and famous songsโ€ alongside a cheery dedication to โ€œthe poison snakes on Desolation Hillโ€. Ouch!

โ€œThatโ€™s No Way To Say Goodbyeโ€, forlorn as ever, is pursued by a riotous version of โ€œDiamonds In The Mineโ€, one of three tracks here that would ultimately see release on 1971โ€™s Songs of Love And Hate, said album also including the Isle of Wight performance of โ€œSing Another Song Boysโ€. This would have been the crowdโ€™s first encounter with both songs, as with โ€œFamous Blue Raincoatโ€, rendered here with gruff, arresting determination. After that, โ€œSeems So Long Ago, Nancyโ€ seems almost an afterthought to a set that, across a 40-year chasm, still astonishes.

NEIL SPENCER

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