Leonard Cohen - Kungliga Tennishall, Stockholm, Sweden, 4-3-1972

A few days ago, I posted a Leonard Cohen concert from 1972. Here's another one. Like the one I posted, which took place in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 20, 1972, I believe this one has never been easily publicly available until now.

I have to repeat the gist of some things I wrote about the Tel Aviv concert, because there are a lot of similarities here. In 2022, over a dozen Cohen concerts from a 1972 European tour were made available, ever so briefly, because there's a law in the European Union that a record company loses a copyright over a recording if it isn't offered for sale within 50 years of the year of creation. So they were offered for sale then, but so briefly and so obscurely that almost everyone missed it. Until today, as far as I can tell, these recordings aren't available on any music sharing websites. I luckily found them via a personal trade. So I want to share them with the wider world. 

Unfortunately, like I said about the Tel Aviv concert, while the sound quality of these recordings is fantastic, they're missing all banter between songs, as well as most of the applause at the ends of songs. So I looked for audience bootlegs of these same concerts to find out if there was some banter I could find there and add in to the soundboard quality versions for the copyright extension versions. Unfortunately, most of the bootlegs of those concerts were missing the banter, because people often turned their recording devices off between songs to save tape. And the few that had them had such truly awful sound quality that one could barely hear anything. 

But, other than the Tel Aviv concert, there was one that stood out as different: this Stockholm one. That's because about 40 minutes of it was broadcast on Swedish TV back in that era. It turns out there wasn't much banter in that broadcast either. Listening for banter to the badly recorded audience bootlegs, I came to the conclusion that Cohen rarely spoke between songs on this tour. Instead, he often talked after the song started, while playing his guitar. So I was able to restore those bits, because it turns out those were cut from the copyright extension versions as well. Those strictly stuck to just the singing parts of songs, because that's all they decided they needed to save for copyright purposes. As an example, there's about an extra minute of audience interaction at the start of "You Know Who I Am" that comes from the Swedish broadcast version that can't be found in the copyright extension version.

Furthermore, the copyright extension version was clearly incomplete, with the number of songs less than those of other concerts on the tour. By luck, some of these missing songs were shown on the Swedish broadcast version: "The Partisan," "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." I have no idea of the order of the songs. While the copyright extension versions put the songs in chronological order, the missing songs could have come at the beginning, or the end, or maybe even somewhere in the middle, if the recording equipment failed temporarily or something like that. I couldn't find a complete, accurate set list. (If anyone knows, please let me know!) So I just added the extra songs at the end.

Also, instead of the usual banter, during this tour, Cohen often expressed his feelings by creating songs on the spot. He did this a few times in this concert. I've marked those with "[Improvised Song]" in the titles. In some cases, I guessed the titles, and in other cases they were the titles given for the copyright extension release. 

However, note that "Broken Down Nightingale" (one of those improvised songs) and the banter before "Suzanne" (meaning track 22) are probably not from this exact concert. Recently, I rewatched the documentary movie about this tour, "Bird on a Wire," and those were little bits from the film taken from concerts on the tour. I don't know if they were from this concert or some other concert. But I thought they were interesting, and I didn't have a better place for them, so I added them in. (It's possible there were more missing songs that didn't make it into either source, but I guess there's no way of knowing for sure.)

The set lists from this concert tour are pretty similar to each other, because Cohen didn't have that many songs he'd written to this point in his career. (He'd released three albums.) But while the Tel Aviv concert was unusual due to conflicts with security forces and the fact that he was making a rare appearance in Israel, this was a more typical concert from the tour. So I figured it was worth posting both. 

For those die-hard fans who want all the other concerts from the tour, I don't plan to post any more of them at this blog, since they're largely very similar to each other. However, I am posting all of those at SoulseekQT at the same time I'm posting this here. They're in my "Leonard Cohen" folder, under the name "1972 Copyright Extension Collection atse." They consist of the following concerts:

01 National Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, 3-18-1972
02 Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 3-23-1972
03 Kungliga Tennishall, Stockholm, Sweden, 4-3-1972
04 Sportpalast, Berlin, Germany, 4-8-1972
05 Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria, 4-10-1972
06 Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, 4-14-1972
07 Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 4-15-1972
08 Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium, 4-16-1972
09 Salle Pleyel, Paris, France, 4-18-72
10 Sports Hall, Tel Aviv, Israel, 4-19-1972
11 Binyanei Ha'uma, Jerusalem, Israel, 4-20-1972

Those are not all the concerts from the tour, just the ones that happened to be professionally recorded for the intention of making an official live album (which came out in 1973 under the name "Live Songs"). All of these are "unadulterated." That means the Stockholm and Tel Aviv ones are unchanged from the copyright extension versions, without the applause and extra banter and songs I found and added in. (And note that I added extra applause at the ends of all the songs that were not part of the Swedish broadcast, since they otherwise abruptly end after just a second or two.) Like I said above, the set lists are very similar, though the order is often changed. However, there are occasional improvised songs, or rarely performed songs. Some of them are missing songs, or have only parts of songs, so watch out for that.

Speaking of rarities, note that this concert has "Chelsea Hotel No. 1," which is similar to, but different from, the much more famous "Chelsea Hotel No. 2." One was basically an early version of the other one, but Cohen decided to give them slightly different names, and only officially released "No. 2." 

Also, I don't know why there is an incomplete version of "So Long, Marianne" in this concert, with a complete version shortly thereafter. I would guess Cohen got interrupted or distracted by something to do with the police, because there's an improvised song between them called "Police." But since we don't have the banter or applause (other than applause that I've added in), it's impossible to say what happened there. 

Finally, in case you're curious, these are the songs from the Swedish broadcast bootleg:

So Long, Marianne
You Know Who I Am
The Butcher
Famous Blue Raincoat
Story of Isaac
Joan of Arc
Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
The Partisan
Suzanne
Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

For all of those, I used the copyright extension versions for the music, since those had slightly better sound quality, but added in the applause from the Swedish broadcast, plus whatever banter and extra bits that had as well. It seems the order of those were mixed up by whoever made the broadcast, so I stuck to the copyright extension order as much as possible. 

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 Broken Down Nightingale [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
02 So Long, Marianne [Incomplete] (Leonard Cohen)
03 Police [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
04 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
05 Crazy Horse Saloon [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
07 Lady Midnight (Leonard Cohen)
08 Avalanche (Leonard Cohen)
09 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
10 Passing Through (Leonard Cohen)
11 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
12 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
13 Sing Another Song, Boys (Leonard Cohen)
14 Come Up on Stage [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
15 The Butcher (Leonard Cohen)
16 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
17 Story of Isaac (Leonard Cohen)
18 Joan of Arc (Leonard Cohen)
19 Chelsea Hotel No. 1 (Leonard Cohen)
20 talk (Leonard Cohen)
21 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
22 talk (Leonard Cohen)
23 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
24 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy (Leonard Cohen)
25 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YgXpcqKN

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/yVCz2EkcOAP1Frh/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, the original was in black and white. I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Leonard Cohen - Sports Hall, Tel Aviv, Israel, 4-19-1972

Here's a really interesting concert that it a "must have" for any Leonard Cohen fan. It's a professionally recorded yet unreleased concert from very early in his career. It also was an extremely unusual and memorable concert, for reasons I'll explain below.

Before I describe the events of this concert, let me explain this recording. In 1972, Cohen did a concert tour of Europe. It was only his second concert tour, after he did one in 1970. Most of the shows were professionally recorded at the time, in order to create a live album. That album, "Live Songs," was released in 1973. In 2022, the all recorded concerts were released, but only in a "blink and you miss it" kind of way. In many European countries, there's a law that if a recording isn't released within 50 years of it being created, the copyright rights are lost. So these concerts probably released for an hour or less in the middle of the night on some obscure platform, as was the case with other similar releases. These releases are so rare that very, very few people have them to this day. I was lucky that I was eventually able to trade for them.

There's one annoying problem with these concerts, however. All that the record company had to post to keep the copyrights was the music, and they did the bare minimum. So the audience quickly fades out a second or two after the songs stop, and there's no banter between songs whatsoever. Luckily, though, this concert is kind of an exception, for two reasons. One is that a soundboard bootleg of about 43 minutes of this concert has existed for many years, and that includes all the applause and banter. 

The other reason is that a documentary movie was made of Cohen's 1972 tour, called "Bird on a Wire." That movie featured a lot of footage from this concert, as well as one he performed in Jerusalem a day later. That's because with Cohen being Jewish, having him perform concerts in Israel was a big deal for the public and for him personally. So I was able to use audio from the movie to fill in more of the banter. I still am missing the banter before many songs, but we have to make do with what we've got.

Because this was a pivotal concert in Cohen's music career, we luckily have a good account of it in a biography of him, "I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen," written by Sylvie Simmons. I'm going to quote it extensively here:

"He was looking forward to playing Israel. He was terrified of playing Israel. ... The first show, at the Yad Eliyahu Arena, was on the same day that Leonard and the band flew into Tel Aviv. Airport security was slow and grim, guns everywhere, but they arrived at the venue in good time. When they came out onstage though, the floor was completely empty. The audience was packed into the stands around the edges, like they were there to see an invisible basketball game. Security had been told to keep everyone off the floor, which had been newly varnished. When Leonard, disturbed by the distance between them, invited the audience to come down, they were set upon by armed guards in orange boiler suits. 'They freaked out and started clubbing everybody, beating kids up,' [tour manager Bill] Donovan remembers. 'Leonard jumped off the stage into the crowd and a guy ran onstage and grabbed [band member] Ron's guitar. I knocked the guy offstage and then somebody hit me from behind and knocked me out. It ended up as sort of a riot.'" [Band member] Peter Marshall says, 'I was hiding behind my string bass and there was some guy raising a chair, like it was a movie, and he's going to hit me in the face, but somebody grabbed the chair from behind.

"The band reconvened backstage. [Backing vocalist] Jennifer Warnes said she was scared. Leonard wondered aloud, 'Maybe I pushed too hard.' Then he led everyone back onstage. 'I know you're trying to do your job, but you don't have to do it with your fists,' he told the guards, then dedicated a song to them. He urged the audience to sit down and enjoy the concert. 'Eventually,' says Marshall, 'he got everybody to calm down, and he completed that show.' As soon as it was done, they dashed out of the hall and into the tour bus."

Only two shows in Israel were planned, to end the tour. The second and last one, in Jerusalem the next night, was even stranger. At first, the concert started okay. According to the biography quoted above, "The songs sounded beautiful as he sang, and the band seemed to be wired into his nervous system. But Leonard felt that it was not good enough, that we was letting down this precious audience and these precious songs. He tried to explain this to them, but his explanation kept getting more and more complex.'" 

Eventually, he gave up, and told the audience, "We're going to leave the stage now and try to profoundly mediate in the dressing room to try to get ourselves back into shape and if we can manage. We'll be back." But backstage, Cohen was having an emotional meltdown. He felt he couldn't go back on stage. However, the audience refused to leave, and sang songs to encourage him to come back. Apparently, Cohen took some L.S.D., and did some rituals to help calm down, such as shaving his face, and eventually managed to return to the stage and finish the concert.

You don't just have to read about this, because both concerts are shown quite extensively in the documentary movie I mentioned above, "Bird on a Wire." When it was finished in 1974, Cohen didn't like it, and the BBC, which had paid for it, didn't like it either. So it got only a very limited viewing in a few places, and then was pretty much forgotten. However, the footage was rediscovered decades later, and painstakingly restored. The movie was rereleased in 2012, and shown it some theaters. You can now watch it on DVD. It shows the battles with security guards in the Tel Aviv concert, the troubles in the Jerusalem concert, and much more. Here's a Wikipedia entry about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen:_Bird_on_a_Wire 

A few years ago, I posted a Cohen album here I called "Live 1972." It compiled songs from different concerts during the 1972 tour, the relatively few that were available with soundboard level quality. More than half of it was that 43 minute long section from this concert. I have removed that link now, in favor of this album. 

In 2024, an album was released called "The Bird on the Wire Concerts." It contains songs from the 1972 tour, apparently from the concerts in Stockholm, Paris, Tel Aviv, and London. But it's very rare and I haven't been able to find a copy. (It seems to only be available as part of a box set with the DVD of the movie.) I also don't know which songs on it are from which venue. But it contains "We Shall Not Be Moved," which I would guess is from this concert. If anyone has it and knows more about it, please let us know. I'd be especially curious to find out if it contains any more banter that I don't have here.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 Passing Through [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
02 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
03 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
04 Independence Day [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
05 Lady Midnight (Leonard Cohen)
06 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
07 I Need Ya to Sing My Song [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
08 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
09 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
10 Instrumental (Leonard Cohen)
11 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)
12 talk (Leonard Cohen)
13 Song for the Machines [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
14 talk (Leonard Cohen)
15 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
16 Chelsea Hotel No. 1 (Leonard Cohen)
17 Avalanche (Leonard Cohen)
18 talk (Leonard Cohen)
19 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
20 talk (Leonard Cohen)
21 We Shall Not Be Moved (Leonard Cohen)
22 talk (Leonard Cohen) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YCbqi8cg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/H1AoV3lzKCmaOUh/file 

The cover image is a screenshot I took of this exact concert, from the "Bird on a Wire" movie. 

Judy Collins with Leonard Cohen - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 1-20-1976

As I've been collecting and discovering lots of "PBS Soundstage" concerts in recent days, one pleasant surprise are the guest appearances. They aren't that common, but when they happened they usually resulted in interesting collaborations. This is such a case. Most of the concert features folk singer Judy Collins. That alone is pretty special, since the number of high quality bootlegs from her is very small. But even more interesting is her guest, Leonard Cohen, and the way they duet on a couple of his songs.

Cohen was a very fitting guest for her, because the two of them had a long history. When Cohen was starting his music career in 1966, Collins was absolutely key in getting it going by covering two of his songs on her next album, back before he'd given a single public performance or released any music, and hardly anyone in the music world knew who he was. In fact, Cohen explained this in some length in his banter during this concert. Collins would continue to be a friend and musical promoter, occasionally covering more of his songs on her albums. In 2004, she would release an entire album of Cohen covers, called "Democracy." 

At the time of this concert, Collins was probably at the peak of her commercial popularity, due to a hit single she'd had in 1975 with the song "Send in the Clowns." So it's not surprising that she closed the concert with that one. But for many, including myself, the highlight of this concert took place in the middle, when Cohen joined her on stage. She and him sang two of his songs as a duet, while she left the stage entirely to him for a third one, "Stranger Song." Later on in the concert, she sang yet another Cohen song without him, "Bird on the Wire."

By the way, I included the two songs they dueted on here on one of the Leonard Cohen BBC albums I made, "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." I didn't include his performance of "Stranger Song" from this concert however, because I didn't happen to stumble across that at the time. It was the only non-BBC material I put on that, since I thought it was something special. The cover image from that album shows both Cohen and Collins from this show. (Collins is wearing a different top in the two images because she changed outfits partway through the show - I watched the whole thing, so I know it's not from a different one.)

I felt very fortunate to find this concert at all. A few days ago, I began with a list of all the Soundstage concerts, thanks to the Wikipedia entry about that show:

Soundstage (TV series) - Wikipedia 

I went looking for the ones I wanted, which included this one. But I couldn't find it anywhere, except for the Cohen segment, which was widely available due to there being so many diehard Cohen fans. But after some more digging, I lucked out and found it streaming on an archived PBS webpage. (It's only one of two I've found that way.) I recorded it as I streamed it, converted it to audio, and then cut it into mp3s. So this may well be the first time this has been available as an audio bootleg.

Just like for the Roberta Flack Soundstage episode I just posted, an interview was done elsewhere and then spliced into the episode. (Although weirdly, she talked about the interviewer, Studs Turkel, and the interview in her banter between songs at one point. Probably, she already knew how the final edit was going to go.) I wanted just the concert, so I didn't include the two interview sections. The song "Secret Gardens" has "[Edit]" in its title because a tiny bit of the interview overlapped with the start of that song. I got rid of that talking using the UVR5 audio editing program, as usual.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 My Father (Judy Collins)
02 Golden Apples of the Sun (Judy Collins)
03 talk (Judy Collins)
04 Someday Soon (Judy Collins)
05 Sons Of (Judy Collins)
06 talk (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
07 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
08 talk (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
09 Stranger Song (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
10 Suzanne (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
11 Secret Gardens [Edit] (Judy Collins)
12 Both Sides Now (Judy Collins)
13 The Lovin' of the Game (Judy Collins)
14 talk (Judy Collins)
15 Bird on the Wire (Judy Collins)
16 Send in the Clowns (Judy Collins)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Wi4UM4Hn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HmoDZPg4F3xugPM/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-5-1988

The Prince's Trust is a charity founded by then Prince Charles, the British crown prince. (He is now King Charles III) as I write this in 2024.) There have been a bunch of benefit concerts for the charity, each with many stars participating. Here's another one.

These Prince's Trust concerts have happened in a very irregular pace. I've already posted benefit concerts from 1982, 1986, and 1987. This one is from 1988. There were more from 1989 and 1990, so it started to seem like an annual thing. However, I think the next one after that took place in 1996. There have been at least five more since then, although I may well be missing some.

This one was similar to the previous two in similar ways. The concert started with some newer acts, like T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet, and they played more songs than one might expect, given the stature of the other acts in the concert. Both T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet actually played four songs each, according to setlists, but I only have two from T'Pau and three from Wet Wet Wet. I can't say I'm lamenting the missing songs, since I don't think one could compare them with nearly all of the acts that came later. Rick Astley and Black were a couple other acts that appeared early, and played the one big hit each of them was known for.

After that, there were many of the same "usual suspects" who played in previous Prince's Trust concerts, such as Phil Collins, Elton John, Howard Jones, Mark Knoplfer, and Eric Clapton. But there were some first timers too, like Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, Peter Gabriel, and Joe Cocker. It's frustrating to me that you have someone like Peter Gabriel, whose most recent album at the time, "So," had sold five million copies in the U.S. alone, only getting to play one song. But it is what it is, I guess.

I don't know the exact details, but I believe that many of the big stars backed each other towards the end of the concert, as was the case in previous years. Because people pay extra close attention to Eric Clapton's guitar playing, I was able to find out that once he took the stage with track 26 ("Behind the Mask"), he stayed on stage for the rest of the concert, including playing guitar on songs sung by Knoplfer, John, and Cocker.

Similarly, I was able to determine that Brian May of Queen didn't sing lead vocals on any songs, but he played lead guitar on a bunch of them: tracks 6, 8, 10, 16, 19, 24, 26, and 35. John Deacon, the bassist for Queen, also apparently played on some songs.

Currently, I'm only able to find a few songs from the 1989 and 1990 concerts. If anyone has the full concerts, please let me know. I may try to post the 1996 concert, but I'm probably missing about half of that one.

This album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 Heart and Soul (T'Pau)
02 China in Your Hand (T'Pau)
03 talk (Wet Wet Wet)
04 Wishing I Was Lucky (Wet Wet Wet)
05 Sweet Little Mystery - Twist and Shout (Wet Wet Wet)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 talk (Midge Ure & Rick Astley)
08 Never Gonna Give You Up (Rick Astley)
09 talk (Rick Astley & Black)
10 Wonderful Life (Black)
11 talk (Black & Leonard Cohen)
12 Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
13 talk (Phil Collins)
14 Doesn't Anyone Stay Together Anymore (Phil Collins)
15 talk (Phil Collins & the Bee Gees)
16 You Win Again (Bee Gees)
17 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
18 talk (Bee Gees & Peter Gabriel)
19 Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel)
20 talk (Peter Gabriel & Howard Jones)
21 What Is Love (Howard Jones)
22 talk (Phil Collins)
23 I Missed Again (Phil Collins)
24 You Can't Hurry Love (Phil Collins)
25 talk (Phil Collins & Joe Cocker)
26 The Letter (Joe Cocker)
27 talk (Eric Clapton)
28 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
29 Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
30 talk (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
31 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Elton John)
34 Layla (Eric Clapton)
35 With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cbyrisBH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jJV74b5uh8a36UP/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/gP7SW

Just like previous years, there was a group photo taken of the performers. Here are all their names.
Back row: Rick Astley, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, Joe Cocker, Phil Collins, Midge Ure
Middle row: Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Elton John, Eric Clapton
Front row: The Bee Gees, Robin, Barry and Maurice Gibb

Leonard Cohen - Songs from a Store Room - Alternate Song Versions (1967-1968) (NEW TO PUBLIC CIRCULATION)

I had been planning on posting this a couple of days ago, but I got knocked down pretty badly by the flu. I know some people are keen on hearing it, so I'll push through and post it now.

This is meant to be the companion piece to the alternate version of Cohen's 1967 album "Songs of Leonard Cohen," which I posted recently. That was Cohen's very first album, but he'd been building up to it for a long time, especially since he was 34 years old at the time, which was quite old for a first album in that era. As a result, he had lots of songs written, many more that could fit on a single album. So this contains the best versions of all the songs he recorded for his 1967 album but didn't get released on it.

Like my alternate version of "Songs of Leonard Cohen," the source for all of these is the official 1967 copyright extension release. I've explained some of this with other posts. But, in brief, in the European Union, for record companies to keep the legal rights to some performances, they need to be officially released within a 50-year time period. So this, it seems, was released in 2017. However, for some of these releases, they were only put on sale for an hour or two in the middle of the night on the Internet in some limited part of Europe. That's what happened here. Luckily, a few people grabbed it, but it never got publicly circulated beyond that. The same thing happened in 2020 with some Cohen 1970 music and in 2022 with some 1972 Cohen music. 

Recently, I happened to find the 1970 release. I put out some feelers, and some kind strangers sent me the 1967 and 1972 releases. The entire 1967 release is seven hours long, and contains every take of all the songs Cohen recorded in 1967 except for the ones that made the official album (or at least all the ones that the record company wanted to maintain the rights to). I've selected just one take of each one. 

In selecting the takes, I largely went with the recommendations of 21st Century Schizoid Cat, who found a copy of this even before I did and was one of the people to send it to me. So, a big thanks to him (and the other person who sent me the files). 21st Century Schizoid Cat also came up with this album title. I like it, because it's a clever word play on the title of Cohen's second album, "Songs from a Room" as well as the title of one of the songs here, "Store Room." Plus, there's also the implied word play that these songs sat in a store room archive all these years.

Pretty much all the songs here would eventually be released on other albums, in different forms. The second and third tracks, "Store Room" and "Blessed Is the Memory," would eventually come out as bonus tracks for the "Songs of Leonard Cohen" album. Tracks four and five, "Tonight Will Be Fine" and "You Know Who I Am," would appear on his 1969 album "Songs from a Room." Tracks six through ten are all from his 1971 album "Songs of Love and Hate." Track 11, an early version of "Take This Longing," is from his 1975 album "New Skin for the Old Ceremony."

That leaves just two songs. The first one, "I've Been Through All Your Clothes," is an early version of "You Know Who I Am," but it's so different that it has all different lyrics and a different title. I put that first to give some space between that one and a more typical version of "You Know Who I Am" at track five, since their melodies are basically the same. 

And the last song, an early version of "Bird on a Wire," is an official bonus track to the "Songs from a Room" album. Although that album was released in 1969, this version dates from 1968, when David Crosby of the Byrds tried to produce the album. That didn't work out; all the songs were rerecorded later. (There also is a bonus track version of "You Know Who I Am," but I didn't include that since this already has two versions of that song.) 

I suspect that some of the other songs here could have been recorded in those 1968 Crosby-produced sessions, but I'm not sure. If anyone knows, please let us know. If some 1968 alternate takes were thrown in with the 1967 copyright release, that might explain why there was no similar 1968 or 1969 copyright release. It's also possible though that such a release did happen, and everyone missed it. Furthermore, it's known that one song included with the 1970 release, "Priests," was recorded by Cohen in 1967. (Judy Collins released a version of it in 1967, and Richie Havens released a version in 1968.) However, he may well have given it another try around 1970. I put that on a 1970 stray tracks album I made, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/11/leonard-cohen-news-from-authorities-non.html

But if I ever confirm that version was actually recorded in 1967, I'll move it to this album.

Most of the alternate versions of "Songs of Leonard Cohen" were pretty close lyrically to the officially released versions on that album. But these often went through more tinkering before being released on later albums. So you'll find more differences both musically and lyrically. This is reflected by the different song titles, which were either used on the 1967 copyright release, or were the titles of songs mentioned in books about Cohen. For instance, one such book mentioned a song called "Jewels in Your Shoulder." I figured out that had to be an early version of "Take This Longing," since it had very different lyrics that included the phrase "jewels in your shoulder."

I made a couple of important edits. "I've Been Through All Your Clothes" only included the first verse, the first chorus, and then all of the second verse except for the last line. That was a very unsatisfying ending for me. So I finished off the second verse with just the instrumental part of the last line from the first verse, and then I repeated the first verse where the second verse would have gone. Also, there was only one take of "Store Room," and it ended about halfway through the song. I assume the bonus track version that eventually got released was the second take. So I finished off the incomplete part of the song with that version.

If you're a big Leonard Cohen fan, as I am, this is a really interesting album. I hope you enjoy it. For the really die-hard fans, starting today, I will also be sharing the entire seven hours of this 1967 copyright release via SoulseekQT. So look for that there. And I soon will be posting some of the 1972 copyright release here, and all of it via SoulSeekQT. That one consists of eleven similar 1972 concerts, but with all of the banter between songs removed.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 I've Been Through All Your Clothes [Early Version of You Know Who I Am] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
02 Store Room [Takes 1 & 2] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
03 Blessed Is the Memory [Take 2] (Leonard Cohen)
04 Tonight Will Be Fine (Leonard Cohen)
05 You Know Who I Am [Take 2] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Avalanche [Take 3] (Leonard Cohen)
07 Dress Rehearsal Rag (Leonard Cohen)
08 Nancy Where Have You Been Sleeping [Early Version of Diamonds in the Mine] (Leonard Cohen)
09 Love Calls You by Your Name [Take 17] (Leonard Cohen)
10 Anyone Can See [Early Version of Sing Another Song, Boys]  [Take 4] (Leonard Cohen)
11 Jewels in Your Shoulder [Early Version of Take This Longing] (Leonard Cohen)
12 Like a Bird [Early Version of Bird on the Wire] (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VBhRRFXZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WOtjwqnXlAr2MTc/file

The cover is the only color photo of Cohen that I know for sure was from 1967. There was another person's head blocking some of the top back part of his head, but I used some Photoshop tricks to get rid of that. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the Krea AI program.

Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen - Alternate Version (1967) (NEW TO PUBLIC CIRCULATION)

Two months ago (as I write this in January 2024), I posted three albums that came from a 1970 Leonard Cohen copyright extension release. In brief, that's an extremely limited official release record companies sometimes to do retain the legal rights to music, based on a law in the European Union. After discovering all that great 1970 music that had never been in public circulation before, I found out that there were 1967 and 1972 copyright extension releases as well. I'm very happy to say that some kind souls gave me copies. This is the first of several albums I'm making to get this material to a wider audience.

For starters, I'm focusing on the 1967 copyright extension release. 1967 was the year Leonard Cohen put out his first album, "Songs of Leonard Cohen," which came out just a few days before the end of the year. It's an undisputed classic. For instance, Rolling Stone Magazine has ranked it Number 195 in its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Because this was Cohen's first album, and he was a total novice when it came to recording music, there were many takes done of nearly all the songs. Plus, he brought in many more songs than could fit on a single album. The 1967 copyright extension release apparently includes all the different takes of each song in the 1967 recording sessions, other than the final versions that made the album. There are so many takes, in fact, that it would get too repetitive for all but the most die-hard Cohen fan. For instance, in the most extreme case, there are 22 takes of the song "Love Calls You by Your Name."

So, to make this release more palatable for most listeners, I've broken it into two albums. The first one is this one here. With the assistance of another Cohen fan, 21st Century Schitzoid Cat, I've picked the most interesting version of each song that made it onto "Songs of Leonard Cohen." Then I put them in the exact same order as the released album, giving you an interesting alternate version of that album. I've also made another album that consists of the best of the 1967 recorded songs that didn't make that album. I'll be posting that album right after this one.

Next, I need to explain that the recording of this album was difficult and contentious. Initially, legendary producer John Hammond was supposed to produce the album. He had signed Cohen, and understood his music. But Hammond got sick and had to drop out. He was replaced by producer John Simon. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia entry about the album:

By all accounts, Simon and Cohen clashed over instrumentation and mixing; Cohen wanted the album to have a sparse sound, while Simon felt the songs could benefit from arrangements that included strings and horns. Writing for Mojo in 2012, Sylvie Simmons recalls, "When Leonard heard the result, he was not happy; the orchestration on 'Suzanne' was overblown, while everything about 'Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye' felt too soft. Several tracks had too much bottom, and there were even drums; Leonard had clearly stipulated no drums." The singer and producer also quarreled over a slight stop in the middle of "So Long, Marianne" – a device Cohen felt interrupted the song. According to biographer Ira Nadel, although Cohen was able to make changes to the mix, some of Simon's additions "couldn't be removed from the four-track master tape."

---

So, while the 1967 copyright release didn't come with any notes to explain things (as far as I know), it's pretty clear that many of the songs were often done in different styles that fit more with Simon's vision of what he thought would be commercially successful. 

Often, this meant more instrumentation, while Cohen wanted things more stripped back. Sometimes, the difference between these versions and the final released versions are dramatic. For instance, the version of "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" here has a fast drumbeat through the whole song, while the released version has no drums at all. But rather than spell everything out, I'll let you be surprised by discovering the differences yourself. 

Often times, the first take was the most different. Note that the first five songs are all the first takes. Many of the takes are incomplete, since something like a flubbed lyric would cause the song to stop before it was finished. In case you're curious, here are the numbers of takes for each song:

Suzanne: 4
Master Song: 1
Winter Lady: 3
The Stranger Song: 2
Sisters of Mercy: 4
Come On, Marianne: 6
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye: 12
Stories of the Street: 9
Teachers: 3
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong: 12

I made significant edits to five of the songs. One of the most drastic was to "Suzanne." The first take is very different from all the other takes, and the album version, so I wanted to use that one. However, it ended after the second verse, missing all of the second chorus as well as the third verse and chorus (with each chorus having different lyrics). I repeated the first chorus after the second verse. Even though they don't match lyrically, I felt that was better than having no chorus at all there. 

"Come On, Marianne" (the early name for "So Long, Marianne") also got a drastic edit. For both Takes Two and Four, there were entire verses that were not used on the album version, but some of them made it to Take Two, and others made it to Take Four. Since the backing music was basically exactly the same for both takes, I merged them together so one got all the different verses from both takes, without any repeats. The result is two minutes longer than the album version.

The edits of the other three songs were more minor. In all three cases, the songs ended abruptly, only a couple of seconds after the last words. For "Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye," I used Take Four for nearly all of the song. But Take Two had an instrumental ending that went on for about 15 seconds. So I patched that ending onto Take Four. With "Winter Lady" and "Teachers," I just repeated some instrumental bits to make the songs last five or ten seconds longer, giving them a less abrupt ending.

This album is 45 minutes long. By contrast, the official album is 41 minutes long. Most of the difference in the times is due to the two extra minutes added to "Come On, Marianne/ So Long, Marianne."

Note that I plan on posting the other 1967 album here tomorrow or thereabouts. After I do that, I will share the full 1967 copyright release, including every single take, via SoulseekQT, for the really die-hard fans. (It's seven hours long!) Then I will get to the 1972 copyright extension release.

01 Suzanne [Take 1] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
02 Master Song [Take 1] (Leonard Cohen)
03 Winter Lady [Take 1] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
04 The Stranger Song [Take 1] (Leonard Cohen)
05 Sisters of Mercy [Take 1] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Come On, Marianne [Early Version of So Long, Marianne] [Takes 2 & 3] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
07 Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye [Take 4 plus Take 2] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
08 Stories of the Street [Take 5] (Leonard Cohen)
09 Teachers [Take 2] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
10 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong [Take 8] (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16141676/LENRDCHN1967_SngsfLnrdChnAltrnte_atse.zip.html

The cover is very closely based on the official cover. However, I added the words "alternate version" at the bottom, and I used a different picture in the middle. This picture is from an August 1967 photo shoot that probably was meant for the album cover. It was a black and white photo, but I tinted it the same way as the version on the official album.

Leonard Cohen - Columbia Records Radio Hour, The Complex, Los Angeles, CA, 4-18-1993

I have some interesting Leonard Cohen rarities I'll be posting in the very near future. But first, I'm posting this because I recently posted a Rosanne Cash concert recorded for the Columbia Records Radio Hour, and that reminded me that I also have this one. It definitely needs posting, because he was supporting one of his best albums, 1993's "The Future," and the sound quality is fantastic.

The reason this sounds so good is because it was professionally recorded and released... but only to radio stations. This was his first concert of his 1993 tour (and his first concert since 1988). So the idea was that radio stations could play select songs from it to drum up interest in the tour. The whole thing was also broadcast to over 100 radio stations, but having a record of it meant the sound quality was a little better than just recording it off the radio.

Also, since this concert predated all the others on the tour by about a week, Cohen was still rehearsing for the tour, so some of these songs have different arrangements than on the other dates from this tour. And while he didn't have any banter per se between songs, for multiple songs, he spoke some of the songs' lyrics before the music kicked in.

The recording from this concert is only 49 minutes long. But I found three more songs he did in Paris on that tour that have nearly as good sound quality, so I added them in as quasi-bonus tracks for the last three songs. I also patched in some applause after each of those songs from earlier songs so the applause better matched.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. But, as mentioned above, the main concert in Los Angeles is only 49 minutes long.

01 talk (Leonard Cohen)
02 First We Take Manhattan (Leonard Cohen)
03 Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen)
04 Coming Back to You (Leonard Cohen)
05 Dance Me to the End of Love (Leonard Cohen)
06 Democracy (Leonard Cohen)
07 Waiting for the Miracle (Leonard Cohen)
08 The Future (Leonard Cohen)
09 I'm You Man (Leonard Cohen)
10 Closing Time (Leonard Cohen)
11 I Can't Forget (Leonard Cohen)
12 Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16116246/LENRDCHN1993_ClumbiRecrdsRdioHurThCmplxLsAnglesCA__4-18-1993_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is most likely from the exact concert. I say "most likely" because the caption said it was recorded in Los Angeles in April 1993, and I believe this was the only concert he did in that city in that month.

Leonard Cohen - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 5-30-1988

This is the fourth, and so far last, Leonard Cohen BBC album I plan on posting. Like the last one, it's a concert. It's also a much longer one, clocking in at over two hours long.

Cohen's career reached a commercial low point in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was so bad that when his album "Various Positions" was released in 1984, his record company refused to release it in the U.S. (For years, one could only get it as an import from Canada.) But that was a strong album that contained what would become his most famous song, "Hallelujah." His next album, "I'm Your Man," was arguably even better. It also sold much better, helped by the fact that he had a new record company that supported it. 

This was part of his tour to support that album. There are no official live albums from the 1980s at all, so this is an excellent one to fill in that gap. The sound quality is top notch, as you'd expect from the BBC.

Note that Cohen's voice got much deeper all through the 1980s. So he sound considerably different than on the last BBC concert album, recorded in 1979.

I believe there's only one song missing: "Avalanche." I don't know why it wasn't included.

Unfortunately, I imagine this is the last BBC album I'll be posting of his music, because I don't know of any BBC concerts or significant sessions after this. He did perform a set at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008, and those sets are almost always broadcast by the BBC. But I'm guessing his set wasn't broadcast, because I can't find a good copy of that performance anywhere. If you have one, please share.

This album is two hours and 19 minutes long.

01 talk (Leonard Cohen)
02 Dance Me to the End of Love (Leonard Cohen)
03 talk (Leonard Cohen)
04 Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen)
05 Who by Fire (Leonard Cohen)
06 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
07 talk (Leonard Cohen)
08 I'm Your Man (Leonard Cohen)
09 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
10 Coming Back to You (Leonard Cohen)
11 talk (Leonard Cohen)
12 First We Take Manhattan (Leonard Cohen)
13 talk (Leonard Cohen)
14 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Leonard Cohen)
15 Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
16 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
17 If It Be Your Will (Leonard Cohen)
18 Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen)
19 Joan of Arc (Leonard Cohen)
20 Hallelujah [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
21 There Is a War (Leonard Cohen)
22 talk (Leonard Cohen)
23 Take This Waltz (Leonard Cohen)
24 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
25 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
26 Passin' Through (Leonard Cohen)
27 I Tried to Leave You (Leonard Cohen)
28 Whither Thou Goest (Leonard Cohen)
29 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XCz1W8sF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0SJvOxDirqLJfud/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/mDiDT

The cover photo was taken in Paris, France, in May 1988.

Leonard Cohen - Beloved Comrade - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1976)

I recently posted a few Leonard Cohen albums based on the totally obscure 1970 copyright extension release that was essentially publicly unavailable until I made my posts. I highly recommend you check those out if you missed them in my big number of new posts lately. In particular, I recommend the album "News from the Authorities," made up of stray tracks from that release. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/11/leonard-cohen-news-from-authorities-non.html

It just so happens that I already had a bunch of Cohen stray tracks albums that I'd made years ago. I'd only posted the first one though ("Out of the Land of Heaven") because there's just way too much good music to post and it takes me time to get to it all. But putting together that "News from the Authorities" album got me in the mood to post the rest of my Cohen stray tracks albums. Here's the next one. I have five more after this.

Everything here but the first song is officially unreleased. The first song is a studio track that appeared on the mostly live album "Live Songs." I've included it here because I feel it is basically a stray track, since it didn't really fit on a live album. 

All the other songs come from concert bootlegs, with the exception of the poem recitation "Two Went to Sleep," which is from a radio show. The sound quality is generally pretty good, though there are some exceptions, rare performances where only an audience bootleg was available. 

Some of the songs here are covers, like "As Time Goes By," "Kevin Barry," "The Banks Are Made of Marble," "We Shall Not Be Moved," and "Beloved Comrade." Although "The Banks Are Made of Marble" is mostly an original creation with just a part of it being the cover song. Cohen learned at least three of these songs ("Kevin Barry," "We Shall Not Be Moved," and "Beloved Comrade") from a socialist song book he had when he was a teenager.

"Chelsea Hotel No. 1" is an interesting case. I don't know if that's the official name or not, but it fits. One of Cohen's most famous songs is "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," which raises the question of what happened to No. 1? This is an early version of that song, and it's basically the same for the first couple of minutes. But then the lyrics diverged, and the song kept going, with lots of new verses. "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" is about three minutes long, but "Chelsea Hotel No. 1" is seven and a half minutes long. 

"The Broken Lip" is a particularly amusing thing. As you can hear in the recording, someone in the audience shouted out something about a "broken lip." Cohen immediately made up a song on the spot based on this phrase. It seemed to end, but then Cohen found a new burst of inspiration and kept going. Then that too seemed to end, only for him to come up with more. He ended up making a pretty interesting four minute long song based on a random shout out from the crowd.

That just leaves a few songs. "Song to the Machines" is an original that was never released and was only played in concert once, so it may or may not have been improvised. "Beauty Salon" is an early version of "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" and "Guerrero" is an early version of "Iodine." Both of these have lots of lyrical differences. They were meant to be part of a mid-1970s album called "Songs for Rebecca." But Cohen got involved with co-writing songs with famous producer Phil Spector, so "Songs for Rebecca" was scrapped and songs from it were redone for the 1977 album with Spector, "Death of a Ladies' Man," as well as the next album "Recent Songs."

"Je Veux Vivre Tout Seul" is mostly a French version of Cohen's famous song "Bird on a Wire." However, some of the English versions are sung as well. I don't speak French, but Cohen was a fluent French speaker, and I understand at least some of the French lyrics are different and not just translations of the English ones.

Finally, "Blessed Is the Memory" is a very early rarity. I have a version of the late 1960s stray track album "Out of the Land of Heaven." But it wasn't released at that time, and Cohen performed it some in mid-1970s concerts using a different arrangement. I figured that was worthy of inclusion too.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Queen Victoria (Leonard Cohen)
02 As Time Goes By (Leonard Cohen)
03 Kevin Barry (Leonard Cohen)
04 The Banks Are Made of Marble (Leonard Cohen)
05 The Broken Lip [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Chelsea Hotel No. 1 (Leonard Cohen)
07 Song to the Machines (Leonard Cohen)
08 We Shall Not Be Moved (Leonard Cohen)
09 Beloved Comrade (Leonard Cohen)
10 Two Went to Sleep [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
11 Beauty Salon [Early Version of Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On] (Leonard Cohen)
12 Guerrero [Early Version of Iodine] (Leonard Cohen)
13 Je Veux Vivre Tout Seul [French Version of Bird on a Wire] (Leonard Cohen)
14 Blessed Is the Memory (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16010574/LeonardC_1971-1976_BlovdComrde_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a publicity photo from the mid-1970s.

Leonard Cohen - News from the Authorities - Non-Album Tracks (1970) (NEW TO PUBLIC CIRCULATION)

I recently explained on this blog that I'd found Leonard Cohen's copyright extension release for 1970. To quickly summarize, there's a European Union law that says music must be publicly released within fifty years of the year it was recorded in order for the copyright to be maintained. So record companies have often released music in their vaults literally for a mere hour or two in the middle of the night on some obscure platform so they can technically say it was publicly for sale. That's what happened to a bunch of 1970 Cohen recordings in 2020. That release included four concerts (though without the banter and most of the applause) and some studio outtakes. I've already posted two of the concerts, including one with the banter and applause put back in. This  is an album of the studio outtakes, plus a couple other rarities from 1970.

Note that this is far from all the studio outtakes that were included in the copyright extension. It took me a couple of weeks to put this together because I wanted to weed out the weaker material and make this a solid album that stands up to repeat listenings. There's a lot of repetition on the copyright extension material. For instance, there are five versions of "Passing Through," generally extremely similar to each other. So I cut out those repeat takes. There are also lots of incomplete takes. For instance, there's an apparently original song called "Solitaire" that I didn't include because it's only 20 seconds long! To hear something so promising but so short is just frustrating. I have included incomplete songs here when they're a bit longer. For instance, "I Was Standing on the Wooden Stair" is a little under a minute long.

The copyright extension release also includes an entire album of poetry recitals. Cohen was already a fairly successful poet before his music career began. Sometime around 1970, he recorded about half an hour of poetry from his 1964 book "Flowers for Hitler," and another ten minutes of poetry from his 1956 book "Let Us Compare Mythologies." I haven't included any of that because it's a whole different kettle of fish. However, I could post an album of that if there's enough interest. Alternately, I've posted the ENTIRE copyright extension material without any changes via SoulseekQT. Just search for "Leonard Cohen" plus "copyright" plus "1970" there and you should find it.

So let's get to what is on this album. I'm going to go song by song. Note that all the titles are from the copyright extension release.

"Priests" - This is probably the most important song in the copyright extension. For years, I've longed to hear a Cohen version, because Judy Collins released a version in 1967, then Richie Havens released a version in 1968. Cohen recorded a version in 1967 for his first album, but it didn't make the final cut, and he never played it in concert. It's known that a version is on a 1967 copyright extension release that I don't have a copy of (although with several other still unreleased original songs). If anyone has that, please share! Luckily, Cohen rerecorded the song again in 1970, so we have a version here.

"Az der Rebbe Singt" - This is a complete song, but it's a cover song sung entirely in Yiddish. Cohen played it in concert a few times in 1976.

"Joan of Arc" - I've generally avoided including alternate versions that aren't that different from the final versions. I figure those are only for the die-hard fans who'd want the entire copyright extension release. But this is an exception because Cohen experimented with basically talking the lyrics instead of singing them, so it's quite different from the released album version. (Interesting tidbit: I believe he's mentioned that this song is about the singer Nico.)

"I Was Standing on the Wooden Stair" - This seems to be an original, but it's frustratingly incomplete. For some reason, he stopped after singing just three lines. Ugh!

"Sing Another Song, Boys" - This song was released on Cohen's 1971 album "Songs of Love and Hate." But that was a live version taken from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. This is the studio version.

"I'm in the Darkness" - This uses the chords and melody of his song "Avalanche," but the lyrics are totally different. He managed to get through two verses before the song faded out.

"Passing Through" - This is a cover song that appeared on Cohen's 1973 live album "Live Songs." This is a studio version. The "Live Songs" version, which is from a 1972 concert, contained four verses, and this one only has three. The ending came abruptly, so I patched in a bit of instrumental music from a different take to give it a more graceful ending (so that's why "[Edit]" is in the title). I would have included more of the instrumental part, but that was all there was.

"Time for Counting" - Another frustratingly incomplete original song, but at least there's more of it. This one almost lasts two minutes. He stopped abruptly, and said, "That kind of thing, you know."

"Travel" - This is a recited poem. It's from the copyright extension release, but it was done at a concert in Paris in 1970. 

"Why Don't I Have the Magic" - This is another studio outtake, but the song title indicates that it was improvised. It's surprisingly good, and done with a band backing him up, considering that it was made up on the spot. The lyrics are an obvious plea for musical inspiration.

"Celebration" - This one is not from the copyright extension. Instead, it's unreleased, from a 1970 concert in Frankfurt, Germany. It's a short recited poem. The sound quality is still pretty good.

"The Arms of Regina" - This is a strange one. It seems to be a song that was jointly written and sung by Cohen and the rest of his band. Apparently, it was only performed twice. The version here is from a 1970 concert at the Henderson Hospital in London, before a crowd of less than fifty mental patients there. It was included on the copyright extension. The other version is unreleased and comes from a brief appearance at a French radio station in 1970. The two versions are very similar to each other, with Cohen's voice largely buried by the voices of his band members, but I've used this version because the French radio one has poorer sound quality. However, for this version, the first few seconds were cut off, so I patched in a bit from the French radio version.

"Tonight Will Be Fine" - This is the other one not from the copyright extension. It's from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, and released on the live album of his set there. The reason I've included it is because it includes two verses not on the studio album version.

"News from the Authorities" - This is another improvised song, done at a Berkeley, California concert, and included in the copyright extension. (I recently posted the entire concert.) Clearly, what happened was the police or some other authority told Cohen that people were sitting in the aisles and the concert couldn't continue until the aisles were cleared. But instead of just passing that information on to the crowd, he made up a surprisingly good song about it, lasting no less than six minutes! His backing band caught on quickly, and it turned into an enthusiastic audience participation type of song by the end. 

"As the Mist Leaves No Scar" - This is another short, recited poem. It's from the same Berkeley concert as the previous track.

I'm so very pleased to be sharing this album. As I mentioned above, the copyright extension was ever so briefly released into the public domain in late 2020, which means it languished in total obscurity until I found a copy in late 2023. It's known that copyright extension releases exist for 1967 and 1972. If anyone has those, I again implore you to please share them with the public. This material is too good to keep hidden away.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Priests (Leonard Cohen)
02 Az der Rebbe Singt [When the Rabbi Sings] (Leonard Cohen)
03 Joan of Arc [Spoken Lyrics Version] (Leonard Cohen)
04 I Was Standing on the Wooden Stair [Incomplete] (Leonard Cohen)
05 Sing Another Song, Boys [Studio Version] (Leonard Cohen)
06 I'm in the Darkness [Alternate Lyrics for Avalanche] (Leonard Cohen)
07 Passing Through [Studio Version] [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
08 Time for Counting [Incomplete] (Leonard Cohen)
09 Travel (Poem) (Leonard Cohen)
10 Why Don't I Have the Magic [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
11 Celebration [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
12 The Arms of Regina (Leonard Cohen)
13 Tonight Will Be Fine [Alternate Lyrics Version] (Leonard Cohen)
14 News from the Authorities [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
15 As the Mist Leaves No Scar [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15968243/LeonardC_1970_NwsfrmtheAuthrities_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in Amsterdam in 1972. I couldn't find any really good ones from 1970 that weren't from the Isle of Wight Festival.

Leonard Cohen - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Birmingham Odeon, Birmingham, Britain, 12-8-1979

I just posted a Beck concert that was edited way down by the BBC, and this is a similar situation for Leonard Cohen. I don't know the full set list, but I'm guessing a lot of it was cut out, including some of the banter between songs. Still, these BBC concerts are great due to the sound quality, and that's the case here.

An official album of Cohen's 1979-1980 tour has been released, called "Field Commander Cohen." It's a few minutes longer than this one. Luckily though, the set lists are drastically different. There are only two songs shared between that and this, "The Smokey Life" and "The Gypsy's Wife."

But what really makes this concert special is the song "Billy Sunday," also known as "Blues for the Jews." (I don't think there's a firm title, since the song has never been officially released.) According to setlist.fm, Cohen only ever performed this original song six times, all on this tour, and this was the very first public performance. It's quite a song, because it's fifteen minutes long.

This concert is 57 minutes long.

01 talk (Leonard Cohen)
02 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
03 Diamonds in the Mine (Leonard Cohen)
04 talk (Leonard Cohen)
05 The Smokey Life (Leonard Cohen)
06 The Gypsy's Wife (Leonard Cohen)
07 talk (Leonard Cohen)
08 Two Quatrains (Leonard Cohen)
09 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Leonard Cohen)
10 A Singer Must Die (Leonard Cohen)
11 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
12 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
13 Our Lady of Solitude (Leonard Cohen)
14 talk (Leonard Cohen)
15 Billy Sunday [Blues for the Jews] (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15990930/LeonardC_1979_BBSessonsVolum3InConcrtBrminghmOdeonBrminghmBrtain__12-8-1979_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1979.

Leonard Cohen - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-2008

I recently decided to reorganize some of my Leonard Cohen music so I could post more of his albums here. As part of that, I've found enough for four BBC albums. I posted one BBC album already, and I'll explain more about that one below. Plus, I found two more BBC concerts. So that leaves this, which is kind of the scraps of everything else he did for the BBC over his entire career. It deals with a whopping 41 years of music, but it's all consistently good stuff.

The first two tracks here are from a 1967 BBC TV show hosted by singer Julie Felix, and one of them is a duet with Felix.

1968 was a big year for Cohen and the BBC. Not only did he do that concert that makes up Volume 2 in this series, he also did a studio session for BBC DJ John Peel. He played five songs. Only four were broadcast, but all five have somehow been bootlegged. Those make up tracks 3 through 7 of this album.

After that, we have the first big time jump. In 1976, Cohen played a couple of songs with singer Judy Collins on a TV show. In 1966, Collins recorded a version of Cohen's song "Suzanne," and put it on her album "In My Life." This was the first public revelation of Cohen's songwriting brilliance, and it led to him getting a record contract. So it was only fitting that Cohen and Collins performed a duet of "Suzanne" in this 1976 performance, as well as a duet of his "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." 

By the way, note that this album has no less than three versions of "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." Normally, I wouldn't want that, but I figure it's okay in this case, because one is a duet with Julie Felix, another is Cohen by himself, and the third is a duet with Judy Collins.

Then there's another big time jump, to 1993. He was promoting his 1992 album "The Future," which in my opinion at least ties for his best album of his career. As part of his promotion, he performed three songs on the BBC TV show "Later... with Jools Holland." Those are tracks 11 through 13.

Finally, in 2008, Cohen played at the annual Glastonbury Festival. Virtually everything from this festival is broadcast on the BBC. But oddly, either his set wasn't broadcast or I can't find it anywhere. There are a few videos of songs from it up on YouTube, but they sound pretty poor. So there's only one song here from that, "Hallelujah." It's from the 2022 official album "Hallelujah and Songs from His Albums." It's the only rarity from that album. It also happens to be the only officially released song on this album.

I'll be posting BBC concerts from 1979 and 1988 after this. If you know of anything else he did for the BBC that I missed, please let me know so I can add it in. Hopefully too the full Glastonbury performance will be made available.

Oh, there's a bonus track, "The Stranger Song." This dates all the way back to May 1966. It was done for a CBC TV show in Canada called "Take 30." That's only a bonus track since it was done for the CBC, not the BBC. But I figure it at least merits bonus track status here, since it almost certainly was the first time he sang on of his songs on a TV show.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen with Julie Felix)
02 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
03 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
04 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
05 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)
06 Dress Rehearsal Rag (Leonard Cohen)
07 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
08 Suzanne (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
09 talk (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
10 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Judy Collins & Leonard Cohen)
11 Democracy (Leonard Cohen)
12 The Future (Leonard Cohen)
13 Dance Me to the End of Love (Leonard Cohen)
14 Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tTp6EYKi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/T0U5qDzG3zXepmx/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of Cohen and Judy Collins singing on TV in 1976. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Leonard Cohen - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 11-15-1970

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I was lucky to get a copy of the 1970 copyright extension release for Leonard Cohen. Since it's been out since late 2020 (and I write this in November 2023), yet virtually nobody seems to have a copy, I was to help make this music accessible. So here's another concert that was part of that release.

The good news is the sound quality is excellent, just as good as the 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert I posted from the release I recently posted. The bad news is this one has the same flaw as that one, namely that all the banter has been removed, as well as most of the applause at the ends of songs. But this one actually was a bit worse is that even some music at the starts and ends of songs was missing. I fixed all those cases by using bits from the Royal Albert Hall show. The more serious cases have "[Edit]" in the titles.

Another disappointment is that the set lists between the Royal Albert Hall show are very similar, although the song order is somewhat different. Only the Royal Albert Hall show included the songs "Avalanche" and "Don't Pass Me By (A Disgrace)," and only this one included the song "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy." Some bits of spoken poetry are different too. 

However, this concert has two obviously improvised songs, and there's nothing similar to that in the other concert. "In the Interests of Those Who Are Not on the Stage" is short and simple. But "News from the Authorities" is six minutes long, and is quite amusing and creative for being thought up on the spot. 

For the Royal Albert Hall show, I had the idea to add in the banter that had been deleted by using banter from a concert that took place four days earlier. I thought that worked out nicely. I wanted to do that here as well, but I couldn't find the raw material to do it. There are only a few bootlegs from the 1970 tour, and most of them either sound terrible or were recorded by bootleggers who cut out the banter in order to save tape space. (That was a common practice back in that era.) 

As a result, if you're a purist, you'll be happier with this version. However, I still did another kind of edit that I did for the other show: I fleshed out the applause after every song, In fact, I used the same applause from the other show, since all applause basically sounds the same.

By the way, this concert was rather odd in that the song "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" was played twice. But by chance, most of the first version was missing. I'm guessing there was a problem with the recording there, because the end of the previous song, "The Stranger Song," was missing too. I fixed "The Stranger Song," but since there were two versions of "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" anyway, I decided just to not include the mostly missing version.

Overall, if you're not a big Cohen fan, you probably don't need this and the Royal Albert Hall show, since the set lists are so similar and even the performances are very similar. However, this one does have those two fun improvised songs, as well as a unique spoken poem ("As the Mist Leaves No Scar") and a unique song ("Seems So Long Ago, Nancy").

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long. That's significantly shorter than the Royal Albert Hall show, mostly due to the lack of "Please Don't Pass Me By," which is 13 minutes long.

01 The Stranger Song [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
02 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
03 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
04 News from the Authorities [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
05 In the Interests of Those Who Are Not on the Stage [Improvised Song] (Leonard Cohen)
06 Dead Song [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
07 Lady Midnight (Leonard Cohen)
08 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
09 Joan of Arc (Leonard Cohen)
10 Tonight Will Be Fine (Leonard Cohen)
11 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
12 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
13 Diamonds in the Mine (Leonard Cohen)
14 Story of Isaac (Leonard Cohen)
15 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
16 Sing Another Song, Boys [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
17 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
18 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)
19 As the Mist Leaves No Scar [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
20 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
21 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy (Leonard Cohen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15965229/LeonardC_1970c_BerkelyCmmunityTheatrBerkelyCA__11-15-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a poster from this exact concert. However, I had to make a few changes to get the rectangular poster fit in a square space. For instance, I vertically squished the text quite a lot.

Various Artists - Tower of Song - A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen, Centre Bell, Montreal, Canada, 11-6-2017

Leonard Cohen died in 2016 at the age of 82. Exactly one year later, his son Adam Cohen put on a memorial concert. Leonard had specifically asked that such a concert be held in Montreal, Canada, so that's where it happened. It was broadcast on Canadian television and radio through the CBC, and later sold as a DVD, but it has never been released as an album. But it was professionally recorded thanks to the broadcasts, so it sounds great here.

This album is based on the CBC radio broadcast, which had great sound quality. (The DVD misses a bunch of songs.) However, there was a big problem with that broadcast, in that someone did a voiceover to talk over all the applause between songs, usually to introduce the next performer. This was very annoying since it was clearly added later and not part of the actual concert. Worse, the voice sometimes went over to the start of the next song. So thank God for audio editing programs like UVR5. I was able to use that to wipe out the voiceover which keeping the underlying applause and/or music. This means there are no verbal introductions of the performers. I don't know if that was the case in the actual concert or not. But you can just look at the song list here.

I also had a few problems with some missing music. Two songs weren't included in the radio broadcast, for whatever reason: "Tower of Song" and "Everybody Knows." That's when the DVD came in handy, because those ones happened to be included. But there was a problem with another song that I couldn't solve, "Closing Time." This was the last song of the concert, and it appears the radio show ran out of time, because it cut the song off before it ended. To make matters worse, the DVD didn't include that song. So there was nothing I could do. I added a chorus to the end of the song so the ending wouldn't seem so weird (which is why it has "[Edit]" in the title. But I didn't have a way to give the music a proper ending after that, so I still had it fade out.

Now, let's get to the performers. I really like the list of performers, including some big names, like Sting and Elvis Costello. But one has to put a kind of asterisk next to the performance of "Tower of Song," with no less than Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen all singing lead vocals on it! That was prerecorded elsewhere, probably due to those artists not being able to attend the concert in person. And note the involvement of Cohen on that song. I'm guessing a recording from a concert before his death was used and cleverly edited in to go with the other voices. A similar recorded performance happened to Cohen's voice on "A Thousand Kisses Deep."

Note that I wanted to keep the focus on the music, so I cut out some non-musical bits. For instance, there was a long speech by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. I removed all of that. However, I did keep the recitation of a poem by actor Seth Rogen, since that was an interesting poem by Cohen.

If you're a fan of Cohen's songs at all, you really should give this a listen. Pretty much all the performances were solid, though I think k. d. lang was the highlight with her version of "Hallelujah."

This album is an hour and 57 minutes long.

01 Dance Me to the End of Love (Sting)
02 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Feist)
03 Who by Fire (Patrick Watson)
04 I'm Your Man (Sharon Robinson)
05 Democracy (Lumineers)
06 A Thousand Kisses Deep (Leonard Cohen [Recording])
07 Suzanne (Ron Sexsmith)
08 The Future (Elvis Costello)
09 Famous Blue Raincoat (Damien Rice)
10 So Long, Marianne (Adam Cohen with the Webb Sisters)
11 Hallelujah (k. d. lang)
12 Tower of Song [Recording] (Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen)
13 Sisters of Mercy (Sting)
14 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Lana Del Rey & Adam Cohen)
15 In My Secret Life (Bettye LaVette)
16 Everybody Knows (Courtney Love)
17 Field Commander Cohen [Poem] (Seth Rogen)
18 If It Be Your Will (Borns with the Webb Sisters)
19 The Partisan (Coeur de Pirate, Adam Cohen & Damien Rice)
20 Bird on a Wire (Elvis Costello)
21 Anthem (Sting)
22 Coming Back to You (Adam Cohen & Basia Bulat)
23 Closing Time [Edit] (Basia Bulat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HzFNUjt2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uEEd4BXXEU8yal8/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/aJCqE

The cover is the poster for this concert. However, I had to make some changes to get a rectangular poster to fit into a square space. I repositioned some things using Photoshop. I also updated some of the artist names at the bottom to better reflect who actually performed at the concert. For instance, it had mentioned Phillip Glass, who didn't show, and failed to mention some, like Ron Sexsmith, Courtney Love, and Bettye LaVette, who did show.

Leonard Cohen - Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 5-10-1970 (NEW TO PUBLIC CIRCULATION!)

WHOA! I don't think I've ever been more excited to post an album than this one. If you're a Leonard Cohen fan at all, this is a must have. I think it's his best concert recording, and for all intents and purposes it's been unavailable to the public until now.

In the past few days, I was doing some searching for Cohen material in order to post more BBC albums from him. I happened to come across some mentions that there had been some copyright extension releases of his music. If you don't know what that is, in the European Union there's a law that if a music recording isn't made public within fifty years of the year it had been recorded, then it goes into the public domain. So the record companies of many musical artists, such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and so on, have released music to the public just to maintain the rights. They typically do it just a few days before the end of the year where their rights will end, and they only make the music available for a few hours in the middle of the night for iTunes in some European country, hoping no one will notice. Then the music goes back into the vaults, so they can continue to own it without selling it. (Why?!) 

So what I read was this happened to some of Leonard Cohen's music. There were copyright releases for his music from 1967 (in 2017), 1970 (in 2020), and 1972 (in 2022). It's possible there were more that went completely undetected. I found a few obscure mentions of these releases, but I highly doubted it, because where's this music? All the copyright releases for the acts mentioned above, and more, have been heavily bootlegged. However, after doing some further digging, I got lucky and found the entire copyright extension release for 1970. For all intents and purposes, this stuff has never been in the public domain before now.

I plan on posting more of this, including some studio versions of previously unreleased songs, but I want to start with this concert, because it's amazing. Keep in mind that Cohen never really did any concerts prior to 1970, so this is about as far back as his live music goes. (He played a few songs here and there, but he had stage fright in those early years. He did do a significant BBC concert in 1968, which I've posted here, but that's about it.) So his 1970 tour (in Europe only) was a big deal for Cohen fans. This was the most important concert of the tour because it was held in London, at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, which meant it was attended by media figures and other famous musicians. (It sold out, not surprisingly.) 

The great news is that the sound quality is freaking fantastic, all the way through! At times, it's easy to think these are studio versions, because there's a "you could hear a pin drop" type sound. And the performance is great too. (He played in acoustic mode, with backing vocalists and a lead guitarist, and not much else.) The only music that's ever been released from this exact concert is the last song, "Please Don't Pass Me By (A Disgrace)," which was a highlight of Cohen's "Live Songs" album, released in 1973. (If you're a big Cohen fan, it may be strange that you're unfamiliar with nearly all of this, but very familiar with the last song!) Why the entire concert hasn't been released yet is a true mystery to me.

Anyway, that's the good news. The bad news is that the copyright extension release only contained the music. What I mean is, as soon as the applause started at the end of each song, there was a quick fade out that sounded jarring to the listener. Furthermore, that release included no banter between songs whatsoever. That's because the record companies only had to briefly release the music in order to keep the copyright, not the banter or anything else, so they released the bare minimum. That's a big disappointment, because Cohen's comments are a big reason to hear his concerts.

However, I resolved to fix this problem. I went looking for a bootleg of this exact show, and I found one. Unfortunately, it's an obscure bootleg because the sound quality is terrible. For instance, during the banter, I couldn't make out the words and often could barely even figure out if Cohen was talking at all. So that tape was of no use to me whatsoever. Then I looked for other audience bootleg recordings from his 1970 tour. There were a few, but they all sounded pretty rough. The best of a bad lot was a concert in Frankfurt, Germany, which took place on May 6, 1970, just four days prior to this concert. I resolved to grab the applause and banter from that one and use it to fill in the missing bits of this concert.

To cut to the chase, it worked like a charm. In fact, I'm kind of shocked at just how well it worked. The key is that I used an audio editing program called "Enhanced Speech" by Adobe. It's only been around the last year or so (as I write this in November 2023). It really brings clarity to muddy recordings. Unfortunately, it only works for speech, not singing or music, so it has had limited use for me and my blog in general. But it was ideal for this situation, because the only thing I needed to fix was the banter. I had to do a lot of careful work, often going line by line and even sometimes word by word, but the end result is the banter now sounds almost like soundboard quality, fitting in well with the crystal clear music. There are only a few bits here and there where the Enhanced Speech program failed to work, usually because the source material was too muddy.

Also, fleshing out the applause worked out really nicely. It seems that clapping is the one thing that basically sounded the same on the two recordings. For all the songs on this album, the applause starts from one source, and fades into the second source. But it all sounds like the same generic cheering  to my ears. I was careful to make sure that the exact amount of cheering after each song is precisely how long that cheering actually took place in the Frankfurt concert. Most of the other bits between songs, like guitar tuning, sounded a lot rougher, and Enhanced Speech couldn't help with that, so I generally cut those bits out.

Now, you might complain that the music is from one concert and the banter is from another one, and it's true that is a bit weird. However, it turns out that since this was Cohen's first tour, he kept things simple, playing virtually the exact same songs every night, in the same order, and even usually making the same comments between songs. That really helped me out, because it meant I was able to find comments for virtually every song, since the set lists of the two concerts were only different by a song or two. (All the songs that don't have banter before them didn't have banter before them in the Frankfurt concert.) No doubt, it was a big help that the concerts were only four days apart. (For instance, Cohen only played "Please Don't Pass Me By" in concert four times in his entire career, and that included these two concerts.) There was only one bit of banter I cut out because it was specific for a German audience.

Two of the songs, "Diamonds in the Mine" and "Story of Isaac," have "[Edit]" in their titles because I had to do extra work on those. It seems Cohen got careless and pulled his mouth away from the microphone during parts of those songs, because the volume of the lead vocals dropped way down at times. But I was able to fix that using the audio editing program UVR5, going line by line in parts to boost the vocals back to normal levels. Oh, and the poem "Celebration" was only from the Frankfurt show. But it sounded so good after using the Enhanced Speech on it that I decided to leave it in.

The bottom line is, there was a lot of work that went into making this concert sound great, mostly by filling in the missing bits from the copyright extension release. But from your point of view as a listener, it should sound seamless, a pristine sounding concert from Cohen's first tour that effectively has never been publicly available until now. 

The only concert from this tour that's been made public is his set from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, which was released in full as "Live at the Isle of Wight 1970" in 2009. That was a more historically important concert, since he played in front of half a million people. But in terms of both the music and the recording quality, I think this clearly is the better concert. If nothing else, it's half an hour longer, so there are more songs and more banter (plus four short poem recitations, and none at the Isle of Wight). But also, there are obvious sonic advantages to the fact that he was playing in front of only 10,000 people instead of half a million. And it was a friendly crowd, allowing him to be relaxed and at the top of his game, whereas the Isle of Wight was a rather hostile crowd, and it was kind of a struggle all the way through. (For instance, singer Kris Kristofferson later commented about Cohen's set at the Isle of Wight: "I never have known why [the crowd] didn't just hoot him off the stage like they did with a lot of people, especially me!")

Anyway, please enjoy this, and spread the word to other Cohen fans. Also, if anyone out there knows about the 1967 and 1972 copyright extension releases, please let me know, and share, so I can help get it out there to people who are dying to hear it! It's ridiculous that record companies hoard music like this in their vaults for more than fifty years. What are they waiting for?! Most of the people who care will be long dead by the time they properly release any of that stuff, if they ever do.

This album is an hour and 44 minutes long.

01 talk (Leonard Cohen)
02 Bird on a Wire (Leonard Cohen)
03 talk (Leonard Cohen)
04 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
05 talk (Leonard Cohen)
06 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
07 Dead Song [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
08 Lady Midnight (Leonard Cohen)
09 talk (Leonard Cohen)
10 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
11 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
12 For E.J.P. [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
13 Avalanche (Leonard Cohen)
14 talk (Leonard Cohen)
15 Joan of Arc (Leonard Cohen)
16 talk (Leonard Cohen)
17 Tonight Will Be Fine (Leonard Cohen)
18 talk (Leonard Cohen)
19 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
20 talk (Leonard Cohen)
21 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
22 Celebration [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
23 Diamonds in the Mine [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
24 Story of Isaac [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
25 talk (Leonard Cohen)
26 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
27 talk (Leonard Cohen)
28 Sing Another Song, Boys (Leonard Cohen)
29 Travel [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
30 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)
31 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
32 Please Don't Pass Me By [A Disgrace] (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/htLxG2AH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/v1MZw0dDP1vaPoo/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, the original was in black and white. I used the Palette program to help colorize it. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with help of the Krea AI program.