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.
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