Cherie Thiessen

Leonard Cohen - rock on!
Went to his Victoria concert Tuesday night, along with hoards of others, mainly we females of a certain age. And were we ever well behaved, too. I’ll bet the arena has never had such a polite group. There were no panties thrown on stage, no outbursts, just lots of applause and whistling at appropriate times and dozens of standing ovations. Now THIS is the one time I joined the crowd in bouncing up and up and up. ( I have always hated the way west coasters leap to their feet at the end of every concert, performance or play that comes to town; totally destroys the whole idea of an ovation and the performers know it means nothing.) But Leonard now, it meant something all right.

I fell in love with him as a wordsmith when I was 20 and he came to the University of British Columbia to read poetry and sections from his first novel, Beautiful Losers. When he first put his poetry to music those of us who can recall those times were startled. We’d never heard anything like it before - the brazen cheek of such a bad singer believing he could actually make money with such a voice. But he was like retsina - once you got used to the shiver, you acquired the taste. And of course his poetry was always there to keep us transfixed.

Leonard took poetry and made a living from it, singing with his guitar in smoky joints with fellow poets like Margaret Atwood and Milton Acorn and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Atwood turned to fiction to make a living, Cohen made it work with music, and poor MacEwen, who never wanted to be anything but a poet, died tragically young.