Paul says: 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.
LEONARD COHEN on SoulseekQT*
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]
02 So Long, Marianne [Incomplete]
03 Police [Improvised Song]
04 So Long, Marianne
05 Crazy Horse Saloon [Improvised Song]
06 Bird on the Wire
07 Lady Midnight
08 Avalanche
09 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
10 Passing Through
11 The Stranger Song
12 You Know Who I Am
13 Sing Another Song, Boys
14 Come Up on Stage [Improvised Song]
15 The Butcher
16 Famous Blue Raincoat
17 Story of Isaac
18 Joan of Arc
19 Chelsea Hotel No. 1
20 talk
21 The Partisan
22 talk
23 Suzanne
24 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy
25 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
* Paul explains SoulseekQT here . . . .
in case you missed the previous one from ’72 it's here Leonard in Tel Aviv
