I'm Your Man (57 page)

But the music business had changed drastically during Leonard's absence. As the Internet grew and people increasingly wanted music for free, or at best to buy it online one song at a time, even big-name, established artists were no longer selling albums in the large numbers they had before. Musicians were starting to look for new ways to sell their music and themselves, coming up with all manner of solutions. Joni Mitchell, for example, had signed a deal with the coffee shop chain Starbucks, which played her CD as background music and sold it alongside lattes and croissants. Joni had been on Leonard's mind lately; Herbie Hancock had asked him to appear on a tribute album,
River: The Joni Letters
(2007); Leonard recited “The Jungle Line.”

Major artists were increasingly making their money from touring, charging considerably higher ticket prices than under the old system, when concerts existed to promote album sales. Although Leonard refused to consider himself a major artist, he also knew that the tributes, the collaborations, the signed limited editions of his artwork and even the lawsuits had done little to refill his empty retirement account. Of all the options available to him for making a living, the only one that appeared even remotely feasible was going back on the road. But Leonard was almost seventy-three years old, and it had been so long since he had last toured, it seemed to him, that to expect that he would still have an audience would be like making a sandcastle and going back a decade and a half later and expecting it to be there waiting for him.

Still, he thought, it was not going to be any easier when he was seventy-five or eighty. And due to the combined publicity from the film and the tribute concerts, Anjani's album, Glass's production and the media interest in his financial problems, Leonard was as much in the public consciousness as he was likely to ever be again. Tentatively and ambivalently—very ambivalently—Leonard began to consider the idea of a tour. Since he had no manager to look into setting one up, having parted company with Sam Feldman some time ago, Leonard asked Robert Kory if he would do it.

As it happened, Leonard was not the only one considering the possibility. Steven Machat had heard from Leonard's old European promoter, asking if he would help him talk Leonard into touring. Machat knew Leonard had financial problems; he had first read about the business with Kelley Lynch in the
New York Times,
and though he was not entirely sympathetic—he had not forgotten that Lynch, who had once been his father Marty Machat's assistant, had, as he saw it, purloined Leonard's files, with Leonard's support, as his father lay dying—he was curious. He put in a call to Leonard, as he had promised the promoter he would. Leonard invited him to his house for lunch. Standing at the stove in his small kitchen, cooking, Leonard conceded to his guest that he might indeed have to tour, since he had no money. “I said to Leonard, man to man, why would any human being allow someone else to have the access to his fortune for five years? But Leonard is an extremely fearful man,” Machat says. “Kelley Lynch played that to the hilt.”

If Leonard was going to tour, it certainly would make sense to start in Europe, where he had his most loyal following. Robert Kory had thought as much and had already put in a call to AEG Live, a London-based promoter. He asked what they knew about Leonard Cohen and the response was “Not much, but there's a man in the company who is a big fan.” That man was Rob Hallett. Hallett had an impressive record in the business. In the eighties he had been Duran Duran's worldwide promoter, and he had been behind Prince's recent sold-out twenty-one-night stand at the twenty-three-thousand-capacity O2 Arena in London. Kory called Hallett, who flew to L.A. to meet with him and Leonard and make his pitch. “I've got every album you've ever made,” Hallett told Leonard. “I've read every novel, every poem, I bore all my friends regularly with quotations from your songs, and I've lived my life by a couplet from a poem that you wrote in 1958, ‘He refused to be held like a drunk / under the cold tap of fact.' ”

Leonard listened soberly. The more he heard, the more he saw the potential for humiliation. “He wasn't sure he could do it,” says Hallett, “and he wasn't sure if anyone cared. I said, ‘I'm a cynical old bastard and I don't want to see anything, but I want to see Leonard Cohen, so there must be others.' I was convinced there were hundreds of thousands of people out there who wanted to see him. His biggest concern was that he didn't want to embarrass himself. But also, he didn't have any money left. So I said, ‘I'll tell you what, do some rehearsals, do as long as you want, audition as long as you want, and I'll pick up the tab and pay for everything. If at the end of it you say, “Thanks, but this isn't working for me, I can't go out there and perform,” I'll go, “Well, we tried,” and you won't owe me anything.' ” It was an offer Leonard couldn't refuse. There were no strings and it had an escape clause, two of his favorite things. “That sounds like a reasonable deal,” Leonard said. They shook hands on it. Kory began putting together a touring plan, while Hallett set about convincing the industry that Leonard Cohen concerts would be a going concern.

When Sharon Robinson opened her door one day soon after, she saw Leonard on her doorstep with a worried look on his face. “Darling,” he said, “I think I'm going to have to go on tour again.” He didn't want to do it, he said, but all the signs were pointing that way. He did not ask Sharon to come on the road with him. Nor did he ask Anjani. He thought—because the tour for
The Future
had soured him on working with old friends, perhaps, or because he did not want to let old friends down or let them see him fail—that he should take all new people with him, musicians he'd never worked with before. The one exception was Roscoe Beck, whom he asked to be his musical director.

“Leonard was very apprehensive about the entire enterprise,” Beck remembers. “He didn't even want to talk on the phone about it. He flew down to Austin to talk to me in person. He said, ‘I'm thinking about touring again. Would you help me put the band together and would you go?' I said, ‘Yes, of course, I had already promised myself if I ever heard from you again I would go.' ” (Beck had put together Leonard's
I'm Your Man
touring band but had been unable to join himself.) “Leonard said, ‘Look, I don't know if I'm really going to do this. I hope you won't hold it against me if I decide to back out.' He really wasn't sure he could go through with it. He said, ‘I'm 92.7 percent sure'—the numbers would change all the time—‘I'm 82 percent sure, I'm 93 percent sure.' He said, ‘I have the option of backing out at any time if I don't like the way it's developing, and if I do go I'm only committed to do six weeks. But if the whole thing doesn't happen would you forgive me?' I said, ‘Of course.' ”

Leonard had begun to feel less concerned about the actual touring—as long as his vocal cords didn't give out, he felt confident he could keep up the pace—than about the band. It had been so long since he'd played with one, he had no idea what kind of band he wanted. He was used to working at home with Anjani and Sharon, but an old man with two women and two synthesizers would not really cut it onstage. In January 2008, Beck started making calls and holding auditions. The first person Beck hired was actually someone Leonard knew well—Bob Metzger, Leanne Ungar's husband, who had played on the
I'm Your Man
tour and on the album
Ten New Songs
—though the next two recruits were new to Leonard, Neil Larsen, a keyboard player whose résumé ranged from Kenny Loggins to Miles Davis, and Javier Mas, a Spanish bandurria, laud and twelve-string-guitar player. Mas had been the musical director of a Leonard Cohen tribute concert in Barcelona, in which Leonard's son, Adam; Jackson Browne; and Anjani had performed. Leonard had seen a DVD of the concert and Mas had impressed him.

Beck was also trying to work out exactly what kind of show Leonard had in mind. Over the years, as Leonard's voice became increasingly deeper and his musical approach more refined, the bands and the volume level had changed accordingly. It appeared to Beck that this band he was putting together was “more like a chamber group.” Six weeks into rehearsals they still had no drummer. Eventually they hired Mexican-born Rafael Gayol, another newcomer to Leonard; Beck had worked with Gayol in Austin. At one point Leonard decided he wanted a violin player, and a female violinist joined the band. Then Leonard realized he did not need a violin, and she was let go, and once again Leonard began to doubt himself—to regret, as he put it, “that I had started the whole process.”
8
Instead, Beck brought in a multi-instrumentalist, Dino Soldo, to play saxophone, woodwind and keyboards.

All that remained to find were the backing singers. Beck asked Jennifer Warnes, but she declined. Anjani had dropped by for some of the early rehearsals, but no mention was made of her joining the tour. Says Beck, “I just wasn't sure what was going to happen in that regard because of the personal relationship between Anjani and Leonard.” Anjani herself attributes it to “a difference of opinion” in their approach to the concerts. “I had in mind a revolutionary approach to Leonard's music; I wanted to showcase it in ways that hadn't been done before, with arrangements that were innovative and unexpected. The other approach was to re-create the past tours. In the end he went with what he felt comfortable with, and I understand the decision.” Beck called Sharon Robinson, who expressed interest. But Leonard wanted two backing singers, and the search went on.

It was March 2008; the tour, if there was going to be one, was just two months away. Leonard meanwhile was in New York, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—the American hall of fame, the big one, the greatest honor the once-dismissive U.S. music industry could bestow on him. Lou Reed was there to introduce Leonard and present his award. In an odd little ceremony-within-a-ceremony Reed, dressed in a black leather suit and fuchsia shirt and carrying a stack of typewritten notes and a copy of
Book of Longing,
gave a reading instead of an introduction. Now and then he paused to interject his own comments like an enthusiastic college professor: “He just gets better. . . . We're so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is.”
9

Leonard, silver haired and dignified in his tuxedo and black bow tie, came out onstage, bowed deeply to Reed and thanked him for reminding him that he had written a few decent lines. This was “such an unlikely event,” Leonard said, and it was not just modesty; he meant it. It brought to mind, he said, “the prophetic statement by Jon Landau in the early 1970s: ‘I have seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and it is not Leonard Cohen.' ”
10
Leonard was making a joke; what Landau, the head of the Hall of Fame's nominating committee, had actually said back in the days when he was a journalist for
Rolling Stone
was that he had seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and it was Bruce Springsteen. But
Rolling Stone
magazine had certainly dismissed Leonard's early albums, describing
Songs from a Room
as “depressed and depressing”
11
and
Songs of Love and Hate
as “unlikely to make you want to shake your little body.”
12
As Lou Reed had, Leonard gave a recital in place of a speech—a solemn reading of the first five verses of “Tower of Song.” He declined to follow the Hall of Fame tradition of performing with the other inductees; he was not ready to perform yet. But he was getting there. Leonard left the stage to Damien Rice to sing “Hallelujah,” a song that at that time was No. 1 on the iTunes chart—the late Jeff Buckley's version. That it had been propelled back into the national consciousness had nothing to do with Leonard's finally taking his official place among the popular music pantheon, but through the sheer number of online discussions that followed Jason Castro's performance of “Hallelujah” on
American Idol
.

Back in Los Angeles, Beck was pulling out his hair. None of the women singers he had auditioned had worked out. He asked Sharon Robinson if she could think of someone—anyone. Sharon mentioned Charley and Hattie Webb. The Webb Sisters were in their early twenties. Born in England two years apart, they had sung and played as a duo since their teens, Charley on guitar, Hattie on harp. They had come to L.A. to work on an album and, during the process, their record label asked them to write some songs for a children's album they planned to release. Sharon, who had a publishing deal with the same company, was also brought in on that project. All three women remember how well their voices blended when they sang together.

Since that time, the Webbs had lost their record deal and were on the point of giving up and going home to the UK when Sharon called, telling them that Leonard was looking for a singer. They replied that they did not know many Leonard Cohen songs; although they had grown up on their parents' record collection of sixties and seventies singer-songwriters, their hairdresser father had banned Leonard's albums from their home because a colleague at the salon played nothing but Leonard Cohen albums all day long. They also told Sharon what she already knew: that they came as a pair and would not separate.

The whole band was in the rehearsal studio at SIR when the Webb Sisters arrived. Beck played a recording of “Dance Me to the End of Love” and told the three women to work out some parts. After singing them, the Webbs took their harp and guitar out of their cases and played two of their own songs, “Baroque Thoughts” and “Everything Changes.” When Beck had first checked the sisters' Myspace page, he thought they looked too young, but the moment he heard them sing, this changed to, “Here are our singers.” When they left, he called Leonard in New York. “I said, ‘I've got good news and bad news. The good news is I think I've found our singers.' Leonard said, ‘Great.' ‘The bad news is now there's three.' We arranged for the sisters to come back when Leonard returned from New York, and it was a no-brainer. We knew we had our vocalists, and at last, our band.”