Leonard Cohen 1934- 2017 RIP

I first saw Leonard Cohen play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Joni Mitchell, in an orange striped mini-dress, led him out.He looked like a rabbinical student. He played ‘Suzanne’ as I remember, and I vowed to buy it as soon as it was out. I have bought virtually everything he has done. I am not one to complain about Bob Dylan’s getting the Nobel, but Cohen was the best we had. He was a Zen Buddhist Jew with Catholic tendencies, and virtually the only person in the music world I considered to be a wise man. Despite the darkness and mortality of much of his work, he was also very funny.

When Libby looked up that first performance, she said my memory was wrong. I thought that Joni had been wearing a horizontal striped mini-dress; it was diagonally striped.

Here is one of my favorites; also one of the world’s best bar songs, though it is a lot more than that…