Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970

Related Content

• Occupy This Album Is as Massive, Inconsistent, and Powerful as Occupy Itself
  May 15, 2012
• Saturday at Hardly Strictly: Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson Become the Great HSB Unifiers
  October 3, 2011
• Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music
  October 5, 2011
• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011: Robert Plant, Thurston Moore, Broken Social Scene, and More
  August 10, 2011
• Teatro ZinZanni's Five-Course Menu: Cheese and Fanfare
  July 19, 2011

More About

• Murray Lerner
• Teo Macero
• Kris Kristofferson
• Joan Baez
• Charlie Daniels

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

This latest from the cottage industry of Cohen-in-concert memorabilia (I'm Your Man, Under Review, Live in London) offers the best vintage available. Director Murray Lerner, whose latter-days career consists largely of revisiting footage from the Isle of Wight concerts, presents a re-sequencing of Cohen's 2 a.m. set from the 1970 festival's final day. With only sparse coverage available, Lerner doesn't have the option of distilling the confidential performance—a virtue. Much of the film is simply Cohen on-screen, dressed like a Camus protagonist in head-to-toe khaki, held in medium close-up, fervid-eyed through his measured recitation. Exceptional live recording by Teo Macero does justice to the Army, Cohen's band of (mostly) Nashville session vets, including fiddler Charlie Daniels and Songs From a Room producer Bob Johnston, performing a set list drawn from Cohen's first three albums, closing on a funeral note with "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy." Lerner solders things together in a narrative arc, breaking for new interviews with witnesses—Kris Kristofferson and Joan Baez—who cast Cohen as a musical sedative. Born-ancient "I know we are not new" Cohen followed young, hellraising Hendrix (with three weeks left to live), subduing a mutinous crowd of some 600,000 with raincoat-weather songs in 3/4 time.
Feb. 19-March 6, 6:40, 8 & 9:30 p.m.; March 6-7, 3:30 & 5 p.m., 2010