COHEN ABOUT SEEING DYLAN LIVE IN CONCERT 2008; read in ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE

You and Bob Dylan were in St. John’s at the same time, playing consecutive shows. I went to his concert. It was terrific. I’ve been to many Dylan concerts. This one, there was a walkway from the hotel to the auditorium, so you could enter into this private area, the people who had boxes. We were in one of those boxes. First of all, I’ve never been in a private box in an auditorium. That was fun. And a lot of members of the band came. But it was very loud. Fortunately, Raphael, our drummer, had earplugs, and he distributed them. Because our music is quite soft and that’s what we’ve been listening to for three or four months.

As Sharon Robinson said, Bob Dylan has a secret code with his audience. If someone came from the moon and watched it they might wonder what was going on. In this particular case he had his back to one half of the audience and was playing the organ, beautifully I might say, and just running through the songs. Some were hard to recognize. But nobody cared. That’s not what they were there for and not what I was there for. Something else was going on, which was a celebration of some kind of genius that is so apparent and so clear and has touched people so deeply that all they need is some kind of symbolic unfolding of the event. It doesn’t have to be the songs. All it has to be is: remember that song and what it did to you. It’s a very strange event.

However, in a 2009 Rolling Stone interview, Dylan claimed that he doesn’t see Cohen, or any other singer-songwriters, perform these days:

Do you get any time to sit in on concerts? Like would you go see someone like Leonard Cohen? Dylan: I know what Leonard does. I wouldn’t need to go see him. I still go see plays. I go to the symphony because I’d be hearing threads and things that are new to me that maybe would influence me in some kind of way. … I mean I would hear things harmonically that I might think, „Oh, well that’s not such a bad idea“ or maybe that kind of thing. But I wouldn’t go see anybody.

Dylan and Cohen were each signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond. Recording in the studio soon after signing, Cohen started singing and Hammond said on the intercom: „Watch out Dylan!“ Like Dylan, Cohen briefly left the label, but soon returned.

 Leonard Cohen & Bob Dylan are Lyricists says Ted Burke in:

Bob Dylan Is Not A Poet by Ted Burke (2007)

Cohen tends the words he uses more than Dylan does; his language is strange and abstruse at times, but beyond the oddity of the existences he sets upon his canvas there exist an element that is persuasive, alluring, masterfully wrought with a writing, from the page alone, that blends all the attendant aspects of Cohen’s stressed worldliness– sexuality, religious ecstasy, the burden of his whiteness– into a whole , subtly argued, minutely detailed, expertly layered with just so many fine, exacting touches of language. His songs, which I fine the finest of the late 20th century in English–only Dylan, Costello, Mitchell and Paul Simon have comparable bodies of work–we find more attention given to the effect of every word and phrase that’s applied to his themes, his story lines. In many ways I would say Cohen is a better lyricist than Dylan because he’s a better writer over all. Unlike Dylan, who has been indiscriminate for the last thirty years about the quality of work he’s released, there is scarcely anything in Cohen’s songbook you would characterize as a cast-off.

Ted Burke

Bob Dylan Is Not A Poet by Ted Burke (Ted Burke – Like It Or Not: September 6, 2007)

• Cohen went to Nashville in 1968, not long after Dylan recorded there.

• Dylan and Phil Spector visited Cohen backstage in 1975. in 1971, Spector co-produced Dylan’s songs for The Concert For Bangla Desh. Spector produced Cohen’s 1977 album, Death Of A Ladies‘ Man (originally released on Warner Brothers,) with Dylan and Allen Ginsberg singing background vocals on one track. Soon after, Dylan was reportedly involved with a friend of Cohen’s named Malka Marom.

• Both spent time with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd, especially Nico. Nico war jedoch mehr Lou Reed zugewandt und Cohen liess sie geradezu „abblitzen“. Angeblich war er ihr zu klein. Viel größer ist Bob Dylan auch nicht 🙂

Der Begriff des  Cuesheets findet man auch in der Computersprache und hat mit Metadaten zu tun. In der Konzertbranche ist es das, was Musiker und Techniker als „Einsatzplan“, bzw. „Ablaufplan“ eines Konzertes ansehen.

Zumeist sind sie mit Tape auf dem Bühnenboden befestigt, sodass alle Beteiligten wissen, wie der Songabaluf ist.

Dylan hielt sich nicht immer daran, bis er irgendwann einmal keine mehr einsetzte. Cohen verwendete sie bei der letzten Tour als eine Art roter Faden ,

CUESHEET/ DYLAN 1996

CUESHEET COHEN/ WORLDTOUR 2008-2010

NEW YORK CITY & Bob Dylan’s GreenwichVillage.

,,I waved goodbyc, stcpped out onto the hard snow. The biting wind hit mc in thc face. At last I was here in ! New York City,“ beschreibt Dylan seine Ankunft in seiner Autobiographie in New York am 24. Januar 1961. Von da an wurde New York und hier insbesondere das Künstlerviertel Greenwich Village zum Dreh- und Angekpunkt seiner Karriere.

Reisereportage aus dem Jahr 1998 für die Zeitschrift TELECRAN

Von da an spielte er regelmäßig in den Literaten-Cafés wie z.B. Gerde’s Folk City in der  West Fourth Street; The Gaslight und The Commons und im The Bitter End and the Village Gate in der Bleecker Street. 1964 nahm er mit Suze Rotolo ein Apartment in der 161 West Fourth Street. Später lebte er auch im Earle Hotel, Washington Square mit Joan Baez und 1965 zog er ins Chelsea Hotel mit Sara Lownds und ihrer Tochter Maria.

Bei seiner Rückkehr aus Woodstock 1969 lebte er in der 94 MacDougal Street. Zur Vorbereitung für die Rolling Thunder revue lebte er in der Houston Street und dort im Gramercy Park Hotel.

Uptown befinden sich die Columbia’s Studio A in der Seventh Avenue wio Dylan die ersten fund Alben aufnahm. In der Carnegie Hall hatte er seinen ersten großen Live-Auftritt. Im Madison Square Garden fanden sowohl The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971) und die 30. Bühnenjubiläums-Party 1992 statt.

Schließlich gibts noch unzählige literarische Referenzen an New York wie z.B. in: „Talking New York“; „Hard Times In New York Town“; „Down The Highway“; „Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream“, „Spanish Harlem Incident“, „Positively Fourth Street“; „Tangled Up In Blue“, „Joey“, „Hurricane“, „Sara“ and „Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Thru Dark Heat). – Im folgenden sind 15 markante Punkte und Adressen New Yorks benannt, die mit Dylans Leben im Big Apple zu tun haben.

l. Bleecker Street

…connects the West and EastVillages, running from the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Hudson Street to the Bowery, at which end of Bleecker Street was,until2006,CBGB’s.

2. TheCafeWha?

…hosted early shows by JimiHendrix and The Velvet Underground äs well äs the young Dylan and the legions of folk Singers that populated The Village in the early-’60s. Legend has it that Dylan’s first recorded onstage words in New York were taped here: „Just got here from the west. Name’s Bob Dylan. I’d like to do a few songs. Can I?“ The Cafe Wha? was then owned by Manny Roth, uncle of Van Halen’s David Lee Roth.

3. 161 West 4th Street

Dylan rented his first apartment here, moving in with girlfriend Suze Rotolo in Decemberl961.

4. Jones Street

Dylan and Suze Rotolo were pictured here, walking towards West Fourth Street, for the iconic cover of 1963’s The Freeivheelin’Bob Dylan.

5. One Sheridan Square

Suze Rotolo lived here on the third floor in the early-’60s. Miki Isaacson, with whom Dylan often stayed, lived on the fourth floor, and The Cafe Socicty folk i clubwasinthebasement.

6. TheWhite Horse Tavern

..onHudsonandllth,wasoneofthe \ Village’s mostfamouswateringholes, i whosepatronsinthe’50sand’60s | includedhard-drinkingwriterlytypes like Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac. The Clancy Brothers were favourites there and Dylan was also a regulär.

7. HotelEarle

Dylan regularly stayed here af ter ] he split from Suze Rotolo, often with i JoanBaez.

8. Gerde’sFolkCity

located at 11 West 4th Street, was where Dylan played his first Professional gigon Aprilll, 1961, openingfor John Lee Hooker. Dylan’s appearance here on September 26,1961 was the show famously reviewed in the New York Times by Robert Shelton, and where Suze Rotolo first saw Bob.

9. The Bitter End

This successful Bleecker St club was i knownforitsTuesdaynight | ‚hootenanies’intheearly-‚öOs.It i becameafavouritehauntofDylan’s i when he started hanging out again in j the Village in the summer of 1975, prior i totheRollingThunderRevue.

10. TheVillageGate

at the intersection of Thompson and l Bleecker Street, this was primarily a ! home for jazz greats like John Coltrane, i Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and l Nina Simone, although it was identified ! more in the early ’60s with the folk i boom. Odetta and ArethaFranklin ; madetheir New York debuts here. l

11. 94 MacDougal Street l Dylanmovedintoatownhouseatthis ; addressin!970,whenheleft i Woodstock.Inevitably,fanswere ! drawn to MacDougal Street, to Dylan’s i evident dismay. He was particularly i houndedbytheinfamouslyobsessedAJ ! Weberman, towhomanoutragcdBob

ended upadministeringasoundpublic i thrashing.

12 IzzyYoung’s Folklore Center

„Thecitadelof Americanfolkmusic…it | hadanantiquegrace,likeanancient i chapel,“ Dylan wrote in Chronicles. Izzy i Youngfounded his Folklore Center in i 19S7 and the young Dylan was a regulär ! there, listeningtoYoung’svast i collectionof recordings, studyingsong i foliosandhistoricjournals.Youngalso ! promoted Dylan’s concert at Carnegie l Chapter Hall in November 1961, a month ! before Dylan recorded his debut album. i There were 52 people in the audience.

13. Kettle Of Fish

Populär hang-out for folkies in the early i ’60s, when Dylan would have been seen ; therealot.

14. The Gaslight Cafe

Acoffeehouseinthebasementofllö | MacDougal Street, the Gaslight had hosted readings by Beat poets Allen i Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, but by the l early- ’60s it was one of the main venues ! for folk music. One of Dylan’s early gigs l there was taped, and, afteryearsof I bootlegged versions, released in August i 2005zsLiveAtTheGaslightl962.

15. Chelsea Hotel, 23^rd Street.

Dylan blew everybody’s mind, except Leonard’s

ALLEN GINSBERG

Each stayed at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, and the building is referenced in the songs „Sara“ (Dylan) and „Chelsea Hotel #2“ (Cohen).

Reportage aus dem Jahr 1999 übers CHELSEA HOTEL in New York. Derzeit ist es geschlossen, wird renoviert und soll im Jahr 2017 wieder eröffnet werden.