$*$ Isle of Wight Amazon.com Exclusive Blu ray

Me and... Leonard Cohen at Isle of Wight 1970 and 2009, 21 Oct 2009

By Peter Solomon





Memories, Dreams and Reflections - Isle Wight 1970.



Me and... Leonard Cohen at Isle of Wight 1970 and 2009



By Peter Solomon 1970 and 2009





I was just two months shy of my seventeenth birthday at 4 am on August 31 1970 and I knew all the words, I was maybe 50 to 75 yards from the stage just outside the overrun VIP and Press enclosure and Leonard Cohen was about to appear on stage at the Isle of Wight Festival.



My older brother Chris was to blame for me being there, for he introduced me to Leonard Cohen, and I had become smitten, I had caught the Leonard Cohen bug big time, which I would be unable to shake off for the rest of my life.



I knew all the songs and all about Marianne, Suzanne and Nancy. And I knew Tonight Will Be Fine, for I had waited 5 days and nights with hardly any sleep, after hitch hiking 250 miles with a friend Johnny Vernon from Manchester in the north of England to be there. I had just slept through most of Jimi Hendrix's set, though disappointed to have missed him, that was unimportant as I had come to see Leonard Cohen, and was slowing moving forward to get as close as possible to the stage.



Looking back now after nearly 40 years it seems like a dream and I have woken up and am watching the DVD of my Dream, compulsively, 3 consecutive times so far and also listened to the whole CD. It's as if time had become dislocated and the warp and woof of reality expanded to include a 40 year Present Moment.



As I watch I am really identifying very intensely with almost spiritual longing with that young man at the beginning of the DVD who was about my age, it was like coming to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus he says, except Leonard Cohen is no 'baby Jesus', and it also felt as much like Babylon as Bethlehem, with Fires, Chaos and Free Love all on display. But it was still like a holy pilgrimage for me.



I wanted so much to connect the 2 time-streams, as I watched Leonard on the DVD, the present with the past, to be there again, with my 17 year old self who was waving matches in the night, through the cold mists of time, trying to signal his presence to his future self. The strangeness of being a mere part, a cell in the huge Beast of Babylon that was the crowd, a Body of 600,000 people. You Know Who I Am, You've Stared at the Sun, sang the poet and prophet in the middle of the night and we stared at the stage where there was a human star burning with such bright intensity, as we stood in awe in the vast dark, small points of light, our matches in our hands.



The 1970 Leonard Cohen never looked so prickly and real, so unshaven, so raw and human yet so sensitive and spiritual, so powerful and yet so frail. So spaced out yet so centred in the moment. Speaking and singing from the heart with words and songs that communicate with the souls of men. He looked like some suffering Christ like figure that came to tell the world the truth but had just been woken up and did not really want to bother.



This was the biggest rock festival in the history of the world and there has not been anything like it since. I was there to see Leonard Cohen in 1970 at the Isle of Wight and feel after viewing the DVD in 2009 that events like these go beyond their stated purpose and moment, reverberate through time and become cracks in the fabric of the world and as Leonard would say, `that's how the light get's in', we enter a Communion with the Higher Powers. "We pray for the angels and then the angels pray for us" to misquote LC. The negative forces on Devastation Hill become insignificant, they had played their part to pump up the intensity and now are just another part of the story, another part of the myth... of how the artist calms the savage beast and opens a spiritual channel for transcendent love to flow and manifest in the world.



Leonard Cohen's words and songs are mined from the very deepest heart and soul. They are like the golden thread from some magical loom, which weave their way through time and remain with us from moment to moment, as we grow older they make our lives richer, more meaningful and bearable.



I am so pleased to have had this chance to be transported back 40 years in time and relive my younger days again. It`s been an experience full of unique and extraordinary memories and emotions. And thanks to Leonard Cohen for being a beacon of light in the darkness of the world, truly he transcends past and present, to bring us the timeless truth of the heart.



If you want to know what it was like to be at one of the defining moments in musical history...buy this DVD/CD.
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