A number of rarely seen Leonard Cohen performances and interviews videos have been uploaded to YouTube lately. Most of them are taken from documentaries about Cohen, but some, such as the recently posted Leonard Cohen In Rare Performance Of Un As Der Rebbe Singt are films of live performances that, as far as I can determine, haven’t been widely distributed in years, if ever.
The video featured in today’s post, Leonard Cohen – Night Comes On, falls into the latter category.
The original was part of a film of the complete 1985 Warsaw concert that was never broadcast. This video copy is clearly imperfect. The colors, for example, never approaches hues found in nature. Leonard gives off a red aura while Anjani, who sings backup and plays keyboard on the video, is tinted blue.1
Anjani - Unretouched screenshot from Night Comes On
Anjani - Screenshot from Night Comes On after application of industrial strength Photoshop
The sound quality, however, is good.
In any case, the video is worth watching because (1) recordings of live performances of Night Comes On are rare and (2) it’s a fine song that somehow didn’t quite qualify for the Most Beloved Songs Of Leonard Cohen classification. Consequently, even many Cohen fans are not familiar with Night Comes On, which makes this video a special treat.
According To Cohen
Cohen elaborated on “Night Comes On” in a 1985 interview for Paroles et Musique:
…In men’s life the mother represents an authentic sense of protection, the life that strengthtens. In the second verse, there is that fight and this idea, “I’d like to pretend that my father was wrong. But you don’t want to lie, not to the young”…the father represents this idea of a war forever fought. Then there is the marriage, which develops from a romantic idea, which we can’t make last forever, to a human responsibility towards children, an ineluctable responsibility, even if these very children will move away. Then the verse, “Now I look for her always…” is in fact, and concerning my case, about a songwriter’s work. Here there is this vision of the woman, neither the mother nor the wife, but another feminine presence that touches all the others and is responsible for the songs. “I lie in her arms, she says, When I’m gone, I’ll be yours, yours for a song.” It’s the feminine Muse. The last verse deals with the street, with “going back to the world,” with friends. I like this passage, “Yes, and here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care!” But obviously this cannot protect us from the idea of what has been lost and will never be back. So the singer is trying to come back his way but the mother, by saying to him again and again, “Go back, go back to the world,” keeps him alive.
Leonard Cohen – Night Comes On (Warsaw, 1985)
_____________________- This clearly presages her “Blue Alert” album.↩
Leonard Cohen w Warszawie - 1985 rok w Schronisku Myśli // Apr 14, 2009 at 7:50 pm
[...] uczestniczyć. Å»e poznaÅ‚em pieÅ›ni Cohena później. I dziÅ›, kiedy na blogu Allana zobaczyÅ‚em ten post, ruszyÅ‚a w mojej gÅ‚owie lawina. PoszperaÅ‚em nieco gÅ‚Ä™biej – i proszÄ™ – kilka niesamowitych [...]