Cohen, Leonard: Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 (Vinyl 2xLP)

On August 31, 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen was awakened at 2 a.m. from a nap in his trailer and brought onstage to perform with his band at the third annual Isle of Wight music festival. The audience of 600,000 was in a fiery and frenzied mood, after turning the festival into a political arena, trampling the fences, setting fire to structures and equipment - and stoked by the most incendiary performance of Jimi Hendrix's career, less than three weeks before his death.

As Cohen followed Hendrix's set, onlookers (and fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood sidestage in awe as the Canadian folksinger-songwriter-poet-novelist quietly tamed the crowd. Academy award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner, whose footage of the 1970 festival did not begin to see release until 1995, was able to capture Cohen's performance. Likewise, Columbia Records staff a&r producer Teo Macero, who was ostensibly there to record Miles Davis' set, did a brilliant job of supervising Cohen's live recording as well.

Adding further historic provenance to this release is a newly commissioned 2,000-word liner notes essay written by veteran British rock journalist and BBC commentator Sylvie Simmons.

1. Introduction
2. Bird On The Wire
3. Intro To So Long, Marianne
4. So Long, Marianne
5. Intro: “Let’s Renew Ourselves Now...”
6. You Know Who I Am
7. Intro To Poems
8. Lady Midnight
9. They Locked Up A Man (Poem) / A Person Who Eats Meat / Intro
10. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong
11. The Stranger Song
12. Tonight Will Be Fine
13. Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye
14. Diamonds In The Mine
15. Suzanne
16. Sing Another Song, Boys
17. The Partisan
18. Famous Blue Raincoat
19. Seems So Long Ago, Nancy