The news of Leonard Cohen’s death came like a cruel punchline, karma’s final dig following the horrors of America’s 2016 election. Despite the timing, Cohen was never a generational spokesperson in the way his career-long comparisons to Bob Dylan would suggest. Cohen’s songs describe interior worlds and the nebulous space between lovers. He was less a pop star than the patron saint of anyone attempting to get laid through the means of poetry and candlelight. When his methods of private seduction took him into the public eye, there was friction.
Tonight, the Hollywood Theatre and Mississippi Records are presenting “an emergency healing showing” of Bird on a Wire, the recently restored documentary of Cohen’s 1972 concert tour of Europe and Israel. (All ticket proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.)