May 24, 1985 Sydney: The Midday Show With Ray Martin (ABC)

More about the show and its host you can read here.


Transcribed by Paula Jenkins, London, for A Thousand Kisses Deep website

(c) 1985, Bravado

»Coming Back To You« is played live in the studio

(Applause)

Ray Martin
Great stuff. Leonard Cohen and the band. One of the living legends and we have got the pleasure of talking to Leonard. Please, welcome back, Leonard Cohen.

(Leonard comes back to the Monty Python tune »Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life«)

Ray Martin
Thank you.

Leonard Cohen
Thank you for having us over tonight.

Ray Martin
Well, it’s all our pleasure. It was the Canadian country, wasn’t it? That song had a country swing to it.

Leonard Cohen
Yeah, it had a country feel to it, yeah.

Ray Martin
Did you realise that today is Bob Dylan’s 44th birthday?

Leonard Cohen
Happy Birthday, Bob.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
The reason I say that is, that it seems like you have been in each other's shadow now for about twenty years, hasn’t it?

Leonard Cohen
I have known him for a long time. I bumped into him many years ago in Greenwich Village in New York and I have rejoiced in his genius over the years.

Ray Martin
It’s not true that, err, those reports that in fact he has modelled himself on you in terms of being the enigmatic figure.

Leonard Cohen
I taught him everything he knows.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
I mentioned Canadian country and you are a Canadian. I am just wondering whether you have had to live with that, whether in fact had you been born in the United States, you would have had the focus of publicity, you would have the sort of star attention that Bob Dylan has been forced to live with.

Leonard Cohen
Maybe. I’ve lived in Canada most of my life and never felt a great desire to move south of the border. But it’s true that we probably have the same kind of ambiguous feelings about the United States that you do down here.

Ray Martin
I think Pierre – someone laughed there – I think Pierre Trudeau referred to it as an inferiority complex.

Leonard Cohen
Well, it’s true. I was just talking to some people here in Sydney over the past few days. It seems that an artist or a sportsman or a scientist even has to have the approval, has to have that stamp of approval from the US before we take him seriously. That’s the sad thing.

Ray Martin
It is... Have you seen enough of Australia yet, Leonard, to really be able to see if we are like a South Pacific version of Canada?

Leonard Cohen
Well, I think in terms of this United States situation that we are talking about, that you have a better take on it here. We are just a few cities really arranged on the border of the United States, so our sense of identity is continually being threatened and a lot of people say what the hell, we will just, you know, go down there and work. So down here, you don’t have that easy access to territorial United States. You got all the cultural stuff coming in on the television but I think it is an easier situation down here.

Ray Martin
Yes. I wonder too, in fact, the sort of characters we have turned out, the Canadian character or the Australia character that we have. Small populations along one strip, in your case it’s along the St Lawrence, in our case it’s along the coast, huge land mass, British stock as I say, with a great alliance with America. Whether you see Australians and Canadians somewhat the same?

Leonard Cohen
Well I always, I never had any, I think we studied the same things in school and we looked at that map of the British Empire and we were both red.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
Did that trouble you?

Leonard Cohen
No, no, and it’s true that the world sees us as stereotypes. They see you as outbackers and kangaroo people and they see us as mounted police and snowmen.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
Not true?

Leonard Cohen
It’s true.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
Can I make one of those sweeping generalisations and say that in my experience and I have been to Canada many times, that I find Canadians as a group perhaps more bland than Australians. They don’t seem to be quite as outrageous and quite as upfront as Australians.

Leonard Cohen
No, I think that they are much more retiring, much more withdrawn than Australians. There is a real --- There’s a real feeling down here of down to earth and, it’s an obscenity that keeps coming to my lips so I can’t say it but, there’s an attitude down here like, so what, which is great and we don’t have the luxury of that kind of --- This country seems healthy. The body of this country seems to be completely intact and sunburnt and full of beans and Canada, you know, we have that long winter and we are continually in this defensive position in regard to the United States so it is different, yeah.

Ray Martin
What about the criticism that often people make about Australia, that we are too hedonistic.

Leonard Cohen
I don’t think you are hedonistic enough. I mean, to rejoice in your own landscape and your own bodies and your own families and your own good luck, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Ray Martin
Is it true that the real reason you have come down here is to taste Australian wine and Australian women?
(Laughter)

Leonard Cohen
Oh no, I- I- I- Please no.

Ray Martin There’s an ugly rumour doing the rounds. Leonard Cohen No, I would never want to have the reputation as someone who sweeps into a country on a raid. (Laughter) No, I have tasted the wine. Ray Martin Is it true that it is in your contract that you must have red wine backstage. Leonard Cohen Who let that news out? (Laughter) Ray Martin Do you feel very Jewish?

(c) 1985 Australian Tourbook

Leonard Cohen
I know that I am a Jew and I had a good --- I came from a good Jewish family, conservative and yeah, I certainly feel that tradition deeply.

Ray Martin
Do you speak Hebrew?

Leonard Cohen
Well, I can pray in Hebrew. I can speak to the Boss in Hebrew.
(Laughter)

Ray Martin
Did you feel especially Jewish when you went back to Poland? I read the story of your return there, which was quite an extraordinary trip, wasn’t it?

Leonard Cohen
Well, it was kind of alarming and touching experience. Well one, because there had been a very large Jewish community there of three million Jews that was destroyed in a couple years during the war. So as a Jew I felt curious because there was a lot of cooperation to be able to do away with that many people. So I did have, in that sense also, because the country is involved in some heroic struggle now, Solidarity. You do identify with their --- with their protest also. I had no idea that I had any place in the Polish culture at all, so it was kind of alarming to find the crowds there and the kind of attention I got there.

Ray Martin
Now, your parents were Polish Jews?

Leonard Cohen
My – my mother was from Lithuania which was a part of Poland and my great-grandfather came over from Poland to Canada.

Ray Martin
I read as well you were very surprised to find that there was in fact a Leonard Cohen Festival of Music in ---

Leonard Cohen
Yes, yeah. They have a festival of my songs at Krakow every year or so.

Ray Martin
Which is just near Auschwitz?

Leonard Cohen
Yeah. It’s, it’s very --- it’s very hard to deal with. I was totally unequipped for the kind of pressures that were put on me, you know, the national spokesman of Solidarity asked me to invite Lech Walesa to the Warsaw concert. He was under town confinement in Gdansk so I was invited to embarrass the Government in some way, and I didn’t have a chance to test my courage. Some of the guys in the band drew me aside and said, You know Leonard, we don’t know what weird missionary adventure (laughter) you’re on but we are just getting paid by the week, so (laughter), don’t say anything that is going to make it difficult to leave the country. Let’s play the gig and get out of town.

Ray Martin
What was your inclination though, I mean, would you like to go back? You could go back on your own.

Leonard Cohen
Yeah, going back on my own. I might look into that sometime, yeah.

Ray Martin
What was the response? I have been to Poland a few times reporting and it seemed that any western music that they weren’t picking up on shortwave radio was at a premium, that in fact they were prepared to pay big money, many zlotys, for music. Did you find that there was thirst, a hunger there for your music?

Leonard Cohen
There’s a real, not just for my music, I mean there is a real appetite for the western experience. I think they want to point west and they are being forced to point east. I think that they feel themselves part of the western European culture and that really eats at the heart of a lot of people.

Ray Martin
We mentioned Bob Dylan, his birthday, but did you find going back there that it was at all an educational experience I mean you and Bob have both, amongst other things, amongst writing beautiful love songs and so on, you have also been somewhat critical of western society and some of our [?] did you find there, was there any education in seeing the other side?

Leonard Cohen
Well, I don’t think that anybody who has ever spent a few weeks under a so-called Communist Government is ever going to, is certainly going to examine any leftist feelings that he has. I mean, it is a difficult place to live. I think that people are really suffering under that regime. You know, I think that probably the Polish people are difficult to govern anyhow ---

Ray Martin
Yes.

Leonard Cohen
...I know the Polish people because I come from that sort of family. They are independent and crazy.

Ray Martin
Yes, the most crazy romantics, I think they used to say the Irish were the crazy romantics but I think it is the Poles.

Leonard Cohen
But anybody who has ever seen a Communist Government, who has felt it for a moment, who has ever seen the public presence of a Government, we don’t know what it is to have the public intrusion into our private world. (Silence) I hate it.

Ray Martin
Where will you spend your 60th birthday? Do you still see yourself, you know, doing gigs in places like Australian and drinking good red wine?

Leonard Cohen
Well, God willing I would like to keep on going. I listened to Alberta Hunter in New York a few years ago. She was 82 at the time and it was really wonderful to hear the experience in this woman’s voice, you know, you knew that she knew what she was talking about and when she said »God bless you« at the end of her set, you really did feel blessed.

Ray Martin
Yes. Despite the image of the prince of darkness and despair and the poet of melancholy, is it fun?

Leonard Cohen
There are a lot of good times on the road. You get very tight with the men and women that you are working with and you feel like you are part of the gang again.

Ray Martin
Yes, on the road. Marauding or raiding, but not raiding.

Leonard Cohen
No, no.
(Laughter)


Captures from the Midday Show With Ray Martin, 1985. Courtesy of The Leonard Cohen Video Database

Ray Martin
Let’s --- In fact, you can catch Leonard Cohen and the band in Sydney tonight at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, on Saturday at the Melbourne State Theatre, on June 2nd at the Adelaide Festival Theatre and June 5th in Perth at the Concert Hall. And it’s your own fault if you don’t take the opportunity to see Leonard Cohen and the band. Leonard, thank you very much indeed.

Leonard Cohen
Thank you very much...
(Applause)


Transcribed in March 2005.
Special thanks to Marie Mazur for corrections - connect to her site Speaking Cohen, archive of many articles & interviews.
Transcribed and reprinted with Leonard Cohen’s permission. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the photographs but some were unreachable. We’d be grateful if the authors concerned would contact us.


Back to Archives.