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[♪♪♪]
NEWSCASTER: The woman who inspired
the songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen
to write some of his best-known work has died.
"So Long, Marianne"
and "Bird on a Wire" were written decades ago
for Cohen's then-lover and muse, Marianne Ihlen.
They split up, but when Marianne grew ill
and near death with leukemia,
her close friend Jan Christian Mollestad
contacted Leonard Cohen.
Less than two hours later, a message came back,
which Jan read to her.
MOLLESTAD [ON RECORDING]: "Dearest Marianne.
I'm just a little behind you.
Close enough to take your hand.
I've never forgotten your love and your beauty.
But you know that. I don't have to say more.
Well, safe travels, old friend.
See you down the road.
Endless love and gratitude, your Leonard."
[CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING]
I wrote this for Marianne.
I hope she's here. Maybe she's here.
I hope she's here.
Marianne.
This song is called "So Long, Marianne."
And a girl called Marianne that I know very well,
she came to me after I sang it for her first, and she said--
She's a Norwegian. She said, uh,
"I'm certainly glad that song wasn't written for me."
I said, "Oh, uh, yeah?"
And she said, "Yeah, 'cause my name is 'Marionn-eh.'"
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
♪ Come over to the window ♪
♪ My little darlin' ♪
♪ I'd like to try To read your palm ♪
♪ I used to think I was Some kind of gypsy boy ♪
♪ Before I let you Take me home... ♪
[♪♪♪]
BROOMFIELD: This is Marianne, filmed on the island of Hydra
in the early '60s.
She said the song "So Long, Marianne"
was originally called "Come On, Marianne"
and was not her favorite song.
She said it was not originally intended as a goodbye,
but came, in actuality, to foreshadow the end
of Marianne and Leonard's relationship as lovers.
This is Little Axel, Marianne's 7-year-old son.
Film it. COHEN: It looks like
some kind of a lobster.
It has all kinds of...
It was the '60s, and the time of free love and open marriage,
including Leonard and Marianne's.
I was a rather lost 20-year-old visiting the island of Hydra
when Marianne befriended me.
For a short while, I became one of her lovers.
She encouraged me to follow my dreams,
and she played me Leonard's songs
under the Greek moon and stars.
Her smile and enthusiasm were one-of-a-kind,
and I felt completely intoxicated
by the beauty of their relationship.
COHEN: I just left one day.
And, uh, I won a prize for a book that I wrote.
And they gave me some money,
and I got on a plane.
I came eventually to, uh-- To Greece
and got on a boat.
And I just saw this island that was so beautiful, you know?
I'd come from a country
that's covered with snow half the year.
And I saw this island, you know, completely shining.
I just got off, met a girl there,
and I stayed.
There were just a few foreigners there in those days.
And the Johnstons were, um, central figures.
They were older, they were doing
what we all wanted to do, which was to write
and to make a living out of writing.
And they were there, and they were very wonderful,
colorful, hospitable people.
And they helped me settle in. They really helped me out.
WOMAN: That was first what made him an outcast in Montreal.
It was the journey into the dark,
because nobody wanted to go there.
And I remember my mother writing me
some horrible things about him.
He knew the dark. He knew the struggle
from moment to moment.
You were supposed to find a mate
and get married and live in Westmount.
They all stayed in Westmount.
So we... We left.
We had our own way of being.
We found our own lives,
but they turned out to be synchronistic.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: When I first went to Hydra,
I was running away because I couldn't cope.
And in many ways Leonard was also looking
for something different.
So there we were, two refugees, running away from something
I knew I'd eventually have to face.
[IN ENGLISH] Can I have a sip?
You'll have to even all of them.
When I first saw Leonard,
I was standing in the shop with my basket.
He was standing in the doorway with the sun behind him.
I could only see his silhouette.
Then he said,
[IN ENGLISH] "Would you like to join us? We're sitting outside."
[IN NORWEGIAN] I remember my eyes met his eyes.
I felt it throughout my whole body.
It was incredible.
The first year on Hydra was fantastic,
and he just wrote and wrote.
I ran and did the shopping and brought food.
And I was his Greek muse, who sat at his feet.
He was the creative one.
COHEN: The days were very, very ordinary.
We'd get up early and have breakfast,
and I'd go to work.
And, uh, a sandwich would be brought to me.
I think I was on speed too, so I wasn't eating very much.
And, uh, that's-- The day would proceed like that.
I had a quota. I think it was three pages a day.
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: Those years were really good.
We sat in the sun, lay in the sun, walked in the sun.
We listened to music, we bathed.
We played, we drank and discussed.
There was writing and lovemaking.
It was absolutely fabulous.
I never felt I was much to look at.
I didn't believe Leonard when he said,
[IN ENGLISH] "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
[IN NORWEGIAN] I always thought my face was too round.
So I was walked looking down.
But I did have sun-bleached hair.
And in Greece, I was so very blond.
Skinny, almost no boobs.
[CHUCKLES]
To my big regret.
Leonard was beautiful.
But he never thought it.
We both had that problem.
We'd often look in the mirror before going out
and wonder who we were today.
How strange we could be.
MOLLESTAD: She was beautiful.
But she didn't really enjoy being beautiful
before she met Leonard,
and he made her love living.
She felt that not only did Leonard see her,
but he really loved her
and he really made her feel beautiful.
[♪♪♪]
I think if you should really understand Marianne,
you have to understand her first husband, Axel.
Axel could get so angry. So he would throw out, uh,
the furniture from the window and out in the street.
I don't think he ever hit her,
but he was violent.
Leonard was the one who came into Marianne's life,
who had watched the relationship breaking down.
Leonard saved her life,
and he went into a kind of role as a kind of helping hand.
He helped with Little Axel,
and he helped her with talking and practical things.
He was the father, in a real sense.
And Little Axel still is talking about Leonard
as a very good force.
BROWN: He was a very smart kid.
He was very quiet.
Maybe a bit shy, even.
Axel and I would just... We would roam the hills.
We would find fossils and...
GOLDMAN: I lived there from the time that I was 3 months old.
We used to run around barefoot,
with the slightly powdery feeling
of the dried seawater on the stones.
Every part of it is beautiful in every season,
anytime of the day or night.
The freshly baked bread and things like that.
I mean, I've never experienced those things anywhere else.
Even the air has a kind of-- You can sort of feel the air,
especially in the evening.
It feels like sort of you're wrapped in something
silky and velvety.
There was so much freedom there
that people just went too far with it.
So there was always that danger hanging over people.
BROOMFIELD: I was mesmerized by the island's beauty
and had never before met so many golden, sun-kissed people
of either sex having so much fun together.
It felt like anything was possible.
Marianne gave me my first acid trip,
which she said had come from a friend of Leonard's
in London called Malcolm,
and she took these pictures of me the morning after.
I had no intention of leaving,
but then one of Marianne's other lovers
unexpectedly showed up on the island,
and I found myself hastily boarding
the next boat back to Athens.
My enthusiasm for Hydra, however, remained undiminished.
I suggested to Rick, my best friend from school,
that he go there as a break
from a hectic career as a journalist.
Rick intended to go for two weeks
but ended up staying for 14 years.
I came to Hydra, which he recommended, and, um,
suddenly this enormous sense of relief,
because it was a combination, I think, of beauty,
the beauty of the place, the simplicity of the place,
and the genuineness of the environment there.
It was just a small group of artists
who were either refugees of some kind or another,
and you could live so cheaply then.
Leonard didn't have much money back then.
And there was a sort of unwritten rule,
certainly back when I was first on Hydra,
that if you saw someone like Leonard at a table,
you didn't assume you could go and sit with him.
They were there to be alone and remain alone,
and they were doing their writing.
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: Leonard had the idea that he needed to live
part of the year in Montreal
to see real life and get inspired.
Leonard was very vulnerable
in his creativity.
COHEN: A large part of my life was escaping. Whatever it was.
Even if the situation looked good, I had to escape,
because it didn't look good to me.
So it was a selfish life, and, uh...
But, uh, it didn't seem so at the time.
It just seemed a matter of survival.
You know, I guess the kids suffered
and people close to me suffered
because I was always leaving.
I was always trying to get away.
I was very much encouraged
by a friend of mine by the name of Irving Layton.
Influenced by his manner.
After he'd ask me what I'm doing, he'd always say,
"Leonard, are you sure you're doing the wrong thing?"
And that really struck home. That really sounded right.
And Cohen's concern is my renunciation
of the Canadian public. Is this true,
or do you have some other concern, Mr. Cohen,
that you'd like to get off your chest right now?
COHEN: When I get up in the morning,
my real concern is to discover
whether or not I'm in a state of grace.
BROOMFIELD: What do you think Leonard loved so much about Irving?
LAYTON: He loved his intellect,
he loved his imagination, and he felt that
Irving was the real thing in terms of poetry.
And the very first time I saw Leonard,
Irving said, "I'm gonna ask this man to come round,
this boy-man to--"
I think he was 19, 20--
And I said, "Who is he?" And he said, "He's the real thing."
They each thought of each other as the real thing.
They also had a very strong Jewish connection.
That was a very strong thing in Irving's life,
a very strong thing in Leonard's life.
Leonard was an aristocratic Jew.
Leonard came from a wealthy family,
very well-rooted in Canadian culture.
He came from an educated family,
highly educated family.
I never knew Leonard's father, of course,
who died when Leonard was young,
but his mother, Masha,
was as mad as a hatter.
Really mad.
She had a thing about Irving--
I wouldn't be at all surprised...
Leonard and I would laugh about it.
...whether Irving and Masha ever
actually went to bed together.
Irving went to bed with everybody.
Why not Leonard's mother?
I mean... And she was--
She was very attracted to Irving.
And Irving might have-- She was very beautiful, but mad.
I think really great writers have to have mad,
Oedipally mad mothers.
And if that's the case, then that's what he had.
[CHUCKLES]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
COHEN: I mean, I know that, uh,
a lot of my love of music comes from my mother,
who, uh, had a lovely voice.
She was Russian, and she sang songs around the house.
And I know that those--
Those changes, those melodies,
touched me very much,
and that's certainly an influence.
She would sing with us.
I'd take my guitar
to a restaurant with my friends,
and my mother would come,
and we'd often sing all night.
[♪♪♪]
[PEOPLE CHATTERING]
[PLAYING MELODY]
[LAUGHS, SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION AND PEOPLE LAUGHING]
COHEN: We're having fun!
We're winning! We're winning!
We're winning the internal battle!
We're keeping a party going!
We're keeping the party going.
[PLAYING MELODY] [GIGGLING]
BACAL: He loved women. No question about it.
But he needed to be his own person in his own way.
So he could love women from a distance...
and love them when they came through and make them--
He could make women feel good about themselves.
And that's how he loved them.
That's how he loved them.
But he couldn't give himself to them
because he couldn't give himself away.
[♪♪♪]
IHLEN [IN ENGLISH]: I was not satisfied with my life at all.
I didn't know what to do.
I was the only one who didn't paint,
write, sculpt.
So everybody was artists.
Lots of people came off the boat to Hydra.
Jacqueline Kennedy was there.
Princess Margaret was there.
So, what could I say?
So finally, I would say,
"I am an artist.
Life is an art. I'm living."
Not very original.
I was looking at myself and saying,
"Oh, everything is wrong with me," you know? So...
it's a pity.
BROOMFIELD: Marianne had been the one to support Leonard
through the nightmare of writing his last novel,
Beautiful Losers, on Hydra.
COHEN: I wrote a lot of books there,
and a lot of songs.
I published a novel, Beautiful Losers,
but I really couldn't pay the rent.
LAYTON: Oh, yeah. He went quite crazy.
I mean, you'd have to be crazy to write Beautiful Losers.
It's like-- It's like a hallucinogenic madness.
He used to stay out there under that hot Greek sun,
and Marianne would make him
little baskets of food and water
and drop them over to him, and--
I mean, he wrote that book in a fever.
So he would never have been able to do that
anywhere else except on that island.
VICK: Leonard had always used acid.
It just gave you that extra whoosh.
It was never just like taking it to get out of oneself.
It was very much to do with part of the spiritual search.
It allowed him to go into his madness, I think,
which he probably couldn't have done anywhere else.
It allowed him to sit in his terrace in the sun,
take acid and speed.
Marianne, I mean, she used to say, you know--
She was there to sort of--
Not pick up the pieces, but just sort of
to hold the man that had driven himself to the Beautiful Losers
and writing those extraordinary pages day after day,
in the sun, lunatic that he was.
COHEN: To find something
that really addresses my attention,
I have to do a lot of endless versions.
Anything I can bring to it. I try everything.
Try to ignore it. Try to address it.
Try to get high.
Try to get intoxicated. Try to get sober, you know?
All the versions of myself that I can summon
are summoned to participate in this-- This workforce.
So, uh, I try everything. I'll do anything.
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: When Beautiful Losers came out,
it was hardly read.
I didn't understand any of it.
Many intellectuals reading it tried to understand it.
But even they were left bewildered.
But listen to what some of the critics said
about his latest book.
[MAN READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]
[♪♪♪]
COHEN: After I finished Beautiful Losers,
I thought that I would go into music.
I wasn't really making a living as a writer.
It was very hard to support and feed the--
The hungry mouths that I was obliged to do.
So I came back to America,
and I didn't know what had been happening
in New York in, uh-- In folk music.
I was completely unaware of people like Phil Ochs
or Dylan or Joan Baez.
COLLINS: Leonard found me,
and he came to my apartment,
and he came in and we had some coffee.
I said, "So?" And he said, "Well, I can't sing.
And I can't play the guitar.
And I don't know if this is a song."
And then he played me:
♪ Suzanne takes you down To her place by the river ♪
So I said, "Leonard, that is a song!
That's a song, and I have to record that immediately."
So he and I--
Of course, I recorded it right away.
We became friends.
He was quite clear that he never,
ever wanted to sing in public.
So about a year went by,
and "Suzanne" was a big song by then.
And I was doing a big fundraiser in New York,
and I said, "You have to come with me.
I want to put you on-stage
and I want you to sing 'Suzanne.'
Everybody is dying to hear you sing this song."
He said, "I can't sing. I have a horrible voice."
I said, "You don't have a horrible voice."
So he came out, and he stood in the middle there
and began singing the song.
And I knew that he was shaking like a leaf
because I had seen him, seen his hands on the guitar.
In the middle of "Suzanne," he broke down and began to sob,
heh, and walked off the stage.
He was dying of fear.
He was having what we know as a great, massive attack
of-- Of stage fright.
So he came off the stage, and I said,
"Leonard, this just will not do.
You have to go back. I'll go back with you,
and we can do the song together."
He said-- Finally he said okay.
So meantime, the whole audience
is continuing to clap and scream and carry on,
'cause they'd gotten a taste.
They could hear him sing. They knew.
So we went out together, he finished the song,
and by the time we finished, he was a convert.
Total convert to his own magical impression.
I would like to introduce to you Mr. Leonard Cohen.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
♪ Suzanne takes you down ♪
♪ To her place near the river ♪
♪ You can hear The boats go by ♪
♪ You can spend the night Beside her ♪
♪ And you know She's half crazy ♪
♪ But that's why You want to be there ♪
♪ And she feeds you Tea and oranges ♪
♪ That come all the way From China... ♪
COLLINS: It was one of the most important moments
of his life and mine.
And of course, then he was off to the races.
Columbia signed him up and was his label forever.
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: He often had to cross the "great dam."
Both to search inspiration and...
[IN ENGLISH] become a little more miserable again, heh.
[IN NORWEGIAN] We couldn't afford all three of us to travel.
So I was often alone on Hydra.
And I got to the point
where I didn't want to be alone anymore.
I was sad.
It wasn't long before I received a telegram.
[IN ENGLISH] "Have house.
All I need is my woman and her son.
Love, Leonard."
[IN NORWEGIAN] And that was it.
I went to him.
COHEN: I remember her arriving at the airport.
She had two heavy valises in each hand.
She couldn't wave to me
because she couldn't lift the suitcases up,
but she didn't want to drop them-- She was moving.
So she waved to me with her foot.
I remember that very, very clearly.
[CHUCKLES]
LAYTON: Yeah, boy, that was a mistake.
You know, and said famously-- You know, the famous thing.
"I want my woman." I mean, that was Leonard, yeah?
"I want my woman and my child to come to Montreal."
And that was this wonderful thing.
And of course, the minute he said it, he didn't--
He wouldn't have-- He didn't need it anymore.
He needed to say it, but--
And Marianne, who was deeply in love with him,
did come and brought Little Axel.
We always used to call him "Little Axel."
And, um, it was a disaster.
It was very unhappy. A very unhappy time.
Axel would come and stay with us.
He used to take a pencil and pencil his name
over every wall in our apartment.
He'd write, "Axel, Axel, Axel."
That was a very unhappy time.
Poets do not make great husbands, do they?
Do you know of a poet who's ever made
an absolutely splendid husband?
Or a filmmaker?
Or an artist?
No. You can't own them.
You can't even own a bit of them.
They're-- They're just elusive creatures
who are married to their... To their muse.
That sounds so pretentious to say that, but it's true.
But the irony is, a man like that
is a man who every woman wants to have...
and can't have.
COLLINS: Marianne came up to me, and she said,
"We were very happy living in Hydra.
And we were walking on the beach
and we were swimming in the nude
and drinking a lot of retsina, and we were very happy.
And then one day, he came to me and he said,
'Marianne, I'm going to New York
to play my songs for Judy Collins.'
And you recorded all of his songs.
And I just wanted to tell you that you ruined my life."
Certainly their dream life in Hydra
had a big interruption, which was that
Leonard discovered himself as a singer.
[♪♪♪]
BROOMFIELD: I took this picture of Marianne in the autumn of 1968,
when she came to the U.K. and contacted me.
She had come to bring Little Axel to boarding school
and needed a lift.
We drove down to Suffolk,
to Summerhill, the A.S. Neill school,
where children didn't have to attend class
if they didn't want to.
Axel was 8, and I remember
how upset he was when we drove away.
Axel would write to Marianne nearly every day.
Marianne was in tears too,
but believed it was the best thing for him
because she was always traveling.
Marianne came and stayed for a while
in my less-than-chic squat in Kentish Town,
where she took this photo.
She introduced me to the world of protest movements
and artists using their art to achieve incredible things.
She was close to Julie Felix, the singer,
an old friend of hers and Leonard's,
and working with Julie as her muse,
encouraging her to write her own songs
for the very first time.
Julie had originally met Leonard on Hydra,
before either of them were singers.
I'm very happy and proud to have him here on the show
and introduce him to the English public.
Here is the writer, the poet, the songwriter.
He's a friend, but he says he's a stranger in this song.
Ladies and gentleman, Leonard Cohen.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
♪ It's true that All the men you knew ♪
♪ Were dealers who said they Were through with dealing ♪
♪ Every time You gave them shelter ♪
♪ I know that kind of man It's hard to hold the hand ♪
♪ Of anyone who's reaching For the sky... ♪
FELIX: Leonard was always searching.
And this feeling of never belonging anywhere,
and even in a relationship, you know, eventually--
With Marianne, I think that was the longest.
But after that, he went from relationship to relationship.
And at the end of the song,
there was just a tear in his eye.
He was an emotional man.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
Well, at that time they were already having a few problems.
Marianne and I hung out together for quite a while,
and we became very close.
And, um, we went on a couple of trips together,
and she was the muse and said, you know, "Why don't you write?"
And the first song I wrote was "Windy Morning,"
which is a song that she kind of guided me through.
BROOMFIELD: She was a great muse, wasn't she?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And, uh-- And I think Leonard honored that, you know?
He said that she was, you know, when... When...
When he was speaking of her.
BROOMFIELD: She was so encouraging.
Yeah. She was so nurturing, you know.
It's-- It's, uh...
Yeah, it's that, you know, the... woman power,
the ability to nurture and love and--
And, uh, encourage, you know?
It's something the world needs.
That's why I think it's good
that we're getting to women's time finally,
with all the "Time's Up."
And Leonard was a great, uh...
He was a feminist, you know? He really, uh...
He said to me once, 'cause I was talking about something--
He said, "I can't wait till women take over."
So that was kind of nice to hear from him.
[♪♪♪]
SIMON: Leonard's imagery came from the poets,
from Shakespeare, from Keats, from Marlowe.
So I found certain lines in his guitar playing
that I could enrich.
And I decided not to do it with instruments
but to do it with female voices,
since so much of his writing
was about his relationships with women.
There was a very female presence in all of his songs,
even though he was a man.
So my girlfriend at the time
had a very nice pure, soprano voice,
and so I started, you know, fooling around,
asking her, "Sing this, sing this,"
over Leonard's song. "What do you think?"
And, uh, some of it sounded really great.
BROOMFIELD: You can't sort of imitate it slightly?
[LAUGHS]
I'm not a singer, and I'm not a girl.
She was singing, ♪ So long, Marianne ♪
She added that little "--anne" on the top.
♪ It's time that We began to laugh ♪
♪ And cry And laugh and cry ♪
♪ About it all again ♪
So she sort of aped what he was doing,
but it gave it a little harder...
Put a little harder edge on it, you know?
♪ So long, Marianne ♪
♪ It's time that we began ♪
♪ To laugh and cry ♪ ♪ To laugh and cry ♪
♪ And cry and laugh About it all again ♪
♪ So long, Marianne ♪
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: There are aspects of our life in that song.
And when you mention the lyric,
[IN ENGLISH] "Fine spider-web fastening my ankle to a stone,"
[IN NORWEGIAN] it reminds me of something that he told me.
It was his record release party.
Leonard was the center of attention.
So he went to the top floor of the apartment,
on the roof terrace.
He just had to get away from it all,
and he told me very seriously
[IN ENGLISH] if this was part of the game,
he didn't know how long he would last.
The very first time I met Leonard Cohen,
he opened the door,
and he's absolutely naked as a jaybird.
Right? So me, coming out of where I come out of, I go,
"This is pretty damn weird," you know? "This is..."
Later, of course, throughout the time I spent with Leonard,
the years that we worked together,
uh, when I look back on all that,
and if I'd have been evolved enough
at that moment, it wouldn't have been weird to me at all.
All the time I knew Leonard,
he was very, very conscious of his body.
Leonard used to say that when we're on tour,
and you get-- We're at the hotel,
take all your clothes off.
You're going to be passing by
these things called mirrors, right?
And when you pass by a mirror,
you're gonna notice that little...
"Hey, I need to be doing a few more sit-ups."
Leonard swam, like, all the time.
Any hotel we were in, you would find--
If they had-- If they had a pool, he was in it.
And he would get up early in the morning
so he didn't have to run into anybody.
He'd be down there at 5:00 in the morning,
and he'd be doing laps.
And if they would let him swim nude,
he would swim nude.
I don't know why. That was just him.
BROOMFIELD: Didn't you write a song with him?
CORNELIUS: I did. Yeah, I wrote "Chelsea Hotel" with him.
We boarded an airplane in LaGuardia,
and me and Leonard sat there and worked on this song.
I had no idea who he was talking to
in his writing at the time.
It came out later that it was about Janis Joplin.
And, you know, it's like,
"Remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel,
uh, talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed
while the limousines wait in the street."
That's all still there.
Nobody knows that the second verse was,
"I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel
in the winter of 1967.
My friends of that year, they were all turning queer,
and me, I was just getting even."
♪ I remember you well ♪
♪ In the Chelsea Hotel ♪
♪ You were talkin' so brave ♪
♪ And so sweet ♪
♪ Giving me head ♪
♪ On an unmade bed ♪
♪ While the limousines ♪
♪ Wait in the street... ♪
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: I moved to New York to be with Leonard.
He was living between our home and the Chelsea Hotel.
He took me to a concert
to see the fantastic Janis Joplin.
[♪♪♪]
I didn't join them after the concert.
Leonard was always protective of that life.
I was grateful for that.
I didn't really have anything to do there.
Whatever he did while he was in New York,
whether I was there or Hydra...
he never shared that with me.
It was a very hard time.
MOLLESTAD: At that time,
Leonard had some experiences with Janis Joplin,
all these things.
And Marianne was living separately
in her apartment with Little Axel.
That must've been, uh... very strange.
But she was still the muse.
And the interesting thing is that
she has read for me the telegrams...
from Leonard.
First telegrams to...
"Marianne Cohen."
It was just like they had been married.
Telegrams going to Hydra and then to London
and then to New York,
first it's in the period
when they are together as a couple.
But the beautiful thing is,
when they're not a couple anymore,
he's still sending money,
he's still asking how Axel is doing.
And so he continues to send
his, uh, small...
uh...
love messages,
even if they're not together.
[♪♪♪]
CORNELIUS: Leonard said he was suffering from depression
that he fought for so many years.
So Leonard decided, he thought, well, it'd be, uh,
a nice thing for us to do is that
we blow in-- Say we blew into London
to play the Royal Albert Hall.
"Well, uh, we got three or four days here.
Why don't we, one evening, go out and play
at a mental institution," right?
Okay, so of course that went over
like a fart in a diver's helmet with me,
'cause I wasn't about to go out to any...
I was not going. No way.
He said, you know, "Just go one time."
He said, "If you go one time
and don't want to play any more of these,
then you don't have to do it," right?
So I said okay. So I went.
Well, I'm gonna tell you this.
By the time that night was over...
you couldn't drive me away from that idea.
And we ended up playing a lot of them.
He had a grandfather or something like that
that I think died in one of those institutions.
COHEN: There are a number of reasons why I played mental hospitals.
When you play for somebody who has really been defeated--
And it was my feeling
that the elements of this defeat corresponded
with certain elements that produced my songs
and that there would be an empathy.
I mean, I feel that I also have an empathy
with this experience.
When I told them I was coming out here, they said,
"They're a tough bunch of young nuts."
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLING]
This song is about a girl I used to live with.
I lived with her for about, uh, eight years.
Her name was Marianne.
And, uh, I used to live with her
you know, for six months of the year,
and then the other six months of the year
I would spend with someone else.
Then I found myself living with her four months of the year.
Then two months of the year.
Then by the eighth year, I was living with her
a couple of weeks of the year.
But I thought it was time
to write this particular song for her.
I still live with her a couple of days of the year.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
♪ For I love you In the morning ♪
♪ Our kisses deep and warm ♪
♪ Your hair upon the pillow ♪
♪ Like a sleepy Golden storm... ♪
CORNELIUS: That was a moment in my life that I would never forget.
And this guy, he stands up
and starts screaming, you know,
"Hey, shut it down. Stop. Shut it."
Well, we, you know,
being musicians and have played a million shows,
we steam right on, right?
We're not gonna let that-- Well, no.
This guy shut it down. He shut it down.
And then, Leonard finally said,
"Okay, you talk then," right? So this guy said, "Look."
He said, "You come in here,
and you got all these shiny guitars and you got all--
And you got the pretty girls there
singing background and stuff, and everything like--"
He said, "I wanna know, what do you think about me?
That's what I wanna know about.
I wanna know what you think about me."
You could hear a pin drop in that place.
And Leonard just walked past me and Charlie,
walked down the stairs, walked right out in the crowd
and just hugged him like you wouldn't have believed.
He almost broke his ribs, he hugged him that hard.
[♪♪♪]
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: I wanted to put him in a cage,
lock him up and swallow the key.
He was always sought after by everyone.
People loved how entertaining and compassionate he was.
That's the way it goes
when you choose those strong, dark, handsome men.
All the girls were panting for him.
It hurt me so much. It destroyed me.
I was on the verge of killing myself because of it.
I wanted to die.
I came to see you because it's-- You don't sing anymore?
COHEN: Pardon? [SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
Well, we go to Geneva. No, I mean now.
Now? No. Why are you--? No, tonight.
Would you like to listen? Yes. Yeah.
Um, I don't have any plans, but--
You don't have any place? No, I don't have any place.
Do you have somewhere for me? Yes. A lot.
Okay.
[CHUCKLES]
It's hard to come on to a girl in front of the camera.
What?
COHEN: I was obsessed by, uh,
gaining women's favors at a certain point in my life.
And, um, way beyond any, uh, reasonable,
uh, activity.
It became the most important thing in my life,
and it led me into very obsessive, uh, behavior
and some very interesting things,
and probably most of the things I learned about myself
and about other people
were gained from this period of obsessive--
This blue movie that I threw myself into.
But we know that blue movies are not romantic.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]
DONOVAN: It was a show. It was more women than men.
It was like, you'd look out there,
and there were some couples,
and it was mostly just women.
They've read his poetry, right?
And then they see him sing these songs,
and they're all just down there
crying and all that, watching him.
There was no problem with women.
You know, I'll tell you a funny story. One day,
I'm down in the lobby of the Mayfair Hotel,
and he comes walking in out of the cab
with this really nice-looking woman.
And they disappear, come down a couple hours later,
and they're having drinks in the lobby,
this bar there.
And she leaves, and then he makes a phone call.
About a half hour later,
he comes back with a different woman. Ha!
And they go up. They're gone. This is in one afternoon.
[CHUCKLES]
Hello. How are you?
DONOVAN: He had to have a woman all the time.
This guy traveled the world. He knew, uh,
women and people in Paris and London
and all those places, right?
He'd go, "Let me just call so-and-so."
Yeah, there was no problem there.
In fact, everybody was doing pretty good.
Even me.
Oh, yeah.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
COHEN: I had a great appetite for the company of women
and for the sexual expression of friendship.
And I was very fortunate, because it was the '60s,
and that possibility was very, very present.
And for a tiny moment in social history,
there was a tremendous cooperation
between men and women about that particular item.
And so I was very lucky that--
That my appetite coincided with this very rare--
What, religious? Social?
I don't know what you'd call it.
Some kind of phenomenon, you know,
that allowed men and women... Boys and girls, we were.
...to come together in that kind of union
that satisfied both the appetites.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
♪ Like a bird ♪
♪ On the wire ♪
♪ Like a drunk in some ♪
♪ Old midnight choir ♪
♪ I have tried ♪
♪ In my way ♪
♪ To be free ♪
IHLEN [IN ENGLISH]: I felt much more that "Bird on a Wire"
had something to do with me, because I was there.
When you see it in the light of how it began,
it was when the new electricity came to Hydra.
I gave him a guitar. We looked out of the window.
We saw the birds landing on the wires.
And he had not been able to create or write or sing
or do anything for weeks,
and he was in a very, very deep, deep depression.
And it also was a period in my life
where I had to...
make a decision that was pretty hard.
And that was following my intuition...
and decide that Leonard and I
was not going to have any children together.
Yeah.
[SNIFFLES]
BROOMFIELD: Marianne came and visited me in Cardiff,
where I was a student living down by the docks.
I was concerned she might get bored,
but Marianne was naturally interested in everyone.
She regarded being receptive and open
as the highest of qualities.
Marianne made friends with all the kids in the street,
who followed her around all day,
and she encouraged me to make my very first film
on slum clearance,
as the whole community was being torn down.
Marianne liked to throw the I Ching every day
and get stoned.
She talked about Leonard a lot:
his favorite salt-beef sandwich shop in Piccadilly,
his spiritual search,
even dabbling in Scientology and est.
Marianne, too, was on her own spiritual search,
and Leonard was, in many ways, her teacher.
One day she asked me to drive her to Bath.
She said she was pregnant with Leonard's child.
I think she was preg-- She was pregnant.
But she knew that Leonard didn't want children,
and she had abortions even though she would have--
If anyone should have had Leonard's children,
she deserved to have them.
But she didn't, for Leonard's sake.
But, you know, she wanted what I wanted.
She wanted to...
She wanted to be with him.
And you cannot be with Leonard...
in that sense.
Although you could say that I'd rather have one day
or one night with Leonard
than a lifetime with somebody else.
That would be easy to say, but it's not--
It's not so easy, you know?
I could have said that with Irving, just to be--
I was with Irving for over 20 years.
Whatever the ups and downs, how wonderful it was--
And it was, but most of that time was anguish.
You can't-- BROOMFIELD: Anguish?
Well, you know, it was the days of open marriage,
whatever the hell that was,
and I don't think it ever was successful with anybody.
One of the partners was always jealous
and angry and hurt and confused.
I don't know any child who came out of it
not damaged by that period of time.
We just wanted to do it all: take drugs
and fuck around and do whatever we liked,
and the children were just-- They came along on the ride.
They didn't want to come along on that ride.
BROWN: There are a lot of us
who grew up very quickly on the island.
There was also a lot of acid on the island.
Like, people were actually dropping acid
into people's drinks.
And I remember hearing reports of people
um, having donkeys--
They were riding donkeys that, like, started tripping
and getting into all kinds of trouble,
you know, and accidents, uh, riding--
BROOMFIELD: They gave acid to donkeys?
BROWN: Yeah, as well as to people.
I got-- Someone put acid in one of my drinks
when I was about 13,
and I had no idea what was happening.
Also a lot of casualties happened.
I think Marianne and, um, a lot of other women
were not as nurturing to their children, perhaps,
or as present with them as they could have been.
Axel was really a casualty of that.
Marianne was going from one love to another, to another,
and often he wasn't with her.
You know, so who was he with? And Leonard--
You know, he wasn't Leonard's kid.
He started wearing long, um,
you know, flowing Moroccan robes,
and he was silent for years.
And then later he became institutionalized.
But I've always felt very sad that he's been, you know,
institutionalized for most of his adult life.
Those who could work with Hydra did really well.
And there weren't many, quite frankly.
I saw so many artists who came
and either just found their creativity
just wasn't strong enough to sustain them,
or the booze, the sex, the beauty of the landscape
was all too much, and they just gave up.
But Leonard was one of those who-- Who somehow--
The whole environment, I think, sort of coalesced
and worked for him, and he worked with it.
Heh. Still, we have to go.
COHEN: ♪ I've got a home In glory land ♪
ALL: ♪ That outshines the sun ♪
♪ I got a home in glory land ♪
♪ That outshines the sun ♪
♪ I got a home in glory land ♪
♪ That outshines the sun ♪
♪ Must be the hand ♪
♪ Of the Lord ♪
♪ Oh, do Lord, Oh, do Lord... ♪
GOLDMAN: He was a real success story. He really was.
He wasn't damaged by that place, I think, at all.
Many other people seemed to come away from that place
sort of irreparably damaged.
And it was terrible on marriages.
Very few marriages lasted at that place,
including my parents'.
[♪♪♪]
BROOMFIELD: I remember Marianne telling me
of the tragedy of the Johnstons,
the family that Leonard had originally stayed with in 1960,
who left the island after nine years.
GOLDMAN: This family of such amazing talent and promise,
and they just kind of all fell to bits
shortly after leaving the island.
It's my birthday today,
and this is a wonderful homecoming.
And that was a photograph, a family one,
taken on my birthday last year on the island.
[BOTH SPEAKING IN GREEK]
They always speak Greek among themselves.
I think it comes more naturally to them.
And they've done all their schooling in Greece, ten years.
GOLDMAN: When they left, almost penniless,
she killed herself, like, a couple years later.
He died a year after that
of tuberculosis, probably greatly compounded
by cigarettes and alcohol.
And then the children that-- That had--
That seemed so, you know, glorious
and beautiful and bright and wonderful on the island,
they, one by one, died early
of alcoholism, suicide, drugs.
There's only one that's alive.
[♪♪♪]
SLATER: Numerous other children
from families that had lived on Hydra
have had a hard time re-entering the real world.
I think there is a depression that sets in
if you've spent any time there.
I've certainly felt it.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't wake up
and wish that I were there, you know?
Literally. I never wanted to be
any other place in the world, you know?
It's just the place.
It's just the place, you know?
Uh, you-- It gets in your bones.
I don't know how to describe it,
but it's just the place.
Just stepping off the boat, every time,
it's, uh, coming home.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
CORNELIUS: That was a very weird, weird night.
There were 660,000 people out there.
It was a disturbing night.
They even caught the stage on fire.
Had to put the stage out before we went on.
"Maybe we out to get out of here, you know?
Somebody's gonna get hurt."
Leonard embraced it.
He got into it.
Like I was saying before,
you either get 'em or you don't.
He got 'em.
COHEN: I was on Mandrax at the time.
They used to call me Captain Mandrax.
I think it-- It had-- It was like a Quaalude.
I was relaxed beyond any reasonable state.
I hope she's here, Marianne.
I hope she's here. Maybe she's here.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
I hope she's here. Marianne.
[BAND STARTS PLAYING "THE PARTISAN"]
♪ An old woman Gave us shelter ♪
♪ Kept us hidden In the garret ♪
♪ Then the soldiers came... ♪
IHLEN [IN NORWEGIAN]: How long could we stay in love
before we had to address our problems?
I recognized the situation we were in.
We couldn't communicate together any more.
We were getting nowhere.
We couldn't understand what the other was saying.
Leonard naturally immersed himself
in his writing and music.
We tried and we tried.
Neither of us wanted to give up completely.
CORNELIUS: And Marianne was-- Was, uh, one woman
that didn't seem to me
all starstruck over Leonard.
Kind of held her own. Put it that way, you know?
She would join us sometimes for a week at a time
or maybe ten days at a time and be gone.
There was other ladies that Leonard had on tour.
But when Marianne was in town,
he was out of the picture.
She carried with her a different feel than any woman
that I ever saw around Leonard.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
There was a, uh-- A need for
such a connection between Leonard and his audience
that would actually have blown your mind.
One night he had, uh,
so many people come up on stage with him
that it was like this big love-in
right in the middle of our concert.
Like, a pile of people making love
without taking their clothes off.
But if we could've stuck around a while longer,
who knows what would've happened?
Can you imagine? We're playing Amsterdam,
and he invites the entire audience
to come home with us to his hotel.
And they did it.
We took a lot of acid on those trips. A lot.
Leonard had a buddy in London,
and he had a thing called desert dust.
And if you took a needle...
and touched it to your tongue,
and the tiniest little speck
that you could pick up with that needle
on your tongue, gone.
I mean, gone for 14 hours,
with no reentry, none.
One time we took that damn desert dust
23 nights in a row,
playing the Royal Albert Hall and the Vienna Opera House
and all the fine places on the--
I mean, I gotta tell you, there's no way I could--
I could ever even survive
one of those nights at this point.
Wanna see my text here?
BAND MEMBERS: Hey!
[WOMAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
MAN: This is the way it's gotta be done.
COHEN: Think that still works? MAN: I don't know.
I'll be in serious trouble if it works or doesn't work.
Right. [LAUGHS]
CORNELIUS: Leonard used to say
you have to be in the zone.
Well, we stayed in the zone. A lot of people would think,
well, if you burn it down really strong tonight,
tomorrow morning you got that hangover and all that.
Uh-uh. We stayed in the zone...
day after day after day.
There was only one night,
we were playing in Jerusalem,
when he wasn't getting 'em.
Now look, uh, if it doesn't get any better,
uh, we'll just end the concert and I'll refund your money.
Some nights...
one is raised off the ground.
And some nights, you just can't get off the ground.
And there's no point in lying about it.
And tonight we just haven't been getting off the ground.
DONOVAN: So anyway, we're backstage,
and we're going, "Well, what's gonna happen?"
And Marty Machat, his manager, is trying to talk to him.
And Leonard's just zinging, right? I knew that. And, uh--
BROOMFIELD: How do you mean, "zinging"?
I mean, like on LSD.
Like, his eyes are blacked out, like they get, right?
And, uh, he's just feeling--
And so all of a sudden he says to me, he goes,
"Billy, can you get me a razor?"
I said, "Leonard, what are you gonna do, cut your throat?"
And he said, "No. I think if I shave,
I might be able to go back out."
MAN: This is the last concert, you know?
This is something you have to do, and then bang--
Oh, I know what I have to do. I have to shave.
What a life.
[CHUCKLES]
What a life.
Oh, this is wonderful.
Why didn't you tell me about this?
[ALL LAUGHING]
DONOVAN: So that's what he did. He shaved...
Dry-shaved, almost, ha, with just some water.
...and then he went back out there
with a big rash on his face
and finished the show.
You ought to try it, man. It's wonderful.
Oh, yeah. Oh, this is really great.
♪ I saw Jesus on the cross ♪
♪ On a hill called Calvary ♪
♪ Do you hate mankind ♪
♪ For what they've done To you? ♪
♪ He said Talk of love, not hate... ♪
CORNELIUS: Everybody was shooting from the hip, right?
Not-- Not welded to anything.
The idea was that tonight we will play this song
better than we did last night.
And tomorrow night, we're gonna play it better
than we did tonight.
ALL: ♪ Sometimes happy Sometimes blue ♪
♪ Glad that I ran... ♪
There was only one night, one night,
that I felt like that I let things
get away from me.
And I actually went for this-- This beautiful chord--
It was an F-sharp minor seventh, I think,
in the song called "Suzanne,"
and as I went for that chord,
I actually landed on my face
on the ground-- On the stage right there.
And Leonard turned around and looked at me like,
"Okay, we need to now start backing off the Mandrax, right?"
[♪♪♪]
BROOMFIELD: Marianne and I kept in touch during the '70s and '80s
with the occasional postcard and letter.
I was delighted when she suggested
we might work together,
and we talked about various ideas.
Marianne was increasingly concerned about Axel.
He'd been on a trip to India and taken too many drugs.
She was upset with Little Axel's father,
who had encouraged him.
Axel was now living in an institution in Oslo,
and Marianne was spending more and more time with him.
Marianne had still been following Leonard
on his travels, and very infrequently,
they still shared the house together on Hydra.
Apparently Leonard was now living
part of the year in Montreal
with a woman called Suzanne.
SCOTT: I've read three of his biographies,
and I've always been surprised
that they sort of partition it as, like,
"Okay, here was Marianne, and then that was over,
and then he took up with Suzanne."
But in fact, there was a considerable overlap of time
where he supported both families.
He said that when he was with her and Axel
in that house on Hydra, he felt that's where he belonged.
But when he was with Suzanne and the baby in Montreal,
he felt that's where he belonged.
And so he was confused.
Suzanne, she was much more visceral, in a way,
and, uh, 14 years younger than him.
So I guess there was a whole bunch of different things
that, uh, conspired to--
To make it come to an end.
You needed somebody like Suzanne, who was...
Well, the word "ruthless"
is just the word that-- That comes to mind.
And she did what she wanted to do
to bind Leonard to her by any means.
She used the Black Panther theme, "By any means necessary."
And, boy, did she do--
And she knew exactly what to do and when to do it.
It was like falling into a spider's web.
There was something--
There's always something terribly fascinating
about the spider.
Very fascinating.
And I think Leonard just fell into that
'cause it was so fascinating.
I don't even know what drove that whole thing, but he knew--
He knew he was, as Irving would say,
"Make sure you're doing the wrong thing."
Boy, did he make sure he did the wrong thing with Suzanne.
[♪♪♪]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
CORNELIUS: I think Leonard's quest in life
overrode the normal, you know, settling down
and having a home and a family and all that stuff.
Leonard always had that feeling that he was after something
that he couldn't get his hands around.
The only thing about it is, I don't know what he--
I don't think he knew what he was chasing, you know?
I don't think he-- I don't think he really knew.
And that made it probably a darker--
You know? He lived in a-- He lived in darkness.
'Cause he'd disappear for six weeks sometimes.
I wouldn't know how to find him or nothing.
Nobody would, you know?
And it was all a deep, deep depression.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
LISSAUER: When we toured Europe and when we toured Germany,
I've never seen so many blonds in one audience.
He was the poet
for the quasi-depressed women of his era.
People who were going through issues, they'd come up sobbing,
"You saved my life. I was in such a dark place,
and your darkness led me out of it."
COHEN: Thank you so much.
LISSAUER: He had his thing that he projected.
He had his black suit.
He had his look of seriousness.
And you never saw his humor. He was a really funny guy,
but when he was on-stage, it was dark,
and it was lonely and it was desperate.
--those who would sacrifice
one generation on behalf of another.
♪ Well, the door It opened slowly ♪
♪ My father, he came in ♪
♪ I was 9 years old ♪
♪ And he stood So tall above me ♪
♪ And his blue eyes They were shining ♪
♪ And his voice Was very cold... ♪
LISSAUER: I wanted to--
To frame each of the songs
like, um, a little vignette.
They all had these places of mind.
So I was giving them colors.
We were using unusual instruments.
We'd use a couple of muted trombones to take it somewhere,
or very icy strings
and dark, shimmering things to make it,
uh, these little movies.
And we came back, we were ready to do
another couple of weeks in the studio,
and he said, "I'm gonna go to Hydra for a little bit.
As soon as I get back, we'll finish it."
And I didn't hear from him
for seven years.
[♪♪♪]
It turns out Marty Machat, who was Leonard's manager,
also managed Phil Spector,
and he had made a deal for Phil with Warner Brothers
that got them both a huge advance.
A really huge advance.
For the '70s, it was unheard of.
So, what had happened is,
Marty called up Leonard and said,
"Forget the record with John.
We want you to do a record with Phil Spector.
He's really famous. It'll make you a hit."
And of course he made Death of a Ladies' Man,
um, which, you know,
is not his best work.
COHEN: That happened at a curious time in my life,
because I was at a very low point.
My family was breaking up.
I was living in Los Angeles, which was a foreign city to me.
And I'd lost control of, as I say, of my family
and my work and my life,
and it was a very, very dark period.
And when he got into the studio,
it was clear that he was eccentric,
but I didn't know that he was mad.
The atmosphere was one of guns.
I mean, that's really what was going on, was guns.
The music was a subsidiary.
People were armed to the teeth--
All his friends, his bodyguards, you know?
And everybody was drunk.
So, you know, you were slipping over bullets.
You were biting into revolvers in your hamburger.
And, I mean, Phil was beyond control.
I remember Phil shoved a revolver into my neck
and said, you know, "Leonard, I love you."
And I said, "I hope you do, Phil."
[♪♪♪]
I think that if anybody, uh--
Uh, you know, disappointed the project, it was me.
I didn't have the chops to sing those songs.
I think a song like "Memories" is a really dynamite tune.
I think the tune is great, the lyric is touching.
I think it really does come out
of that high-school gymnasium.
♪ So won't you let me see ♪
♪ Won't you let me see ♪
♪ I said Won't you let me see ♪
[ALL HARMONIZING]
♪ Your naked body ♪
[♪♪♪]
IHLEN [IN ENGLISH]: One day, Suzanne, with little Adam,
the same age as my son when I came back to Hydra,
was standing on the doorway...
wondering when I was moving out so she could move in.
I remember that...
seeing her, I somehow felt
a little bit taller, a little bit stronger,
a little bit older, and a little bit wiser.
[CHUCKLES]
I got hold of something when I saw her there with the baby.
And then I very calmly packed up,
took Axel and moved out.
[SIGHS]
Yeah, so that was Marianne finally deciding
that enough was enough and she did have to go back to Oslo.
Her mother had always wanted her to--
Wanted her to come here and have a normal life,
become a secretary, a receptionist
or something like that and be normal.
So Marianne had finally decided,
"Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do."
So she came back up here, became a secretary,
married a Norwegian man,
and, um, became a stepmother to his children.
Had a very average, ordinary life.
And then every once in a while, she would go back to Hydra
and visit her friends.
LISSAUER: Out of the blue, and I told you I was--
I'd done Rebecca and never heard from Leonard again.
I thought, "Well, I did something.
What did--? I did something."
He calls up, "Hey, man. How you doing?"
1984. "Want to make a record?"
I'm saying, "Yeah, I've been--
I've been waiting-- Waiting for this phone call."
So we went in the studio,
and we did "Hallelujah" fairly early.
And he played it for me, and it went...
[PLAYING "HALLELUJAH" MELODY]
He had just bought a little Casio synthesizer
on Seventh Avenue and 49th Street,
one of these "dink-a-dink-a-dink"
one-finger things, and he fell in love with it.
He said, "I want to record this, use it for the track."
So we put it down that way.
We're saying, "Holy crap, man. This is really good.
We've done something here."
Leonard was just grinning.
Even Marty, who was reluctant
to like anything I was involved in,
just said to us, "This is it."
We bring him up to Columbia.
There's a new guy named Walter Yetnikoff.
This was his first big thing. He hears it, and he says,
"No, I don't like this at all."
And there's a famous quote, "Leonard, I know you're great,
but I don't know if you're any good."
Something like that. And he says,
"We're not gonna release it."
And Marty then later says,
"John, I knew it. You ruined Leonard's career.
You have ruined-- This is an unreleasable record.
It's the biggest disappointment in our lives.
I can't believe you'd do this to Leonard."
And he had loved it earlier in the day, but...
And I'm saying, "Well, what do you mean?"
He said, "No, they hate it. They're not gonna release it."
At which point he ceremoniously
threw my contract in the garbage.
I never got to sign it. And he said,
"And you're not gonna be working for Columbia anymore."
There was a couple other artists I was supposed to work with.
And I was just-- That was it. I was done.
In the morning, we thought we had
this greatest of all Leonard Cohen records,
and by the afternoon, I was out of the business.
It was the end of the world.
That's when the whole Mt. Baldy thing happened.
That's a huge phase in Leonard's life.
I didn't see him. I got out of the record business
essentially because of how this record went down.
♪ Yes, and I've seen your flag ♪
♪ On the marble arch ♪
♪ But love is not A victory march ♪
♪ It's a cold And it's a broken ♪
♪ Hallelujah... ♪
LISSAUER: This record was monumentally important.
It was the anthem of anthems.
But to this day, I've yet to see any royalties.
[♪♪♪]
GOLDMAN: I think that through all of this searching and searching
for herself and for her identity
through all those years on Hydra and other places,
and having had, you know, the first husband,
who was the writer, and the second husband,
who was the writer and singer,
and never really knowing who she was,
except in comparison to them or somehow in relation to them,
I think it took coming back here
for her to really find herself.
She was a really nice person. Very kind and very generous.
She really listened to you when you talked.
Not a lot of people do that.
Most people, when they're talking to you,
they're just waiting till they can say their next line.
But she was really interested, and she really listened,
and she really thought about it.
She was a very generous and kind person.
BROOMFIELD: I hadn't visited Hydra for 40 years.
It had changed from the wondrous place
you could live on a thousand dollars a year
to the playground of the very rich.
One of the only survivors of the old Hydra is Don Lowe,
who lives up this path, in this house
without electricity or running water.
Don prefers candles and has a well.
Marianne introduced me to Don in 1968.
He has since self-published over 30 books.
BROOMFIELD: Oh, there you are.
LOWE: Let me come out. [CHUCKLES]
Don has lived on Hydra for 60 years.
The last time he left the island was 25 years ago.
I made this for my--
Anyone who gets stuck and they got nowhere to live, you see?
So-- Wow, it's beautiful.
It's nice, you see? Dug it out.
Did one of your children do that?
LOWE: No, I did that. You did that? It's beautiful.
That's my idea of paradise.
You can cook here and you can write a book here,
if you are that way inclined.
It's got a view...
of the sea and next door--
This is where Marianne was gonna stay, in the house there.
Marianne was gonna stay where? In the house?
Just there. You can see it through there.
She was very nice at the end, Marianne.
Because she mellowed, and, you know.
'Cause it was never easy after Leonard,
'cause every time he gave a concert or something,
she'd get caught up in it.
Every time he gave--? Every time he gave a concert,
she had an invitation, and she was interviewed
in Norway and things like that, and so she couldn't really--
She married a lovely guy afterwards,
divorced him and married him again, and, uh--
Jan. A very sweet man.
Norwegian.
Uh, but, yeah, I was--
Got quite fond of her at the end, Marianne.
When we were younger, we lived our own way.
But at the end, she became very close.
Mm-hmm.
[BELL CHIMES]
[RINGING]
[ALL CHANTING INDISTINCTLY]
COHEN: I had some wonderful moments on the road,
you know, traveling with musicians
and playing with musicians.
But, by and large,
I didn't have what it took
to really enjoy my success or my celebrity.
I was never able to locate it.
I was never able to use it.
That's beautiful, huh?
CORNELIUS: Doing what he did up there
came natural to him
because of his discipline.
He became a servant for years and years there.
He had to get up, like, at 3:00 in the morning.
Some of the things he told me that they did up there,
I don't know if I could've hung with that.
You a small? Yeah.
You're a black bag? Yeah.
Uh, brown bag. What did I do with it?
Oh, in here, Roshi. In here. Oh.
In here.
My handbag here? Your handbag?
Yeah. It's still in the car?
Yeah. Oh, okay.
Want to eat something, Roshi? Eh?
You want to eat something?
[SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
Oh, okay. Okay.
LISSAUER: Roshi was his spiritual adviser,
his Buddhist monk leader.
He centered him. It was like having
Mom and Dad watching you
if you think you're likely to be tempted to stray.
I think it was his crutch.
And it also probably increased his focus and concentration.
COHEN: I'm trying to learn some things about love.
Well, love is that activity that...
That makes the power of man and woman...
that incorporates it into your own heart,
where you can embody man and woman,
when you can embody hell and heaven,
when you can reconcile and contain,
when man and woman becomes your content.
In other words, when your woman
becomes your own content,
and you become her content, that's love.
And-- And you recognize
the full equality of that exchange,
because if she's smaller than you, she can't fill you.
And if you're larger than her, you can't fill her.
You know? So there has to be an understanding
that there really is an absolute equality of power.
Different kinds of power. Obvious--
Obviously different kinds of magic.
Different kinds of strength, different kinds of movement,
that's as different as night and day.
And it is night and day. And it is the moon and the sun.
And it is the land and the sea. And it is plus and minus.
It is heaven and hell. It is all those antonyms.
But they're all equal.
I have experienced it. I have experienced it.
You don't have to change the world.
There doesn't have to be any revolutions.
CORNELIUS: I'm sure that everybody already knows
about all that, uh, transpired along the way
when he came back down off the mountain.
He had no money, you know?
Because this person that he had trusted,
a person that he would have taken a bullet for,
so to speak, that's what he told me,
that he spent holidays with,
with her children and his children,
had absolutely sold him out.
And that it turned out that a friendship
that he thought was the real deal
ended up being a really bad thing.
COHEN: Well, the money seems to be gone.
As far as the manager,
you know, who was my dear friend...
I'm still rather fond of her.
But, uh, she, um--
There's been a-- A judgment of--
Of several million dollars against her.
But, you know, that's--
She doesn't seem to have any money,
so it's impossible to collect it.
I don't know. I guess I should be more worried than I am,
but I'm not. So, what can I say?
Heh-heh, you know?
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING, CHEERING]
CORNELIUS: All of a sudden, here he is.
He's now in his 70s,
and he has no money now.
He said to me, "All I can do is get out there and tour
and try to make some money."
He said, "I don't know if I can do it or not."
It's, uh-- It's been a long time
since I stood on a stage in London.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
It was about, uh--
About, uh, 14 or 15 years ago.
I was 60 years old.
Just a kid with a crazy dream.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
LISSAUER: Suddenly, Leonard was the hottest ticket in town,
and he went from our little tour bus
with two sound engineers and three roadies
to an entourage of 59 people on his own jet.
♪ Show me slowly What I only know ♪
♪ The limits of ♪
♪ And dance me ♪
♪ To the end of love... ♪
And he was making upwards of $15 million every year.
One of the top-ten grossing acts.
He went from literally being wiped out
to incredible stardom.
[ALL CHEERING]
[BAND STARTS PLAYING "SO LONG, MARIANNE"]
♪ So long, Marianne ♪
♪ It's time that we began ♪
♪ To laugh and cry ♪
♪ And cry ♪
♪ And laugh About it all again... ♪
MOLLESTAD: It was a love story
which had 50 chapters
without being together.
[LAUGHS]
She had a compartment of her heart
which was always married to Leonard.
That's the beauty
of Marianne's and Leonard's history,
that they had this place for each other,
uh, till the very end.
And it's not the bitter end. It was a lovely end.
It's a very beautiful end.
Suddenly one evening, I got an SMS saying,
"I'm at hospital. I'm going to die.
Please take care of Little Axel
and Jan, my husband."
She asked me,
"Could you-- Could you tell Leonard?"
And another thing she said was, "Could you bring a camera?
Because I still feel I have something to say."
[♪♪♪]
And in the morning, there was this lovely letter
from Leonard to Marianne.
"Dearest Marianne...
I'm just a little behind you.
Close enough to take your hand.
This old body of mine has given up,
as yours has too.
I've never forgotten your love and your beauty...
but you know that.
I don't have to say more.
Safe travels, old friend.
See you down the road.
Endless love and gratitude,
your Leonard."
[IN ENGLISH] That was very beautiful.
Very beautiful.
MOLLESTAD: Very beautiful.
Yeah.
[IN NORWEGIAN] If only he was as lucky as me,
getting his feet massaged by Sue.
[BOTH LAUGHING]
[MARIANNE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY IN NORWEGIAN]
[MOLLESTAD CHUCKLING]
And the beautiful thing was that
this old, sick man...
reached his old, sick lover...
with a message that, uh...
she had always wanted to hear.
And...
I think that, uh...
for Marianne, this was a ring
that started with leaving Oslo
and going into the adventure with Axel
and meeting Leonard,
losing Leonard,
meeting Jan...
having problems, of course, with her son.
And then when this love letter came from Leonard...
I think she felt that it was all completed.
So, uh...
that's what words of love can do.
COHEN: Greece is a good place to look at the moon, isn't it?
You can read by moonlight.
You can read on the terrace. You can see a face
as you saw it when you were young.
It was good light then.
Oil lamps and candles
and those little flames that floated on a cork in olive oil.
What I loved in my old life, I haven't forgotten.
It lives in my spine.
Marianne and the child,
the days of kindness.
It rises in my spine, and it manifests as tears.
I pray that a loving memory
exists for them too...
the precious ones I overthrew
for an education in the world.
[♪♪♪]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]