Leonard Cohen's last concert: Vector Arena, Auckland, December 21, 2013

About the artist

Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal (Westmount) on September 21, 1934.^[1] He took up the guitar at 15 and earned an English degree from McGill University in 1955.^[1] He first made his name as a poet, with Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) and The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), followed by the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).^[1]

He turned to singing in the mid-1960s. At a poetry reading at New York's 92nd Street YMHA on February 14, 1966, he sang "The Stranger Song," and his readings gradually became concerts.^[1] Judy Collins recorded several of his songs, most notably "Suzanne," which Nina Simone also covered.^[1] At the 1967 Newport Folk Festival he was signed to Columbia Records, and his debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen, came out the same year. "Bird on a Wire" appeared on Songs from a Room in 1969.^[1]

"Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Hallelujah" were on Various Positions (1984), an album Columbia declined to release in the United States; it came out there in 1985 on a small independent label.^[1][2] Cohen wrote more than 80 verses for "Hallelujah," filling two notebooks.^[2] The song spread through other singers: John Cale recorded it for a Cohen tribute album in 1991, Jeff Buckley put it on Grace in 1994, and Rufus Wainwright's version was on the Shrek soundtrack in 2001.^[2]

I'm Your Man (1988) and The Future (1992), which includes "Closing Time," followed.^[1] In 1994 he withdrew to the Zen Center on Mount Baldy near Los Angeles, was ordained as a Zen monk in 1996 and lived there on and off until early 1999.^[1] He returned with Ten New Songs in 2001 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.^[1] By then he had been made a Companion of the Order of Canada (2003), and in 2011 he received both the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and the Glenn Gould Prize.^[1]

Why this was the last show

The Auckland show was never billed as a farewell. When the promoter Frontier Touring announced Cohen's return to Australia and New Zealand on July 29, 2013, Auckland was simply the last date on a run that began in Perth on November 13; a second Wellington show was later added. The Australian leg mixed arenas with two outdoor A Day on the Green shows, and on November 1 a Sydney arena show was moved to the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House on December 2, while a Melbourne date moved from Rod Laver Arena to the Palais Theatre.^[3]

The road to that night began in 2008. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, Cohen fired his manager, Kelley Lynch, in 2004 after questions arose about his finances; she had embezzled more than $5 million from his accounts. He sued in 2005 and was awarded $9 million, though it is unclear whether it was ever paid in full, and Lynch was convicted of harassment in 2012.^[1] Rolling Stone wrote that these mid-2000s money troubles led Cohen to reconsider performing.^[4]

On May 11, 2008, at the 709-seat Fredericton Playhouse in New Brunswick, he began his first tour in about 15 years; his previous show had been in 1993.^[4] The plan was a short run of theaters in small Canadian cities, away from the press, but word spread fast and he was soon headlining arenas.^[4] "I never thought I'd tour again," he told Rolling Stone in 2012.^[4] He took 2011 off to record Old Ideas,^[4] which came out in January 2012 and reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 in Canada.^[5][1]

The Old Ideas World Tour opened in August 2012.^[6] In his hometown he played two nights at the Bell Centre on November 28 and 29, 2012; the Montreal Gazette reported that the first ran almost three hours and that "Tower of Song" was deliriously received.^[7] In the summer and fall of 2013 he toured British and Irish arenas. His London show at the O2 was moved from September 14 to September 15 because the original date fell on Yom Kippur; Cohen, an observant Jew, kept the Sabbath on the road.^[5] That September 15 show was his last in London. Three days earlier, on September 12, he played the O2 in Dublin, the concert later released as Live in Dublin.^[8]

Then came Australia and New Zealand in November and December. In New Zealand he played Christchurch on December 14 and Wellington on December 17 and 18 before closing in Auckland on December 21.^[3] Rolling Stone counted Auckland as his 69th show of 2013 and his 387th since returning to the road in the summer of 2008. Every show had run at least three hours, which by the magazine's math added up to at least 1,110 hours on stage.^[9]

He never toured again. Neither Popular Problems (2014) nor the tour souvenir Can't Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour (2015) was taken on the road.^[9] No statement from Cohen explaining why he stopped touring has been found in the sources checked for this article. Auckland became his last concert only in hindsight.

What is known about the day

Vector Arena is an indoor arena on Mahuhu Crescent in Parnell, on the edge of central Auckland,^[3] with 12,000 seats; it has been called Spark Arena since 2017.^[10] Doors opened at 7 p.m., with Cohen due on stage at 8. A-reserve tickets were NZ$204.50.^[3]

According to Kelly Carmichael's review for the New Zealand music site Libel, the packed house gave Cohen a standing ovation as he walked out, before he had sung a note. He wore his trademark fedora and a dark suit.^[6] On the last night of a tour that had passed 120 shows, he told the audience that tonight, and especially tonight, the band would give them everything they had.^[6][11]

He opened with "Dance Me to the End of Love," followed by "The Future" and "Bird on a Wire."^[6] Carmichael wrote that his gravelly voice had kept its old texture. He sang some lines on his knees and sprang back up each time.^[6] He introduced the band and backing singers, many of whom had been with him for years, with evident respect. Violinist Alexandru Bublitchi brought fire to several songs, and on "Come Healing," from Old Ideas, Cohen sang in close harmony with Charley and Hattie Webb of the Webb Sisters.^[6] According to the fan-edited site setlist.fm, the first set went on through "Everybody Knows" and "Who by Fire" and closed with "Anthem."^[12]

Of "Tower of Song," played in the second half, Carmichael wrote that the audience was in on the song's wry joke.^[6] Sharon Robinson, Cohen's longtime co-writer, sang "Alexandra Leaving" on her own.^[6][11] setlist.fm has the second set moving through "Suzanne," "Chelsea Hotel #2," a recitation of "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and "Hallelujah" before ending with "Take This Waltz."^[12]

There were three encores.^[11] According to setlist.fm, the first ran from "So Long, Marianne" to "First We Take Manhattan." The second brought "Famous Blue Raincoat," then the Webb Sisters singing "If It Be Your Will," and closed with "Closing Time."^[12][11]

The night was not over. In a third encore Cohen sang "I Tried to Leave You" and finished with a cover of the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me."^[9][11] According to Rolling Stone, he told the crowd, "Friends, I want to thank you for the wonderful hospitality you've showed us tonight," and thanked them for all the years they had paid attention to his songs. Then he took off his hat, bowed deeply and walked offstage smiling.^[9] A setlist.fm feature adds that the band and the audience applauded as he left.^[11] The show lasted about three hours^[13] and, by setlist.fm's count, ran to 28 songs.^[12]

What the show left behind

In 2014, the year he turned 80, Cohen released Popular Problems. It reached No. 1 in Canada and won the 2015 Juno Award for Album of the Year.^[1] That December came Live in Dublin, recorded on September 12, 2013, and issued as three CDs with a DVD or Blu-ray, among other formats.^[8] The tour souvenir Can't Forget followed in 2015.^[9]

You Want It Darker, his 14th studio album, came out on October 21, 2016.^[14][15] It was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, with much of the music written with Patrick Leonard: eight songs in just over 35 minutes.^[14] Before the release, Cohen told The New Yorker that he was ready to die. At a listening event in Los Angeles on October 13, he walked that back, saying he had been exaggerating and that he intended to live forever, or at least to stick around until 120.^[15] The album went to No. 1 in Canada and No. 10 on the Billboard 200, won the 2017 Juno for Album of the Year and brought him a posthumous Grammy for Best Rock Performance in 2018.^[1] Sharon Robinson has said that the feeling of a goodbye in the record was hard to miss.^[14]

Less than three weeks after the album's release, on November 7, 2016, Cohen died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 82.^[1][16] His manager, Robert Kory, said he died in his sleep after a fall during the night.^[16] His death was announced three days later, on November 10, the day he was buried beside his parents after a small ceremony in Montreal.^[16]

The work kept coming. A poetry collection, The Flame, appeared in 2018 with a foreword by Adam.^[17] On November 22, 2019, Adam released Thanks for the Dance, finished from unfinished songs and vocal takes his father had recorded during the You Want It Darker sessions. He told The New York Times the songs were not discards but "a continuation."^[17] Adam also told Rolling Stone that his father had been "at the summit of his powers" at the end of his career.^[9]

On the evening of November 6, 2017, almost a year to the day after his death, the Bell Centre in Montreal hosted Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen before 15,672 people. Adam assembled the lineup, which included Sting, Feist, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, Lana Del Rey and Damien Rice. Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters, both on stage in Auckland, took part, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke.^[18] It came five years after Cohen's own Old Ideas shows in the same building.^[7]

The stage career Cohen resumed in 2008, after some 15 years away, ran to more than five years and 387 concerts.^[1][9] On its last night he sang his own songs for three hours and then closed with someone else's hit. As far as the record shows, that was the last time he sang for an audience.