Leonard Cohen (1970)

Nearly 40 summers ago 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. As Cohen followed Hendrix's set, onlookers (and fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood side-stage in awe as the Canadian folksinger-songwriter-poet-novelist quietly tamed the crowd. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner (From Mao To Mozart, Festival, Message To Love), perfectly captured Cohen's performance. Likewise, Columbia Records staff A&R producer Teo Macero did a brilliant job of supervising the live audio recording. This Blu-ray, transferred from the original 16mm film into High Definition, contains this new, beautiful film documentary by Lerner featuring interviews with fellow festival performers and Cohen's classic songs, poetry and stories.