NEWSREADER: 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 the 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 AND 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 Marianne."
(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)
(LEONARD SINGING)
NICK 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.
LITTLE AXEL: Film it.
LEONARD: It looks like some kind of a lobster.
(CHUCKLES) It has all kinds of openers in there.
BROOMFIELD: 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.
LEONARD: 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 and I came,
eventually to Greece and got on a boat.
And I just saw this island that was so beautiful, you know?
I 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.
-(DONKEYS BRAYING) -(BELL JINGLING)
There were just a few foreigners there in those days.
And the Johnstons were 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.
NANCY BACAL: 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 left.
We had our own way of being.
We found our own lives,
but they turned out to be synchronistic.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MARIANNE: (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?
LITTLE AXEL: You'll have to even all of them.
MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN) 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.
LEONARD: The days were very, very ordinary.
We'd get up early and have breakfast
and I'd go to work.
And the sandwich would be brought to me.
I think I was on speed, too, so I wasn't eating very much.
And the day would proceed like that.
I had a quota, I think it was three pages a day.
MARIANNE: (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,
"You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
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 blonde.
Skinny, almost no boobs.
(MARIANNE LAUGHS)
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
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.
JEFFREY BROWN: He's 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...
HELLE GOLDMAN: I lived there from the time that I was three months old.
And we used to run around barefoot,
through the slightly powdery feeling
of the dried seawater on the stones.
Every part of it is beautiful in every season.
Any time 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 silky...
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 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 this sort of unwritten rule,
certainly back when I was first on Hydra,
that if you saw someone like Leonard at a table,
then you didn't assume you could go and sit with him.
They were there to be alone and to remain alone,
and they were doing their writing.
MARIANNE: (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 a very vulnerable in his creativity.
LEONARD: 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 it didn't seem so at the time.
It just seemed a matter of survival.
And 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.
HOST: Is this true, or have you some other concern, Mr. Cohen,
that you'd like to get off your chest right now?
LEONARD: 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?
AVIVA 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 around...
"This boy-man to..." He was...
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.
He went to bed with... Irving went to bed with everybody,
why not Leonard's mother? I mean... (LAUGHS)
And she was ma...
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.
(LAUGHS)
(INAUDIBLE)
LEONARD: I mean, I know that
a lot of my love of music comes from my mother,
who had a lovely voice.
She was Russian and she sang songs around the house.
And I know that 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.
-(LIVELY CHATTER) -(PLAYING HARMONICA)
WOMAN: Yeah, very good coffee... (LAUGHS)
(CONTINUES PLAYING HARMONICA)
(LAUGHING)
MAN: The plague of all things.
LEONARD: Are you having fun?
Okay.
We're winning. We're winning.
We're winning the internal battle.
We're keeping the party going.
(LAUGHING)
We're keeping the party going.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
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.
MARIANNE: 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.
LEONARD: I wrote a lot of books there and a lot of songs.
I published the 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.
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.
And 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,
I mean, you know, she was there to sort of...
Not pick up the pieces, but to 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.
LEONARD: 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 workforce.
So, I try everything. I'll do anything.
MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN) When Beautiful Losers came out,
it was hardly read.
I didn't understand any of it.
Many intellectuals reading it tried understand it.
But even they were left bewildered.
But listen to what some of the critics said about his latest book.
NEWSREADER: "I have just read
"Leonard Cohen's new novel Beautiful Losers
"and I've had to wash my mind."
"This is, among other things,
"the most revolting book ever written in Canada."
"Verbal masturbation."
LEONARD: 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 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
and in folk music.
I was completely unaware
of people like Phil Ochs, or Dylan, or Joan Baez.
JUDY COLLINS: Leonard found me.
And he came to my apartment.
And he came in and we had some coffee.
And 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...
(SINGING)
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 wanna 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 he 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
and walked off the stage. (LAUGHS)
He was dying of fear. (SCOFFS)
He was having what we know as a great,
massive attack 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, because 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)
(SINGING)
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 it was his label forever.
MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN) He often had to cross the "great dam,"
both to search inspiration and...
(IN ENGLISH) Become a little more miserable again.
(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.
LEONARD: 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,
and she didn't wanna drop them, she was moving.
So she waved to me with her foot.
I remember that very, very clearly. (LAUGHS)
LAYTON: Yeah, boy. That was a mistake.
You know and said famously...
(LAUGHING) 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. (LAUGHS)
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 it was a disaster.
It was very unhappy. 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 the 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 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 other...
That 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 red sena, 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 UK and contacted me.
She had come to bring Little Axel to boarding school
and needed a lift.
(DOG BARKING)
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 eight
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.
Well, 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 gentlemen, Leonard Cohen.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
(SINGING)
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 really.
But after that, he went from relationship to relationship.
And at the end of the song, there was a tear in his eye.
He was an emotional man.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Yeah, 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 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 was a song that she kind of guided me through.
BROOMFIELD: She was a great muse, wasn't she?
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, uh...
I think Leonard honored that, you know?
He said that she was, you know?
When, um... When he was speaking of her.
BROOMFIELD: But she was so encouraging.
Yeah, and she was so nurturing, you know,
it's, uh...
Yeah. It's, you know...
Woman power.
The ability to nurture and love and...
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...
Was a feminist, you know?
He really...
He said to me once...
Because I was talking about something,
he said, "I can't wait until women take over."
So that was kind of nice to hear from him.
(SLOW GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING)
JOHN 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 over Leonard's song.
"What do you think?"
And some of it sounded really great.
BROOMFIELD: You can't sort of imitate it slightly?
(LAUGHING) I'm not a singer,
and I'm not a girl either. She was singing...
(SINGING)
She added a little "...anne" at the top.
(SINGING)
(CLICKING TONGUE)
So she sort of aped what he was doing,
but it gave it a little harder... (EXCLAIMS)
Put a little harder edge on it, you know?
(SINGING)
MARIANNE: (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 centre 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 did know how long he would last.
The very first time I met Leonard Cohen,
he opened the door and he's just absolutely naked as a jay bird, right?
So me, coming out of where I come out of, I go,
"This is pretty damn weird," you know?
Later, of course,
throughout the time I spent with Leonard,
the years that we worked together,
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,
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 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 the 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 to Janis Joplin.
And, you know, it's like,
"I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.
"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."
(SINGING)
MARIANNE: (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 been
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,"
was just like they have 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 still sends money,
he's still asking how Axel is doing,
and so he continues to send his small
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
a nice thing for us to do is that we blow in...
Say we blew into London to play the Royal Albert Hall.
Well, we got three or four days here,
why don't we, one evening, go out and play
at a mental institution, right? (LAUGHS)
Okay, so of course, that went over like a fart in a diver's helmet with me,
because I wasn't about to go
out to any... (CHUCKLES)
I was not going. No way.
He said, you know, "Just go one time."
He said, "If you go one time and don't wanna play any more...
(CHUCKLES SLIGHTLY) "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 'em.
You know, he had a grandfather or something like that,
that I think died in one of those institutions.
LEONARD: There are a number of reasons why I played mental hospitals.
You know, 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 song,
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."
-(CROWD LAUGHS) -(LEONARD CLEARS THROAT)
This song is about a girl I used to live with.
I lived with her for about eight years.
Her name was Marianne.
And, uh, I used to live with her
about 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.
And then two months of the year.
Then by the eight, eight, eighth year
I was living with her a couple 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.
(CROWD LAUGHS)
(SINGING)
CORNELIUS: That was a moment in my life
that I would never forget.
And this guy, he stands up and starts screaming,
you know, to, "Hey, shut it down. Stop. Shut it."
Well, we, you know, being musicians and being...
Have played a million shows,
we steamed 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 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.
MARIANNE: (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.
LEONARD: I came to see you, because it's...
-You don't sing anymore? -LEONARD: Pardon?
Out somewhere?
LEONARD: Well, we go to Geneva.
-No, I mean now. -Now? No.
-Why are you... -Out tonight.
Would you like to listen?
-Yes. Yeah. -(LEONARD LAUGHS)
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? -(LAUGHS) Yes, a lot.
Okay.
(CHUCKLES)
It's hard to come onto a girl in front of the camera.
-What? -(ALL LAUGH)
LEONARD: I was obsessed by gaining women's favors
at a certain point in my life.
And, um, way beyond
any reasonable activity.
It became the most important thing in my life
and it led me into very obsessive 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.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BILLY DONOVAN: It was a show. It was more women than men.
It was like, you'd look out there
and there was some couples and it was mostly just women.
They read his poetry, right?
And then they see him sing these songs
and they're all just down there crying and all that.
But watching him.
There was no problem with women. (LAUGHS)
You know, I'll tell you a funny story.
One day, I'm down in the lobby in the Mayfair Hotel,
and he comes walking in
out of a 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 half hour later he comes back
with a different woman. (LAUGHS) And they go up.
They're gone. This is in one afternoon. (LAUGHS)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
How are you?
DONOVAN: He had to have a woman all the time.
This guy traveled the world. He knew women and people,
and Paris and London, and all those places, right?
He'd go, "Oh, well let me just call so-and-so."
Yeah, there was no problem there.
In fact, everybody was doing pretty good, even me.
Oh, yeah.
(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)
LEONARD: 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 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.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(SINGING)
(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)
MARIANNE: I felt much more that Bird on the 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 decided 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 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 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 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, 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.
We just wanted to do it all.
Take drugs and fuck around and do whatever we...
And the children were just... They came along on the ride.
They didn't wanna 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 having donkeys.
They were riding donkeys that, like, started tripping
and getting into all kinds of trouble, you know,
and accidents, riding...
BROOMFIELD: They'd give acid to the 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 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,
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 somehow, the whole environment,
I think, sort of coalesced and worked for him
and he worked with it.
(LAUGHS) Still, we didn't plan it.
(SINGING)
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 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 of family.
One taken on my birthday last year on the island.
(CONVERSING IN GREEK)
They always speak Greek amongst themselves.
I think it comes more naturally to them.
And they've done all their schooling in Greece, 10 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 seemed so, you know, glorious,
and beautiful, and bright, and wonderful on the island,
they one-by-one died early of alcoholism and suicide, drugs.
There's only one that's alive.
GEORGE SLATER: Numerous other children
from families that have 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.
(SIGHS) It's just the place.
It's just the place, you know?
It gets into 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 coming home.
(CROWD CHEERING)
CORNELIUS: That was a very weird, weird night.
There was 660,000 people out there.
It was a disturbing night.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
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 them or you don't.
He got them.
(CROWD CHEERING)
LEONARD: Well, I was on mandrax at the time.
They used to call me Captain Mandrax.
I think it had... It was like a Quaalude, right?
It was relaxed beyond any reasonable state.
I hope she's here, Marianne.
I hope she's here. Maybe she's here.
I hope she's here.
Marianne.
(SINGING)
MARIANNE: (IN NORWEGIAN) How long could we stay in love
before we had to address our problems?
(MARIANNE SNIFFLES)
I recognized the situation we were in.
We couldn't communicate together anymore.
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 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 10 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.
(CROWD CHEERING)
There was a need for such a connection
between Leonard and his audience
that would actually have blown your mind.
One night, he had 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 have stuck around a while longer,
who knows what would have happened.
Can you imagine, we're playing in 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 re-entry.
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...
We were... I mean, I gotta tell you,
there's no way I could ever even survive
one of those nights at this point.
LEONARD: Trying to see my text here.
WOMAN: Hey.
ALL: Hey!
WOMAN: That's what you got on you, baby. (CHUCKLES)
MAN: This is the way it's gotta be done.
LEONARD: Think that stuff still works?
MAN: I don't know.
I'll be in serious trouble if it works or if it doesn't work.
(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 like,
"Well, if you burn it down really strong tonight, tomorrow morning,
"you got that hangover and all that kind of..."
-Uh-uh. We stayed in the zone. -(CROWD CHEERING)
Day after day after day.
There was only one night we were playing in Jerusalem,
when he wasn't getting them.
Now look, uh, if it doesn't get any better,
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 says, "No, I think if I shave,
"I might be able to go back out."
MAN: And you got... 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. (LAUGHS) What a life.
Oh, this is wonderful.
Why didn't you tell me about this?
(LAUGHTER)
DONOVAN: So that's what he did.
He shaved...
Dry shaved almost... (LAUGHS) With just some water.
And then he went back out there
with a big rash on his face
and finished the show.
At least you gotta try it, man. It's wonderful.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, this is really great.
(SINGING)
CORNELIUS: Everybody was shooting from the hip, right?
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.
(SINGING)
CORNELIUS: 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 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, all right.
"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.
JUDY 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.
LAYTON: 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 14 years younger than him.
So I guess there was a whole bunch of different things
that conspired to make it come to an end.
You needed somebody like Suzanne who was...
Well, the word "ruthless" is just the word
that comes to mind.
And she did what she wanted to do
to bind Leonard to her by any means.
To use 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.
And 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 CONVERSATION)
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 his... I don't know what he...
I don't think he knew what he was chasing, you know?
I don't think he really knew.
And that made it, probably darker, you know?
He lived in darkness
because 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.
(CROWD CHEERING)
JOHN LISSAUER: When we toured Europe,
and when we toured Germany
I've never seen so many blondes 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."
LEONARD: Thank you so much.
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.
And it's about those who would, uh,
sacrifice one generation on behalf of another.
(SINGING)
LISSAUER: I wanted to frame each of the songs
like a little vignette.
They all had these places of mind.
So I was giving them...
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 these little movies.
And we came back, and 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 Bros.
that got them both a huge advance.
A really huge advance.
For the '70s, it was unheard of.
So what had happened,
Marty called up Leonard and just said,
"Forget the record with John. We'll put that on the back burner.
"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
which, you know, is not his best work.
LEONARD: 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.
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.
They were armed to the teeth.
All his friends, his bodyguards, you know?
And everybody was drunk.
So, you know, I mean, you were tripping over bullets.
You were biting into revolvers in your hamburger.
I mean, Phil was beyond control.
I remember Phil, you know, 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, 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,
and it really does come out of that high school gymnasium.
(SINGING)
(ALL HARMONIZING)
MARIANNE: 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.
(BREATHES DEEPLY) Yeah, so that was...
Marianne finally decided that enough was enough
and she did have to come back to Oslo.
And her mother had always wanted her to come.
Wanted her to come here and have a normal life.
Become a secretary, 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 became the stepmother to his children.
Had a very average, ordinary life.
And then every once in a while she would go back to Hydra,
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... I did something."
He calls up and, uh, "Hey, man. How you doing?"
1984.
"Wanna make a record?"
I'm saying, "Yeah, 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...
(PLAYS PIANO)
He had just bought a little Casio synthesizer
on 7th Avenue and 49th Street. One of these...
(IMITATES PIANO NOTES) ...one finger things.
And he fell in love with it.
He said, "I wanna 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, "This is it."
We bring him up to Columbia.
There's a new guy named Walter Yetnikoff.
This was his first big thing.
He listened and he says,
"No, I don't like this at all."
And there's a famous quote, you know,
"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 did 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.
(SINGING)
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, 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 kind of waiting
till they can say their next line, you know?
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 $1,000 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.
Oh, there you are. (LAUGHS)
Don has lived on Hydra for 60 years.
The last time he left the island was 25 years ago.
LOWE: I made this for my...
I didn't wanna get stuck
and then got nowhere to live, you see.
BROOMFIELD: Wow, it's beautiful.
It's nice, you see? Dug it out.
BROOMFIELD: Did one of your children do that?
LOWE: No, I did that. (LAUGHS)
BROOMFIELD: You did that? It's beautiful.
LOWE: 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.
BROOMFIELD: Marianne was gonna stay where in the house?
LOWE: Just there. You can see it through there.
She was very nice at the end, Marianne,
because she mellowed and, you know...
Because it was never easy after Leonard...
Because every time he gave a concert or something,
she'd get caught up in it.
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, Jan, a very sweet man. Norwegian.
Yeah, I got quite fond of her at the end, Marianne.
Even when we were younger, we lived around way.
But near the end, she became very close.
Mmm-hmm.
(CHANTING INDISTINCTLY)
LEONARD: 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.
Well, 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 at, like, 3:00 in the morning.
Some of the things he told me that they did up there,
I don't know if I could have hung with that.
-You're a small? -Yeah.
-Your black bag? -Yeah.
Uh, brown bag? What did I do with it?
I just saw... Oh, in here, Roshi. In here.
In here.
-Your handbag? -Yeah.
-It's still in car? -Yeah.
Okay.
You want to eat something, Roshi?
-Huh? -You want to eat something?
Yeah, now wait.
Oh, okay. Okay.
LISSAUER: Roshi was his spiritual advisor,
his Buddhist monk leader.
He centered him.
It was like having mom and dad watching you if you think
because you're likely to be tempted to stray.
I think it was his crutch.
And it also probably increased his focus and concentration.
LEONARD: I'm trying to learn some things about love.
Well, love is that activity
that makes the power of man and woman
that incorporates 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 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.
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's not gonna be any revolutions.
CORNELIUS: I'm sure that everybody already knows
about all that 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...
What he told me...
That he spent holidays 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.
LEONARD: Well, the money seems to be gone. Uh...
As far as the manager,
you know, who was my dear friend,
I'm still rather fond of her.
But she, um... There's been a judgment of
several million dollars against her.
But, uh, you know... Well, that's...
She doesn't seem to have any money to...
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... (CHUCKLES) You know?
(CROWD 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 been a long time since I stood on a stage in London.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Was about 14 or 15 years ago.
I was 60 years old,
just a kid with a crazy dream.
(CROWD LAUGHING)
LISSAUER: Suddenly Leonard was the hottest ticket in town
and went from our little tour bus
with two sound engineers and three roadies
to an entourage of 59 people on his own jet.
(SINGING)
LISSAUER: And he was making upwards of $15 million every year.
One of the top 10 grossing acts.
He went from literally being wiped out
to incredible stardom.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(OLD BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)
(CHORUS SINGING)
(LEONARD SINGING)
MOLLESTAD: It was a love story
which had the 50 chapters without being together.
(LAUGHS)
She had a compartment of her heart
which was always married to Leonard.
(CROWD CHEERING)
That's the beauty of Marianne's and Leonard's history.
That they had this place for each other
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 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.
MOLLESTAD: "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."
That was very beautiful.
Very beautiful.
(IN NORWEGIAN) If only he was as lucky as me, getting his feet massaged by Sue.
(MOLLESTAD LAUGHS)
(CONTINUES SPEAKING NORWEGIAN)
And the beautiful thing was that
this old, sick man
reached his old, sick lover
with the message
that 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.
LEONARD: 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 loving memory exists for them, too.
The precious ones I overthrew for an education in the world.
(INAUDIBLE)