Leonard Cohen's private Birthday Party

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cohenadmirer: Leonard Cohen forum birthday celebrations Barcelona 2009 · the Wijbe & Willy .... 42 (no forumname) - Shiloh Noone - Cape Town, South Africa ...

Yes you looking at it, the Google proof to an invite to Leonard Cohens' private 75th birthday party , so why me?

                       The lady on the left, initially photographed on the back of  'Songs From Room' 

                                                                    Faithfull to the clap

Well it all had to do with a Leonard Cohen article I wrote called At His Masters Feet for a American website called Hippyland. The events that led up to this were not rosy , on take off from Cape Town one of the KLM engines blew up on the runway. A hectic in transit via JB resulted in all my luggage been lost and the driver supposedly waiting for me at Barcelona airport understandably gave up the day before. With 4 hours to spare and freshly bought clothes I arrived sweaty at the 'Vivaldi' restaurant and told at the door that I am making the speech largely because I was the only radio presenter there. A dimly lit restaurant filled with underground writers, poets, fans called Cohenites, ex lovers and celebrities namely Marianne Faithfull, plus a host of prominent people drank deeply from the excellent wine. Unbeknown as I was later to find the restaurant was surrounded by Spanish intelligence largley due to Cohen's music used for Gary Oldman's movie Backwoods, in support of the Basque people. The party did have its moments such as myself stepping up to make the speech with a Bob Dylan T shirt on which caused some incoherent mumbling and then a folk singer covering "So Long Marianne" and Leonard whispering into my ear, 'she still thinks the song is about her' , referring to the attractive chain-smoking Faithfull at the head of the table. That evening at the concert filled with 250.000 people, Leonard came up for 12 encores , need I say more