Steven MachatSteven Machat's late father, Marty, was the legendary music industry lawyer/manager of both Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector. As a close friend of Cohen, Marty Machat persuaded the Canadian poet to allow himself to be filmed on tour.
It's the kind of film that most stars and their management probably wouldn't sign up for these days. As director Tony Palmer, who also made films with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, commented, "I know of few other films where the backstage confusion comes so vividly to life, with Cohen apparently taking no notice whatsoever of the camera. I doubt if today we would be allowed such access."
Steven Machat sums the project up by saying "This film is an organic representation and reproduction of Leonard, and Leonard's reaction to the audience reacting to Leonard's work.
"Before whatever our modern age is, when you wrote you could be what I call an 'armchair quarterback', where you can criticise and not have to live with the ramifications of your critique of life. What happened is that Leonard moved from being a poet to being a performer, and when you perform your audience reacts. So if you're singing songs that will incite the audience, they want you to react with them and, in essence, to lead them.
"But not everyone that can incite can also lead. A rocker is someone that can incite and a roller is someone that can lead what they incited. And the movie is about Leonard not being able to roll with what he incited... he didn't want to wear the suit of being the leader of what he was rocking."
It seems that Cohen himself had reservations after filming, because in 1974 a heavily-cut version of the footage appeared, in place of Tony Palmer's film, while the reels themselves were thought to have disappeared.
Steven Machat believes it was "because he (Cohen) didn't want people to see that he couldn't roll with what he rocked. I really understand it on an extremely spiritual level, because if you're sitting and yelling and screaming from your armchair, who hears you? And then you get it off your chest. But if you're screaming in front of an audience, that believes you, and they want action and you can't do it, it's like uh-oh. He just wasn't prepared."
However, later Steven Machat says, "I believe this (film) is extremely important socially. It shows you my generation in 1972, looking for answers and our elders unable to give them to us."
I asked Steven if he knew where the original reels had spent all this time. "Yeah," he laughs, "they were in Leonard Cohen's possession."
During a visit to Leonard Cohen some years ago, the star revealed that he had the reels. "In my head I thought my dad would be visiting me spiritually as I sat and spoke to his best friend, Leonard Cohen. And I figured Leonard and I could have locker-room trash talk and we could discuss women, but Leonard Cohen thought I was coming after him because of what went on with the books and records and Kelley Lynch (see Steven’s fascinating book Gods, Gangsters and Honour for more on the relationship between Marty Machat and Leonard Cohen).
"So he and I were looking at my visit from two different worlds. He wanted to know what I was going to do, and I wanted to do...nothing. Leonard wouldn't talk and he got nervous and volunteered that he had the film, and I'm like 'great'. He says 'I'll give it back to you' and I say, 'I'll take it.' And then I found Tony, and I had Tony re-edit the movie. And I'm so happy. Tony's catalogue is now complete, he's an extremely talented person and the movie's fantastic."
However, putting Tony Palmer’s film back together again was far from straightforward, as Steven explains: "What they did is they gave me back all the reels, but there were no instructions. You know when you're given a puzzle box and you see the picture? Well we were given the pieces of the puzzle, but we couldn't see the picture. So Tony had to re-create it from scratch in his head."
Steven's father and Leonard Cohen were, in Steven's words, “best friends”. That's why, he says, "I always had a problem with Leonard, because he owed my father closure with me. I had fun with Leonard, I mean The Death of a Ladies' Man, that was funny. I put out an album he thought would never surface. By the way," he chuckles, "I put out a film that no one ever believed would surface. It's the perfect circle."
"I've done so much for Leonard Cohen through the entire circle of his career, and I believe it will give the youth an understanding of who and what he is, which is fantastic, and I believe it's the circle of my life. That's who I am - I'm a finisher, I'm what's called a 'closer' in American baseball folklore. I finish things. And that's what I did. I'm happy."
"Leonard Cohen's real message, that he'll be remembered for, is being a man that at this age didn't let time and his physical body stop him. He got up and he's singing to the audiences that want to hear his messages before he moves on - it's beautiful.
"What a fantastic story for all ages. At 75 you're up off your ass and doing this? How many grandfathers do that? It's beautiful and I'm so honoured I could be part of that entire circle, and I'm so honoured I could fix my dad's heritage by putting out a movie that he knew was important - he's been dead 23 years and he's now coming back to life. To me it's the circle."
Written by Melody Rousseau
Bird On A Wire is released by The Machat Company in September. Steven’s insider’s guide to the music industry Gods, Gangsters and Honour is available to buy from the Saga Bookshop and selected chapters, read by Steven, are available as audio books on iTunes.