Remember When: Bob Dylan Tried to Get Leonard Cohen to Perform With Him in Montreal, Then Dedicated “Isis” to Him

New York City journalist and author Larry “Ratso” Sloman found himself inside a phone booth, connecting Bob Dylan to Leonard Cohen. Sloman was already a friend and close acquaintance of Cohen’s since first interviewing him the previous year and was nudged by Dylan to call him after the two ran into one another in a hotel lobby in Montreal.

At the time, Sloman was documenting Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue Tour, 1975-1976, for his book On the Road with Bob Dylan. The North America tour featured a collection of surprise guest musicians and collaborators, including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Ronee Blakely, and Dylan wanted Cohen to come up on stage for a song at the next show.

“I bumped into Bob and he was shopping in the lobby and said, ‘Hey, call Leonard. See if he’ll come and do a song,’” Sloman shared with American Songwriter in 2022. “No, no call him right now,” urged Dylan, according to the writer.

“I’m dialing his [Cohen’s] number and all the time Bob is literally tugging at my arm,” remembers Sloman, also known as “Ratso,” a nickname affectionately bestowed upon him by Baez during the aforementioned tour. “I say, ‘Leonard, it’s Larry. How you doing?’ and Leonard’s answer to that was, ‘Well, I can’t complain.’ That’s what he would always say. I’m trying to talk to him, and Bob is going, ‘Is he gonna come? Is he gonna come?’”

Eventually, Sloman handed the phone to Dylan so the two could speak without a mediary. “I hear Bob saying, ‘Leonard, how you doing?’ And of course, I hear Leonard go, ‘Well, I can’t complain.’”

Sloman’s account is one in a rolodex of moments, spanning his initial meeting with Cohen for a Rolling Stone assignment in 1974, and their subsequent conversations and friendship for more than 30 years. The writer had endless hours of unedited recorded conversations with Cohen through 2005 that had never been heard before and later shared them with directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller for the 2021 documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.

That night at Dylan’s show, Cohen never joined him on stage and instead sat and watched him perform.

“When I picked up Leonard the night of the show and we entered the backstage area, he was immediately greeted by Joni [Mitchell], [Bob] Neuwirth, Ronee {Blakley] and then Dylan,” recalled Sloman in 2019 of that evening in Montreal. “’Hey Leonard, you gonna sing?’ I pleaded. Cohen replied, “I’m going to sit out there and watch.”

Before Dylan started playing “Isis” that night, he said, “This is for Leonard if he’s still here.”

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Dylan Covered “Hallelujah,” First

Though they were never close friends, there was a high degree of mutual respect between Dylan and Cohen. Both would see one another from time to time over the years. When Cohen was recording his 1977 album Death of a Ladies’ Man in Los Angeles, Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg came to the studio and ended up singing backing vocals on the closing track “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On.”

In the early ’80s, the two also met at a Paris cafe, where Cohen lied to Dylan about how long it took him to write “Hallelujah.” He jokingly told Dylan it took two years to write, but, in fact, took five years—perhaps closer to seven, according to Cohen’s son Adam. Dylan then told Cohen that it took him 15 minutes to write his Blonde on Blonde track “Just Like a Woman.”

Dylan also revisited Cohen’s 1984 album Various Positions on more than one occasion. When it was first released, the album didn’t get much attention, but Dylan already heard all of its magic. “These are more than songs,” said Dylan of the album. “These are prayers.”

He later told the New Yorker: “That song ‘Hallelujah’ has resonance for me. It’s a beautifully constructed melody that steps up, evolves, and slips back, all in quick time. But this song has a connective chorus, which when it comes in has a power all of its own. The ‘secret chord’ and the point-blank I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself aspect of the song has plenty of resonance for me.”

Before John Cale covered “Hallelujah” in 1991 and Jeff Buckley followed with his majestic rendition on the album Grace three years later, Dylan was technically the first artist to cover “Hallelujah” during his concert at the Forum in Montreal on July 9, 1988, and again that year at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on August 4.

It took 35 years before Dylan revisited Various Positions again, covering the album opener “Dance Me to the End of Love,” during his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour at the Place Des Arts on October 29, 2023.

“As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music,” said Dylan of Cohen. “His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres.”

Photo: Bob Dylan, New York, September 5, 1970 by ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock