The Bob Dylan song that Leonard Cohen turned down: “I’m going to sit out”
When it comes to the world of singer-songwriters who have managed to lend their unique voices to generations’ worth of detailed and poignant storytelling, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are up there as some of the pioneers.
While many might consider them to have been in constant competition, the duo were, in fact, relatively close friends and admirers of each other’s work, and though the latter was critically acclaimed but not necessarily as well-known, Dylan was embarking on gigantic worldwide tours during the peak of his powers.
It was between 1975 and 1976, when Dylan was on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour across North America, that he took the opportunity to invite out many of his closest friends and collaborators to perform alongside him throughout the 57-date run. With the likes of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Roger McGuinn all accompanying him, it made for a special string of dates that would go down in history as being one of his finest tours in his career at a time that had brought him success with albums like Blood on the Tracks and Desire.
However, as he passed through Montreal, he ran into journalist Larry Sloman, who was, at the time, documenting the tour for a book about Dylan, and according to a 2022 interview with American Songwriter, Dylan’s response to his suggestion to invite a particular guest of the city was one of urgency.
“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 recalled of their chance encounter in a Montreal hotel. While he didn’t expect Dylan to have an immediate reaction, he insisted on calling him “right now”, and very soon after, Sloman found himself passing the phone over to him to see if he was able to convince his fellow songwriter Cohen to accompany him.
According to another account from Sloman, he came to pick up Cohen later that evening, and upon arriving backstage at the venue, he was greeted by Dylan, Mitchell, Bob Neuwith and Ronee Blakley. However, after trying to convince him to go on stage to sing with Dylan, he politely declined the offer, responding with, “I’m going to sit out there and watch”.
Whether or not Cohen enjoyed the show remains a mystery, but it would appear that Dylan had already planned out what he was going to be singing alongside him before he refused the offer to come on stage. Shortly before launching into his rendition of ‘Isis’, he addressed the audience: “This is for Leonard, if he’s still here”.
It would have been spectacular had Cohen joined Dylan onstage for one of the finest cuts from Desire, and would possibly have gone down as a historic performance, but we can only hope that the former was satisfied enough with having the track dedicated to him instead.
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