"I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II," he dryly croaked in "Waiting for the Miracle," the elegantly stately song in which he sang, "the maestro says its Mozart, but it sounds like bubblegum," before gesturing toward the bust of the Austrian composer atop the Academy's proscenium arch.
And Cohen altered a lyric in the sashaying "I'm Your Man," to volunteer to "wear an old man mask for you," as part of his septuagenarian seduction technique.
Cohen hasn't toured in nearly 15 years - or, as he put it, when "I was 60, just a kid with a crazy dream." In the interim, his stature has rightly grown as an iconic wordsmith of the first generation of rock singer-songwriters, a philosopher of love and death, sexual ecstasy and societal doom, whose cigarette-scarred singing voice has grown more effective even as its range has become more limited.
This time around, Cohen was backed by a superb 10-piece band whose standouts included the Spanish bandurria player Javier Mas, the keyboardist Neil Larsen, and a chorus consisting of Cohen's co-writer Sharon Robinson, and sisters Charley and Hattie Webb.
The crowd at the sold-out Academy - which would have been even more cross-generational if the ticket prices hadn't hit nearly $200 (not that anybody was complaining) - regarded him with deep respect.
Early on in the first set, Cohen performed "Everybody Knows," his song of political and personal betrayal from his fruitful late-'80s electronic phase. And at the Academy, everybody knew that he would probably still be holed up in a Buddhist monastery in Los Angeles if he hadn't been allegedly bilked out of millions by his former manager (he was later awarded $9 million by a Canadian court in a civil suit).
