Peterskirche and the spirit of Leonard Cohen

It’s eight years since the funeral of Leonard Cohen. Yet his haunting lyrics still echo down the years. His ghost still fills the vast Peterskirche (St Peter’s Church) in Leipzig during a concert. His diehard fans in their hundreds pack into the nave and surge upwards into the galleries.

Only the voice echoing in Peterskirche is different.

Rich and strong, it’s actually a more melodious voice than the original, although of a similar timbre. It belongs to Rolf Ableiter, who spent the evening of November 8th honouring Cohen’s legacy to the packed Leipzig audience, along with his equally talented band.

In his exclusive interview for The Leipzig Glocal, the German musician shared that he cannot imagine an alternative musical career for the moment. He will continue touring with Cohen’s songs at least until the end of 2026. He calls his act “Field Commander C” in honour of “Field Commander Cohen,” the 1979 tour of Europe and eponymous live album.

Since having been introduced to Cohen’s song “Suzanne” (1966) in his youth in the early 80s, Ableiter has been entranced by the music.

“I only saw Leonard Cohen live once, in Stuttgart in the Schleyer-Halle in 2010,” Ableiter told us after his concert at Peterskirche. “I think I cried for three and a half hours and that’s no joke. He was hilarious, telling highly intellectual jokes and still singing for three hours. So you’re torn between crying and laughing and that’s unbelievable.”

Sadly, Ableiter did not get to meet his idol in person: “If I could tell you that, I would be the proudest person in the world.”

Not only in the way he sings, but also in his deep knowledge of the oeuvre and life of the iconic singer-songwriter and poet, you might say that he sounds like Cohen’s “Second Coming.”

That would be a fitting term for Ableiter’s concert in the Christian Peterskirche, entitled “Early works – the roots of Hallelujah,” where he lovingly shared a story for each of Cohen’s songs his band performed, including the title song as the encore.

The tune “Hallelujah” (1984), which has cemented Cohen’s legacy despite its initial lack of commercial success, mixes religious references to Biblical characters – King David, Samson and Delilah – with hints at bondage and other erotic games. Drawing on his Jewish heritage and extensive knowledge of world religions, mixed with love, sex and heartbreak, the song is a perfect distillation of the themes running across Cohen’s early career.

“The roots of Hallelujah” takes us from Cohen’s birthplace in Montreal, Canada via his first muse Suzanne Verdal and passionate affairs on the Greek island of Hydra with a Norwegian hippie, Marianne Ihlen – and several other women – to a brief fling with world-famous singer Janis Joplin in New York’s Chelsea Hotel.

Immortalised in Cohen’s songs, these muses ignited his poetry as well as his carnal desires. You can trace the women’s profound influence on him right now in the ARD Mediathek, in an eight-part series called “So Long, Marianne.” Starring Alex Wolff and Thea Sofie Loch Næss, it re-tells the story of his life and loves. It’s fascinating and it brings Cohen’s music and award-winning poetry to a new generation.

But is it true to life? Field Commander C thinks not quite.

“He was a gentleman,” Ableiter insists. “All this throwing things around in a rage that we see in the TV series – that was not Leonard Cohen. It’s true he had some heavy episodes with drugs. But he was never mean like that.”

Ableiter cites as an example the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival in England when Cohen appeared onstage, clearly drugged-up and mumbling his lyrics incoherently. He adds that the poet also had a severe alcohol problem, which led him to check in… not to a rehab clinic… but to a Buddhist monastery in Los Angeles. With typical wholeheartedness, Cohen did not just dry out but was fully ordained as a monk and dedicated himself to meditating and plain living.

How does this fit with his Jewishness and the many references in his songs and poems to Jesus Christ and the Sisters of Mercy?

“He was spiritual, in the truest sense of the word,” says Ableiter. “He was highly interested in all kinds of religions and was always searching for more enlightenment.”

Then – disaster! While Cohen was practising Za-Zen, his manager embezzled millions from his accounts. The only solution was to do what he had always done – go back on tour. So from 2008 to his death eight years later at the age of 82, he toured and re-released recordings of his earlier tours as the only way to make a living.

As a Jewish artiste on the world stage, Leonard Cohen played record-breaking gigs in Israel, filling huge stadiums with up to 50,000 fans. But when he booked a concert in a small venue at Ramallah on the West Bank, it was cancelled at the last minute – for security reasons, says Field Commander C. The singer insists that Cohen did not take sides politically, and would not do so in the current Middle East war if he were still alive today.

What would Cohen do musically if he were still with us?

“When we interpret his songs, we like to reference Leonard Cohen’s early roots,” Ableiter reveals. “This is why we give some of them a country and Western treatment in the arrangements.”

While he was still at school in his hometown of Montreal, Cohen had formed a country music band called The Buckskin Boys. His ambition was to go to Nashville in the USA and take his music to the next level by becoming a professional singer on the country circuit.

That never happened because his urge to write poetry and novels, encouraged by winning several literary prizes at school and university, took him instead to Hydra in Greece and then to the 1960s folk music scene in New York.

Touring Europe with the best of Cohen’s songs, Field Commander C is able to bring out all the different musical influences and to skip the less successful works. He regards it as an homage.

But not – repeat, not! – as a tribute.

“I dislike this label, ‘tribute band.’ We are not pretending to be Leonard Cohen. We are performing his music. If you go to a concert to hear Mozart, you don’t call it a Mozart tribute band!”

After its Peterskirche stop and a couple of others in Germany, the tour picks back up in early 2025, including Dresden on February 28th, and returns to Leipzig in January 2026.

For those of us who find the untold stories behind the love songs just as compelling as the music, the series “So Long, Marianne” is still available in the ARD Mediathek and the full-length documentary feature “Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love” is on Amazon Prime. So the music lives on and another new generation of fans can understand and appreciate it, even if taking the stories with a grain of salt.

Maybe this makes Leonard Cohen a true classic. But – like Mozart? Only time will tell.

Check out Field Commander C’s official website for all tour dates.