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"Dance Me to the End of Love: In the Round" – Leonard Cohen on Later… with Jools Holland

Mark Cooper, 'Later... with Jools Holland' (Harper Collins), September 2022

LEONARD COHEN taught us what Later... could become. He would show us how the show could be much more than the accidental sum of its parts. Our layout wasn't only a way of filling a studio with a variety of bands and filming them from the inside out, it could be a humming dynamo, a circle of energy. Leonard would involve the other artists he was facing across the room and unite them in a shared orbit. The bands could drive each other forward and raise each other's game; the "story" of the show was the contrast between the artists; momentum came from the power of the performances and their variety, from not knowing what was coming next.

Total word count of piece: 1135

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