{"id":806159,"date":"2020-04-07T15:08:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=980013"},"modified":"2020-04-07T15:08:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:08:31","slug":"flashback-hal-willner-recruits-leonard-cohen-sonny-rollins-for-transfixing-who-by-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-hal-willner-recruits-leonard-cohen-sonny-rollins-for-transfixing-who-by-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Hal Willner Recruits Leonard Cohen, Sonny Rollins for Transfixing \u2018Who by Fire\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hal Willner<\/a> wasn\u2019t known for playing music himself. But the producer, who died Monday at 64,<\/a> had a unique gift for making music happen.<\/em> Through his marvelously eclectic tribute albums \u2014 which featured everything from Tom Waits yowling out Snow White\u2019<\/em>s \u201cHeigh Ho (The Dwarf\u2019s Marching Song)\u201d<\/a> to Debbie Harry singing a tune from La Dolce Vita<\/em> and Chuck D declaiming passages from Charles Mingus\u2019 autobiography<\/a> \u2014 he turned countless musical what-ifs into reality. As he once put it, through his curation he was \u201ctrying to to combine things that are sort of fantasy.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Willner\u2019s greatest coups happened in 1989 when he engineered a team-up between Leonard Cohen<\/a> and Sonny Rollins for the short-lived NBC show Night Music<\/a>.<\/em> Executive-produced by Lorne Michaels and hosted by David Sanborn and Jools Holland, the program featured a stunning array of talent, from rock legends (Joe Walsh, Carlos Santana) to jazz<\/a> royalty (Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra), visionary composers (Philip Glass, John Zorn), and inspired outliers (Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins, Diamanda Gal\u00e1s). Sometimes, Willner, who served as musical coordinator, would even play mix-and-match with the guests.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLeonard said he wanted to do \u2018Tower of Song,\u2019 but I had a fantasy in my head of doing \u2018Who by Fire\u2019 with Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins, who was another guest on the show,\u201d Willner told Sylvie Simmons in her Cohen bio I\u2019m Your Man.<\/em> \u201cUsually when people jam they go with uptempo things; that song had a spiritual aspect, but I knew that people would relate.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the rehearsal, as Simmons recounted, each musician seemed wary of the other. Finally, Willner said, \u201cSonny Rollins, who was sitting there staring at Leonard the whole time, picked up his horn and started wailing in a different kind of understanding of the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afterward, recalled Cohen back-up singer Julie Christensen, Rollins approached her and asked, \u201cDo you think Mr. Cohen likes what I\u2019m doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Seeing the performance itself, it\u2019s hard to imagine he didn\u2019t. Rollins starts off with a stirring solo, backed by the Night Music<\/em> house band and members of Was Not Was. Cohen faces the saxophonist as he plays, then turns around to start singing and playing \u201cWho by Fire,\u201d a somber and at times morbidly comic ballad cataloging various methods and states of death from 1974\u2019s New Skin for the Old Ceremony.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rollins shadows him during the first couple verses, then breaks into another improv feature, showing off his signature brawny tone and impassioned flow, with a hint of wit (at one point he quotes a phrase from \u201cPop Goes the Weasel\u201d). Rollins ratchets up the intensity even more during one final feature, before ending with a wild circular-breathed coda. When he\u2019s done, Cohen breaks into applause.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is staggeringly cool, and it\u2019s even more amazing to think that it went down on national television. This \u201cWho by Fire,\u201d which you can watch in full above, will stand as a monument to Willner\u2019s ability to pull off seemingly impossible curatorial feats in highly visible settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at that show as a success,\u201d Willner said of Night Music<\/em><\/a> in 1992, \u201cI mean, look what we did. We had Sun Ra on NBC. We put Leonard Cohen with Sonny Rollins playing together. We had John Cale, Van Dyke Parks, Pharaoh Sanders \u2014 these people were all seen by a lot of people. \u2026 For a while, I can guarantee that show affected people.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hal Willner wasn\u2019t known for playing music himself. But the producer, who died Monday at 64, had a unique gift for making music happen. Through his marvelously eclectic tribute albums \u2014 which featured everything from Tom Waits yowling out Snow White\u2019s \u201cHeigh Ho (The Dwarf\u2019s Marching Song)\u201d to Debbie Harry singing a tune from La […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-16 22:19:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}