The Geneva Conference/Leonard Cohen

During the Yom Hakipurim war (1973) Matti Caspi, Oshik Levy, Puppick Arnon, and Illana Rubina were all part of a military musical group that performed before soldiers in the army. They performed existing material of the artists and also in skits that belonged to The Triplets trio (Oshik Levy, Puppick Arnon and Hannan Goldblat) where Goldblat’s role was performed by Matti Caspi.

 

The shows featured the international artist Leonard Cohen (RIP), who arrived in Israel for a period of two months especially for that. Cohen sang while accompanied by Matti Caspi playing the guitar during his songs.
Caspi tells that Leonard Cohen, who used to improvise and make up things on stage, wrote his famous song Lover come back to me while on stage in front of the soldiers audience, during their second performance together: “He actually wrote and composed that song while on stage in front of the soldiers, and from show to show he improved it. That’s how he was - improvising words and melody all at once” says Caspi. “We were in the group together, we slept in sleeping bags and it was much like a boy-scout fieldtrip. We would tell each other jokes and also talk about serious stuff. But mostly it was all jokes. He was a very humble man. Never thought of himself as an important person”.

 

Illana Robina: “It was one of the most exciting experiences in my life. We all sat at the ‘corner’ café in Tel Aviv, Matti, Oshik, Puppick and I, and were preparing for a show, and then Oshik said: ‘That man sitting there alone looks a lot like Leonard Cohen’ I told him: ‘You wish’ but he said: ‘I swear that’s Leonard Cohen’ he then came to him and asked: ‘Are you Leonard Cohen’? and the man said: ‘Yes’. We invited him to sit with us, told him we were singers and asked him what he was doing in Israel. He said: ‘I heard there is a war going on so I came to volunteer and work in the kibbutzes at Katzir and to set some people free to go to the military’. We told him there wasn’t any katzir going on now (harvest, or nickname to army recruitment) and we invited him to come perform with us, and he said he was a pacifist. We explained him we weren’t fighting, just performing to which he replied he didn’t have a guitar. We called Odded Feldman, who was cultural officer of the air force and within seconds we had a guitar. And so we circled around the strongholds for a few months, the soldiers simply didn’t believe it. Back in the time he was an idol in Israel, and he himself was very excited too. Leonard was then in the pinnacle of his popularity, teenagers admired him. When the soldiers heard he was coming to perform for them they thought it was a prank. When he arrived with us there was such excitement as can’t be described. It was surreal”.

 

The entire group performed together for two months, and then Matti Caspi, Oshik Levy, and Puppick Arnon continued performing together without Rubina and Cohen, when Monni Moshonov or Shlomo Yidov joined them occasionally..

 

Matti Caspi tells that the shows were very successful and popular, and the success was so big that after the war producer A. Deshe Pashnel took them to perform before citizens. Then the name“Geneva Conference"was decided (following the real Geneva conference that took place that time). The group performed at a grand hall in Jaffa that was completely full for two shows, and then the success simply vanished. Caspi explains that the reason it was such a success and then suddenly stopped being one, was probably because that kind of show only thrived during the war.
He says the success came from the distinction between the show itself and the bad conditions in which were the soldiers, and that the show simply didn’t suit normal conditions.

 

Matti Caspi: “During the Yom Kippur war I have performed with Leonard Cohen across Sini. I remember a surreal scene where we were at Rafidim next to the landing strip at the airport, we saw a Hercules airplane land, and from it came out dozens of soldiers. As commanded, they sat down on the strip and I accompanied Leonard Cohen while he sang his song ‘Like a Bird on a Wire’. With the song’s ending, on command, they all mounted trucks that were on their way to the Suez Cannal. Right afterwards, another Hercules landed and everything repeated. They sat on the strip and Leonard Cohen sang the same song and immediately following the song’s ending they mounted trucks on their way to the Cannal. And so, like in a picture, we stood there all day and Leonard kept singing the same song for the soldiers that landed and immediately mounted the trucks. At the end of the day in the evening, we joined one of the trucks and arrived at the enclave from the Egyptian side, which was conquered by Arik Sharon and his soldiers who came by trucks from Rafidim. There, in a strange yet natural way, we found ourselves helping carrying wounded soldiers to the helicopters. They were the same soldiers for whom we performed hours earlier.
I just remember one nice person who agreed I call him Eliezer because that was his name in Hebrew”.

 

“The Geneva Conference” (without Leonard Cohen) recorded one song composed and arranged by Matti Caspi, Oshik Levy, and Puppick Arnon: “We Have No Words”.The song is featured in the album “War and Peace” and in 2003 was also included in the “Matti Caspi Songs” collection album released by Phonokol.