In Britain you can bet on it: which song will be the ‘Christmas Number One’?In December 2008, forecasting was a cinch: Talent Show winner Alexandra Burke_The X Factor_ with her rendition of Hallelujah. “From Jeff Buckley,” shesaid.
Thanks to various ‘counter-offensives’ came Hallelujah not only on 1(Burke), but also on 2 (the 1994 Buckley version). Further down, at number 36,was even the original (1984) by Leonard Cohen, who had never charted in the UKor US in the thirty years before 2008.
In the beautiful documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song_use filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine _Hallelujah as pars pro toto forthe music career of Leonard Cohen (1934-2016). Cohen started out as quite asuccessful Jewish poet and novelist from Montreal and also became a musicianfrom 1967. In that role he operated for more than thirty years on thecommercial margin and encountered undisguised hostility: what was that poetthinking? That he could write songs?
comeback
He was only able to really harvest in 2008, on the waves of Hallelujah inthe performances of others and with his own unforgettable comeback tours as aseventy-plus. His glorious return to the stage was born out of financialnecessity after it was revealed that his ex-manager Kelley Lynch had embezzledhis assets (she was convicted, but the money was gone).
Hallelujah is typical Cohen, in every way. Just take the difficult birth ofit: he worked on the song for seven years, wrote dozens in notebooks (andaccording to his friends Rollingstone journalist Larry Sloman as many as180) couplets.
Cohen thought with Various Positions (1984) finally made the album thatwould put him on the map in the US. He had reinvented himself: acoustic guitarstrumming had given way to the swaying sounds of a small Casio synthesizer. Hewas 50 and descending from baritone to bass.
Cohen opined that the album met Hallelujah and Dance Me to the End of Love_contained two strong points, but record executive Walter Yetnikoff of ColumbiaRecords saw no potential and decided _Various Positions not even marketablein the US and Europe. Cohen did that himself, almost under his own management,through the small Passport Records. Praise for Hallelujah only came from BobDylan, who played it live from 1988.
Which Hallelujah ascended, is due to two cover versions: a piano version byJohn Cale (1991) and the phenomenally sung version by Jeff Buckley, featuredon his albums in 1994 Grace ended up.
Buckley’s version was important because of its flywheel action. Almost allartists who Hallelujah sang afterwards, did not mention the Cohen but theBuckley version as their source of inspiration. But for widespreadpopularization, Cale’s version was equally important. It became ten yearsafter its first appearance on the Cohen tribute I ‘m Your Fan_used in thehugely successful animated film _Shrek (2001).
God and horniness
Geller and Goldfine do not cover all cover versions of Hallelujah : that isimpracticable and would have been uninteresting. What they do do, in a clearnarrative and interspersed with beautiful unknown images, is to provideinsight into how the song ‘mutated like a virus’: both the tone (from gloomycontemplation to euphoric exclamation) and the lyrics changed.
Cohen himself started doing this. His dozens of stanzas can be roughly dividedinto the two categories into which much of his work falls: ‘ holiness andhorniness ‘. God and horniness, the edifying and the scabrous. Death, sin andprayer versus love, lust and adoration.
In the album version, the biblical still predominates, but soon, duringCohen’s own concerts, secular and sexual couplets replaced it. John Cale drewhis own from Cohen’s stage versions cheeky ‘ mosaic of couplets together andinspired Buckley with it – and through him countless others.
The creators of Shrek used the Cale version, but obviously removed the ‘naughty bits ‘, the naughty bits. For an ambiguous phrase like ‘ she tiedyou to a kitchen chair ‘ had no place in a family cartoon.
Each his own Hallelujah. From street musician to amateur choir, everyonegets something out of that magic word, including singer kd Lang at Cohen’s ownfuneral.
The writer herself, in the triple chart storm of 2008, reflects fondly on therejection of 24 years earlier: ‘There is a mild sense of revenge in my heart.But now maybe people should stop singing it for a while.’