A while back, Laura Barton wrote about Hallelujah, the much covered song that has come to define Cohen through the countless cover versions.
It was always the John Cale version that did it for me; his voice seemed to bring a more ecclesiastical quality to those lines. For a long while I clung to that and resisted the prettiness of Jeff Buckley’s version, but Buckley’s is undoubtedly the most sensual interpretation, breathing life into the song with a short exhalation even before he plays, bringing out the texture of Cohen’s lyrics, the feel of lips and hair and coldness. He takes its holiness and renders it physical, earthly. “Whoever listens closely to Hallelujah will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on earth,” Buckley once explained. “The hallelujah is not a homage to a worshipped person, idol or god, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. It’s an ode to life and love.” After all, what is a minor fall if not a petite mort?”
‘He knew things about life, and if you listened you could learn’
The truth was that Cohen felt as lost as anybody. What gave his work its uncommon gravitas wasn’t that he knew the answers but that he never stopped looking. He searched for clues in bedrooms and warzones, in Jewish temples and Buddhist retreats, in Europe, Africa, Israel and Cuba. He tried to flush them out with booze and drugs and seduce them with melodies. And whenever he managed to painfully extract some nugget of wisdom, he would cut and polish it like a precious stone before resuming the search. Funny about himself but profoundly serious about his art, he liked to describe his songs as “investigations” into the hidden mechanics of love, sex, war, religion and death – the beautiful and terrifying truths of existence. A Leonard Cohen song is an anchor flung into a churning sea. It has the kind of weight that could save your life.
Do have a read of Dorian Lynskey’s beautiful tribute to Cohen.
Cohen’s son, Adam, told Rolling Stone his father died peacefully at home:
My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records. He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humour.”
Musicians, celebrities, politicians and fans are all paying tribute.
In this dark moment after the US election let’s remember Leonard Cohen ”There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” #RIP
The Blogging Goth tweets me to point out Cohen’s influence on goth music. Sisters of Mercy took their name from him, and covered Teachers very early on.
The legendary record mogul Clive Davis has paid tribute, in Billboard:
Leonard Cohen was truly a master songwriter. No one sounded like him either vocally or lyrically. He penetrated your soul with his haunting voice and his piercing words. Leonard was absolutely one-of-a-kind, a poet and an artist who put you under his spell time and time again. Suzanne, So Long, Marianne, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye, Hallelujah, Bird on a Wire. Each is unforgettable and each will live on forever as will Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet laureate.”
Good morning, everyone. Michael Hann here, in London, taking over from Claire Phipps in Australia, on another sobering and sad morning in music – there have been rather too many sober days in the last 12 months, what with Lemmy, Bowie, Prince and now Leonard Cohen. Alongside the mourning, I’d like to celebrate Leonard Cohen’s life and music. So would you help me with compiling a playlist of the best covers of Cohen songs? I’ll kick us off with REM. Tweet me your nominations: @MichaelAHann
