Leonard Cohen in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1968. {Photograph}: Tony Vaccaro/Getty PhotographsLeonard Cohen in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1968. {Photograph}: Tony Vaccaro/Getty Photographs
A brand new film tells the story of the track, written over 10 years with 100 eighty variations
Hallelujah is among the most well-known songs ever written, but a model new film well-known it took Leonard Cohen 100 and eighty tries over a decade to greatest – easiest for it to be rejected by way of his report company. Practically twenty years glided by sooner than an animated ogre, Shrek, turned the music proper right into a monster hit.
The makers of the documentary, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Track, had exceptional get right of entry to to Cohen’s many notebooks, exhibiting his scrawled handwriting and deletions. “We received Leonard’s ‘tacit blessing’ now not lengthy earlier than he died in 2016,” says co-director Dan Geller.
Cohen had pencilled in his ill-fated meeting with the president of Columbia Information, Walter Yetnikoff, who turned down the album, Numerous Positions, on which Hallelujah become the principle music.
Sooner or later in 1984, John Lissauer, his arranger and producer of a few years, got a reputation. “Leonard requested if I desired to make a file as he had a number of new songs, inclusive of 1 known as Hallelujah. I on no account requested roughly the lyrics or for him to clarify them as that may have been insulting. I indubitably desired to be the audience. I actually idea Columbia would find it irresistible. Boy, grew to become I fallacious. Yetnikoff hated it.”
However he equipped no clarification apart from some imprecise remark roughly “now not liking the combination”. Geller and co-director Dayna Goldfine tried to interview Yetnikoff. “However his spouse mentioned he had dementia,” says Goldfine. He died closing yr.
“How ought to Columbia get it so fallacious?” asks Lissauer.
Cohen in 2009 in Los Angeles: Hallelujah have turn out to be ‘a world hymn – spiritual or in another case’. {Photograph}: Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Occasions/Getty Photographs
The rejection become devastating for Cohen. “He become actually crushed,” says French photographer Dominique Issermann, who lived with Cohen whereas he grew to become writing the album and had sat in on the studio recording. Whereas Cohen on no account spoke vitriolically in regards to the blow in public, in a single clip within the movie he talks of being instructed by way of Columbia: “We notice you might be extraordinary, however don’t acknowledge if you’re any applicable”.
Hallelujah began out its existence with a spiritual slant, reflecting Cohen’s Jewish background, with allusions to King David and Bathsheba (“The thriller chord that David performed”) along with Samson and Delilah. Later variations have been extra spiritual, and every so often sexual. Strains together with “When David carried out, his palms bled” are confirmed as abandoned.
Cohen recorded the date of his first come throughout with Issermann in his notebooks. She recalled: “We’d have espresso collectively inside the morning earlier than he’d start work on it [Hallelujah]. He may play distinctive variations within the entrance of me. However it’s the sort of riddle; one in all these symbolic poem. Sure, it’s obscure – like a fowl flying around the room.”
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Shrek: the 2001 movie’s use of Hallelujah led to many canopy variations. {Photograph}: Most Movie/Alamy
After its rejection, Hallelujah become sung at a number of concert events by way of Bob Dylan, nonetheless to no excellent acclaim. Cohen himself accomplished it on the give up of the Eighties, as soon as extra and never utilizing an actual achievement. It wanted John Cale with a barely totally different model for the monitor to benefit higher reputation, after which Jeff Buckley, who in 1993 grew to become sed by utilizing Columbia Information, albeit beneath a definite boss.
In 1994, Cohen, suffering from excessive ingesting and melancholy, moved for five years proper right into a Buddhist monastery in California. Quickly after leaving the retreat, he realized that Dreamworks grew to become making a pc animated film, Shrek, whereby they deliberate to make use of Hallelujah, with Shrek lamenting in regards to the captive Princess Fiona. It appeared an unlikely selection. “I simply idea it grew to become correct for the complicated mixture of feelings, now not usually there in a household film,” says Shrek’s director Vicky Jenson, who used Cale’s voice in her movie. “I additionally chosen it to maintain ‘butts on seats’ as a result of it become a widely known track. However I cut back the naughty bits, consisting of ‘tied you to a kitchen chair’ and ‘noticed you bathing on the roof’.”
Goldfine says: “Hallelujah become revitalised by Shrek.” It led to additional cowl variations by utilizing the likes of kd lang and Brandi Carlile. Hallelujah even have turn out to be massively widespread on TV expertise reveals, with Alexandra Burke triumphing The X Issue in 2008 together with her rendition, and subsequently topping the charts. But Cohen on no account regarded angered that others had fared so properly collectively along with his monitor. In a rare musing about their success, he in actuality speaks in a single clip within the documentary about that being “an understatement”.
A rejuvenated Cohen toured world in 2008-9 and, in his overdue 70s, once more in 2012-13. Hallelujah turn out to be regularly sung, typically with Cohen on his knees close to its give up. “It grew to become, appropriately, a world hymn – spiritual or in any other case,” says Geller.
Hallelujah grew to become executed on the Covid memorial provider in early 2021 in Washington, even because it’s miles usually carried out at engagements, weddings and funerals. Within the documentary, launched in cinemas this weekend, the singer Regina Spektor cites it as “a contemporary prayer” and “a information for cutting-edge survival”.
“There may be clearly no query that Hallelujah helped rejuvenate Leonard’s profession,” says Goldfine. “And eventually, 1 / 4 of a century on, it become reclaimed by the use of him as his very personal music.”
