It's not just who he was, it's a different reading and a different emphasis."Īfter the success of Buckley's version the song has been covered over 300 times. It makes sense that that kind of interpretation resonated with younger listeners and pop listeners in a way that Leonard's version did not. It's a much more fragile and a much more sexy version of the song.
It's much more about discovering the way that life will hurt you and let you down. It's really about the first time you confront those struggles and those disappointments. It's obviously much more intimate, much more melancholy, much more romantic. "That wouldn't have sounded particularly believable coming from 24-year-old Jeff Buckley. In the end it's confusing and it's frustrating but you have to accept it, this is the way the world is. "Learning that you'll survive heartbreak. "Leonard was 50 years old when he wrote the song and I think it reads very much as a song about overcoming the obstacles and difficulties that life throws at you," he says. He didn't initially learn it from Leonard Cohen's recording, he learnt it from this re-edit that John Cale did."Ĭohen and Buckley's age difference gave the song very different perspectives, Light says. "So John Cale re-edited it a bit and recorded it for this tribute record and actually that was the version that Jeff Buckley first heard. Obviously I didn't do a very good job at finding the song in all of this.'
Leonard said 'Listen, let's see if you can figure it out. He wrote to Leonard's office and said 'could you guys send me the lyrics' and they faxed him 15 pages of all the lyrics to the song. John Cale decided that he wanted to record 'Hallelujah'. "A rock magazine in France put together a tribute record to Leonard. Light says Bob Dylan was about the only person who paid any attention to the song, covering it in concert a few times in the late 1980s, before John Cale saw Cohen perform it live in the early '90s. Not only was this song not noticed, but Columbia Records turned down the album and wouldn't put it out."
He finally did record it in 1984 on an album called Various Positions, which came out that year. "He wrote, depending on which version of the story he tells, 60 or 70 or 80 verses for and grew very frustrated trying to actually edit it down into a song. " says it was a song he struggled with for years," Light explains.
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