Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’: Inside its wild journey from rejected song to ‘unstoppable’ classic
nypost.com“Born in the U.S.A.,” “Purple Rain” and “Like a Virgin,” respectively — there was another classic that never saw the light of day.Leonard Cohen’s towering tune “Hallelujah” was rejected — along with the rest of his “Various Positions” album — by then-CBS Records head Walter Yetnikoff. “He said, ‘Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good,’ ” recalls the late singer-songwriter in the new documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,” which opens in theaters Friday.But that would turn out to be only a “minor fall” in the song’s long ascent to the pantheon of iconic tunes.
A triumph of both perseverance and undeniable brilliance, it was a determined, decades-spanning journey that took “Hallelujah” from John Cale and Jeff Buckley covers to “Shrek” and “American Idol” ubiquity.“It took so many years to get ready, like a great bottle of wine, that when it finally hit, it was unstoppable,” John Lissauer — who produced Cohen’s original version of “Hallelujah” — told The Post.Today, it’s a song that adds grace, grandeur and gravitas to any momentous occasion. “It’s a song that people use at funerals and weddings, and they use it when their baby is born,” said Alan Light, whose newly updated book “The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, & the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ ” inspired the current documentary.Cohen had been working on writing “Hallelujah” for years — going through hundreds of verses in notebook after notebook — when he first played it for Lissauer in 1983. “It was completely different than we know it now,” he said. “He was strumming it on this little nylon [string] guitar.
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