Alan Light - The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of Hallelujah

Thank you for purchasing this Atria Books eBook.

Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Atria Books and Simon & Schuster.

C LICK H ERE T O S IGN U P

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

For Suzanne and Adam,
with all my love

Hallelujah is a Hebrew word which means Glory to the Lord. The song explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist. I say all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have an equal value. Its a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm, with emotion.

Leonard Cohen

Whoever listens carefully to Hallelujah will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on earth. The hallelujah is not an homage to a worshipped person, idol, or god, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. Its an ode to life and love.

Jeff Buckley

Words and Music by Leonard Cohen

Ive heard there was a secret chord

that David played to please the Lord

but you dont really care for music, do you?

It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth

the minor fall, the major lift;

the baffled king composing Hallelujah!

Your faith was strong but you needed proof.

You saw her bathing on the roof;

her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.

She tied you to a kitchen chair

she broke your throne, she cut your hair,

and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah!

You say I took the Name in vain;

I dont even know the name.

But if I did, well, really, whats it to you?

Theres a blaze of light in every word;

it doesnt matter which you heard,

the holy, or the broken Hallelujah!

I did my best; it wasnt much.

I couldnt feel, so I learned to touch.

Ive told the truth, I didnt come to fool you.

And even though it all went wrong,

Ill stand before the Lord of Song

with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah!

(Additional verses)

Baby, Ive been here before.

I know this room, Ive walked this floor.

I used to live alone before I knew you.

Ive seen your flag on the marble arch,

but love is not a victory march,

its a cold and its a broken Hallelujah!

There was a time you let me know

whats really going on below

but now you never show it to me, do you?

I remember when I moved in you,

and the holy dove was moving too,

and every breath we drew was Hallelujah!

Now maybe theres a God above

but all I ever learned from love

is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

And its no complaint you hear tonight,

and its not some pilgrim whos seen the light

its a cold and its a broken Hallelujah!

T he John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum sits on the Columbia Point peninsula of Bostons Dorchester neighborhood. It is housed in a striking I. M. Pei building, situated in dramatic isolation on a reshaped former landfill.

This brisk February Sunday in 2012, President Kennedys daughter, Caroline, is opening a ceremony by invoking one of her fathers speeches. Society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him, she quotes him as saying in a 1963 address at Amherst College, honoring Robert Frost. The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself.

The occasion is the inaugural presentation of a new award for Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence, given by PEN (Poets/Playwrights, Essayists/Editors, Novelists) New England. The award committee, chaired by journalist/novelist/television executive Bill Flanagan, includes Bono, Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello, Paul Muldoon (poet and poetry editor at the New Yorker ), Smokey Robinson, Salman Rushdie, and Paul Simon. The first recipients of the award are Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen.

The honorees are both dressed in their latter-day uniforms: Berry in a sailors cap and windbreaker, Cohen in a dark suit with a gray shirt, topped by a fedora. In truth, the spotlight mostly stays squarely on eighty-five-year-old Berry. Paul Simon presents Berrys awardwhich the event program says reflect[s] our passion for the intelligence, beauty and power of words and celebrates these songwriters for their creativity, originality and contribution to literaturewith a heartfelt, slightly rambling speech, reciting some of the rock and roll pioneers most evocative lyrics, which Berry admitted at the time he couldnt hear.

Costello performs an impassioned, slowed-down version of Berrys No Particular Place to Go, and Flanagan reads a congratulatory e-mail from Bob Dylan, who calls Berry the Shakespeare of rock and roll (adding, Say hello to Mr. Leonard, Kafka of the blues). Instead of making a speech, Berry straps on Costellos guitar and delivers a haphazard verse of Johnny B. Goode. The whole thing winds up with Costello and surprise guest Keith Richardsperhaps Chuck Berrys greatest acolyteswaggering through a glorious rendition of The Promised Land, with the beaming Rolling Stone reeling off three lengthy, hard-driving guitar solos as his idol pumps his fist in the front row.

In contrast to all that firepower, the presentation to Cohen is quiet and modest. Shawn Colvin sings a delicate, slightly nervous version of Come Healing, as Cohen leans forward in his seat and watches closely. At the end of the song, she knocks over her guitar when placing it back in its stand; Cohen graciously bends over and steadies the instrument before leaning in to give Colvin a kiss of gratitude.

Cohens own speech is brief and characteristically humble. With Dorchester Bay and the Boston skyline gleaming through the windows behind the podium, the elegant seventy-seven-year-old talks for less than two minutesexclusively about Chuck Berry. His bass voice scarcely above a murmur, he says that Roll Over Beethoven is the only exclamation in our literature that rivals Walt Whitman declaring his barbaric yawp. He concludes with the thought that all of us are just footnotes to the work of Chuck Berry.

Salman Rushdies presentation to Cohen is a bit more expansive. When we were kids, he taught us something about how it might be to be grown up, the novelist says. He quotes a few lines from Cohens songs, and sums up his admiration by saying, If I could write like that, I would.

Several times, Rushdie speaks of the song for which Cohen is now best known, calling it simply the great Hallelujah. He describes the song as something anthemic and hymnlike, but if you listen closely you hear the wit and jaundiced comedy. He gets a laugh from the audience when, with a grin, he notes Cohens rhyme of hallelujah with whats it to ya, alongside the lyrics other rhymes equally non-sacred. Rushdie compares this playfulness with the work of poets W. H. Auden and James Fenton, and describes the songs melancholy and exaltation, desire and loss.

When the hour-long ceremony is over, and the thousand or so audience members have filed out of the auditorium, perhaps Leonard Cohen allows himself a moment to smile and consider the irony. This song, which tormented him for years, only to wind up included on the lone album of his career that his record company refused to release, is now held up as exemplify[ing] the highest standards of literary achievement. Whats more, this turn of events is far from the most unlikely thing that has happened to Hallelujah along its almost three-decade-long journey.