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Hallelujah · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. In nineteen eighty four, Elvis Costello released his ninth album,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Goodbye Cruel World. I bought it the week it came out,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: because I bought every Elvis Costello album back then the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: week it came out. There's a theory in psychology the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: music you listen to at ages nineteen and twenty is
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the music that imprints itself most deeply on your consciousness.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: If you make a list of your favorite songs, you'll
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: see what I mean. Anyway, I was twenty in nineteen
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: eighty four, so I remember Goodbye Cruel World. I listened
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to it right away. And this episode is about one
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: song on that album. It's called the Deportees Club. I
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: still have it on vinyl. It goes like this, Oh God,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it's awful. My name is Malcolm Blavo. Welcome to Revisionist History,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: my podcast about things forgotten or misunderstood. This week, I
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: want to go back to Elvis Costello in nineteen eighty four.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I should say you don't have to know anything about
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello or even like his music to be interested
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: in this story. I'm not talking about Deportees Club as
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a song, but as a symbol. I'm interested in understanding
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: how creativity works, and I've chosen Depotees Club as my
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: case study for the purely arbitrary reason that I'm obsessed
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: with it and maybe, hopefully you will be two once
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: you're finished. Depote's Club is the second to last song
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: on the B side of Goodbye World. The album cover
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: is a picture of a little mountaintop with two trees
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: on it, with Costello and his band members in various
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: strange poses. It's all very eighties. The record was produced
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: by two legends of the British music scene at the time,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Clive Langer and Alan win Stanley. You've probably heard some
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of their work. They did records with Madness, Lloyd Cole,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: David Bowie, virtually all of the great English new wave
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: hit songs of the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Clive Langer and Allan Winstanley were the guys behind the curtain.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever heard come On Eileen
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: by Dexy's Midnight Runners. Come On Eileen. Oh, I swear
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: what he means at this moment you mean everything.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I'm a terrible singer, but maybe you could make that
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: out that song. Langer and win Stanley Clive Langer knows
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello. Of course they would bump into each other
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: in the way that people in a small world always
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: bump into each other, and new wave music in the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties was a small world. At one point, Langer
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: has his own band and he was doing a show
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: in a riverboat on the river Mersey. Costello calls him
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: up and.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: He said, oh, I'll come up and play a few
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: songs before you go on.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: That's Langer. We met at a pub on Lawston Road
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: in Hackney in North London. He's slightly spidery, with close
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: cropped white hair and oversized glasses and the kind of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: graciousness that only the English seemed to possess. An absolutely
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: delightful person. My father is English and all older, charming
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Englishman remind me of my father.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: We had some tea. It was all very civilized. Okay,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: back to Elvis Costello. He came up and played all
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: his best songs. I mean it's his you know Alison
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: and Everything.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Song, Allison Costello's first big hit.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Oh then I had to go on and do my
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: first ever show with the same lineup, and we weren't
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: as good, you know, so I don't know. I didn't
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: know quite how to take that.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: If you detect a little bit of friction in that,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you're not wrong. Alvis Costello is a genius, and like
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of geniuses, he has a really strong personality.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: A few years pass and Costello's record label decides they
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: want to broaden his commercial appeal. He has a fanatical
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: following among those who know New Way music, but the
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: label wants a big commercial hit, so they turned to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the hit makers Langer and win Stanley, and the two
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: of them produce a record for Costello called Punch the Clock,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: which has a number of absolutely exquisite songs, including Shipbuilding,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: which Langer co wrote with Elvis Costello.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Isis worth the news culture shoes? Fine?
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: You collaborate on Punch the Clock?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: And you like that album?
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Yes? He doesn't, and he doesn't know.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Why is he unhappy with it?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: I think it was just too commercial at that time,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: and he wanted to write something simpler, more live more.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: You know, he's more of a purist than I am.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: So I was brought up with psychedelic pop in the
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: mid sixties, so I was kind of like, Oh, we
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: can do this, we can do that you know, and
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: he's like, oh, I want it to sound real and
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: black pop dinner or something, you know. But and when
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: you get that right, that's amazing.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I want to hear a little bit more about Punch
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the Clock, about whether those differences in perspective had an
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: impact on the way the record turned out.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Not so much. On Punch the Clock we didn't have tension.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: We had tension later, which I'll talk to you about
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: what we did have. When we did the playback of
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Punch the Clock, he got quite drunk and played it
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: back really loud.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Of course they did, and how much would you kill
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to a bit in the room with.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Him, and he kind of freaked out, said it's all rubbish,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: it's terrible, it's terrible, and I was like, I had to,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: you know, calm him down a bit and we all
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: carry it on.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: When the time comes to make the next album, Castello
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: turns to Langer and win Stanley again, only this time.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: The first thing he said is that I want to
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: call it Goodbye Corl World. I think it's going to
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: be my last album, which he didn't even tell the band,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: so he was confiding in me.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: They do a first run through recording all the songs live.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Langer is the producer, the one who's supposed to be
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: running the show, but immediately there's an issue. Elvis basically
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: takes over.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Because he's quite a forceful, powerful guy, very eloquent and
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: you know, lovely, but you can sort of barge in
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: and start changing th hims, you know. So I remember saying,
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: thanks for letting me be here to listen to you
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: and make your record, you know, but I don't think
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: it should go like that. Shouldn't be like this, you know.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: So it was a bit a bit of a standoff.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I think he went out and bought a half bottler.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: June and I asked Langer and why Costello said this
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: was going to be his last album. It's not like
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: he was an old man ready to retire.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: He wasn't even thirty. It was just that he'd had
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: a lot on his back, you know, he'd been through
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: a lot. I don't know if he wanted to carry
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: on playing the game at that point.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: The result is disastrous. I hate it. Goodbye cruel World.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: When I first heard it, and remember I'm a massive
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello fan. A couple of years ago, Costello did
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: a television variety show called Spectacle.
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: Ladies, and gentleman, will you please wag him to the stage.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I want to live to Nick Lo, And in the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: episode where he interviews Nick Low and Richard Thompson, the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: camera pans the audience and twice you see me grinning
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: madly as I said. I'm a massive Elvis Costello fan,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and believe me when I say goodbye. Cruel world was unlistenable,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: especially Deporte's Club. It was angry and loud and upsetting.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm not the only one who feels that way.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, the album is re released by
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Raiko Disc Records, and Elvis Costello writes in the liner notes, congratulations,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: you've just purchased our worst album. You have to kind
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of admire as honesty. Except on that same re release,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Costello includes a new version of Deporte's Club, one of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the songs on the original album he hates so much
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: he gives it a new melody and plays it by himself.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: An acoustic version shortens the title to DEPORTI fiddles with
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: some of the lyrics, and it never appears anywhere else,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: just on this random re release by Raiko disc Records.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Whatever that is, and I would never have heard it
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: except that my friend Bruce ran across it and played
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: it for me. Bruce, by the way, was also in
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the audience of that Elvis Casseillo TV show, grinning madly. Anyway,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Bruce and I used to make mixtapes for each other,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and he puts this new version Deportee on a mixtape
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: for my birthday, and I become obsessed with it. I'll
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: bet I sing parts of it to myself almost every day.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I don't really know why, but it might be one
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of my favorite songs ever. There's a line in it
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: that jumps into my head whenever I'm sad. It's so perfect,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a little couplet about the dissolution of romantic love and
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you don't know where to start or where to stop.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: All this pillow talk is finely talk, king shop.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: Can we play it?
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I'm in the pub with Clive Langer, the producer of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the original awful version Deportees Club. Strangely, he'd never heard
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the new, obscure and amazing version of the song he
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: produced so long ago.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I want to hear his new version.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So I found it on my iPhone and
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Langer leaned his head over the table so that his
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: ear would be right next to the tiny phone speaker.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Is the one in the.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Air Children nine Club, bar Shend, Fine Classrooms, bunch of charms.
• 11:02
  Speaker 7: Send.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: All Chrum that's doing the spent stems and part us.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: There's a tad.
• 11:32
  Speaker 7: You know, it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Sounds like he's found the song, but he didn't know
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: at the time either that That's what I mean, That's
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: what's sort of fascinating that. Yeah, either review in the moment.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: No, Sometimes you know, if it's not sounding right, maybe
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe we were not focused enough. You know,
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: maybe we were making a record, but we were miles away.
• 11:55
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: In the end, they Alvis Costello and his producers all
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: thought they had put out something mediocre. What they didn't
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: understand until much later was that that mediocrity contained a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: bit of genius. It's just that it hadn't become genius yet.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And that's what I want to talk about, time and iteration.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: What happens when genius takes its sweet time to emerge.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I know that this is just one three minute song.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe you don't even like it, but every time I
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: hear it, I think the same thing, which is this
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is something that gives a lot of people in the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: world pleasure, including me, And it almost didn't happen. If
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello doesn't go back and revisit Deportees Club turn
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: it into Deportee, we miss all that beauty, and the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: thought of that breaks my heart. There's a theory about
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: creativity that I've always loved. It's an idea that an
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: economist named David Gailnsen came up with. Gailenson is an
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: art lover, and it strikes him when looking at modern art,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: that there are two very different trajectories that great artists
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: seem to take. On the one hand, there are those
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: who do their best work very early in their life.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: They tend to work quickly. They have very specific ideas
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: that they want to communicate, and they can articulate those
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: ideas clearly. They plan precisely and meticulously, then they execute boom.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Galensen calls them conceptual innovators. Picasso is a great example.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: He bursts on the scene in his early twenties and
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: electrifies the art world at the turn of the last century.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I think that someone like Picasso is who we have
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: in mind when we think of that word genius. But
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Galenson says, wait a minute, there's another kind of creativity.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: He calls it experimental innovation. Experimental innovators are people who
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: never have a clear, easily articulated idea. They don't work
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: quickly when they start off. They don't really know where
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: they're going. By trial and error, they do endless drafts.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: They're perpetually unsatisfied. It can take them a lifetime to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: figure out what they want to say. Who's a good example. Seison,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: every bit as famous and important a painter as Picasso,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: may be the greatest of the Impressionists who reinvent modern
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: art in Paris in the late eighteen hundreds. With Seison's
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: genius and Picasso's genius, they could not be more different.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Why don't we start with your favorite?
• 14:38
  Speaker 8: Do you have a favorite in this wild Maybe? My
• 14:41
  Speaker 8: favorite at the moment is that one the bay.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I'm talking to a man named John Elderfield. He's a
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Seeson expert, and he took me to that gallery at
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Museum in New York where they have all
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of their seisons, easily a few billion dollars worth of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: paintings in one room, and it took only about five minutes.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Wandering from picture to picture with Elderfield to see experimental
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: genius in action.
• 15:04
  Speaker 8: So this is one of the many portraits of his
• 15:08
  Speaker 8: wife's that says On made, and it's one of four
• 15:12
  Speaker 8: pictures done in a short period of time when they
• 15:15
  Speaker 8: were living together in Paris.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: The season we're looking at is a picture of a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: middle aged woman seated. Her head is tilted slightly to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the side. As with a lot of Saison's portraits, we
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: can see only one of her ears. He didn't like
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: doing the second year. She's sitting quietly, almost floating in
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the chair.
• 15:34
  Speaker 8: And I think it's arguably one of the greatest portraits
• 15:39
  Speaker 8: that he did.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: It's one of a series of four similar portraits. Elderfield
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: says that the first two are a little smaller, looser,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: maybe one trace from another, and then a third much
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: like the one we're looking at, but without any background
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: painted in just the figure. Is this very typical of
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the way he worked? So he does essentially comes back
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to her four times.
• 16:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and then he.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Gets it right.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Notice my assumption here, because what I was thinking when
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I said that bit about he gets it right the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: fourth time was that if Saeson did four versions, he
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: must have been marching towards some kind of preordained conclusion.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: He has an idea and he's perfecting it. But that's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: not seyson Standard practice is you do a sketch, work
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: out the problems, do a finished version. Seyson kind of
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: starts in the middle. The fourth version of Sezon's portrait
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of his wife, the one we're looking at, is less
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: finished than his second and third versions.
• 16:36
  Speaker 8: Well, for example, here you can see this unfinished parts
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: putatively unfinished parts, I mean like the area of the
• 16:43
  Speaker 8: dress there where there's like you can really see the
• 16:46
  Speaker 8: grounds of the canvas and all the way through the
• 16:48
  Speaker 8: lower part, and you can see who's been putting these
• 16:51
  Speaker 8: breast strikes down and not actually filling them all together.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Sezon didn't work according to some clear linear plan. He
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: basically just did versions over and again, iteration after iteration,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: trying to stumble on something that seized his imagination. Many
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: of Saizan's paintings are unsigned because he doesn't want to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: admit to himself that he's done. He does portraits of
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: his art dealer, Ambrose Villard, and he makes him come
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: for a hundred sittings, one.
• 17:20
  Speaker 8: Hundred, one hundred.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Normally they would be how many.
• 17:23
  Speaker 8: And now I mean normally for portraits it would just
• 17:25
  Speaker 8: be a relatively short number, I mean five or something.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Why does he need a hundred exactly?
• 17:31
  Speaker 8: I mean, what's in?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: What's she doing?
• 17:33
  Speaker 8: All the time?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Saisan was never finished. This is what David Gilinson means
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: by experimental genius, and Gillinsen points out that you can
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: see this creative type in virtually every field. Herman Melville
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: publishes Moby Dick when he's thirty two, writes it in
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: a heartbeat. He's Picasso. Mark Twain publishes Huck Finn when
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: he's in his late forties, and it takes him forever
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: because he ends up obsessively rewriting and rewriting the ending.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: He says on who else does Citizen Kane? When he's
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: twenty four? Picasso. Alfred Hitchcock doesn't reach his prime until
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: his mid fifties, after he spent his entire career making
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: one thriller after another, playing with a genre over and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: over again. Saison. But there's one field where I think
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Galenson's theory plays out the most powerfully, and that's music.
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minifold,
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: the major lift, the baffled game. Coboluia heluaallulua.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: That's the song Hallelujah. It was composed by the Canadian
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: songwriter Leonard Cohen. But basically everybody is in a cover
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of Hallelujah. Rufus Wainwright, You Two, Jeff Buckley, bon Jovi,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: John Kle, Bob Dylan, I could go on. It's featured
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: in countless TV and movie soundtracks. If you ride the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: New York City Subway on a regular basis, you'll probably
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: hear a busker singing it virtually every day. Like a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: good Canadian, I go to a Canada Day celebration every
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: year at Joe's pap in Manhattan, where local artists sing
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: cover versions of Canadian songs. Every year someone does a
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: version of Hallelujah. Every year. It brings down the house.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: And here's what's interesting about that song.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: It is so not Picasso. It is seison, textbook seison.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: A few years ago, the music writer Alan Light wrote
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: an absolutely wonderful book, an entire book on the song Hallelujah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: It's called The Holy or the Broken, and one of
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the big themes is how peculiar Leonard Cohen is. He's
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a poet, a tortured poet.
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: He is a writer in that way that he labors
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: over what these lyrics are, line by line, word by word,
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: throws a lot away, spends a great deal of time.
• 20:12
  Speaker 7: And Hallelujah, famously, out of all of these, is probably
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: the song that he says bedeviled him the most.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: That's allan like. He came by my house one day
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to talk about Hallelujah.
• 20:22
  Speaker 7: He sort of was chasing some idea with this song
• 20:27
  Speaker 7: and couldn't find it and just kept writing and writing
• 20:30
  Speaker 7: and depending when he tells the story, wrote fifty or
• 20:32
  Speaker 7: sixty or seventy verses.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Which is for this song, which I mean, you've been
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: writing about music for many, many years. Have you ever
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: heard of a musician who wrote eighty different?
• 20:43
  Speaker 7: I don't think so, I mean, and I don't know
• 20:45
  Speaker 7: what that. I don't know if that means variations on verses.
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: I don't know if that means entirely like how much
• 20:50
  Speaker 7: of this is exaggeration, But it doesn't matter. It's a
• 20:52
  Speaker 7: whole other.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Level.
• 20:54
  Speaker 7: Well, there's the famous story that you know, Leonard Cohen
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: and Bob Dylan have this kind of mutual admiration thing,
• 21:01
  Speaker 7: and apparently they met up in the eighties. At some
• 21:03
  Speaker 7: point they were both in Paris and they went to
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: meet at a cafe and Dylan said, oh, I like
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: that song Hallelujah, which is a fascinating piece of this
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: story that really the first person who paid attention to
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: Hallelujah as an important song was Bob Dylan. But he
• 21:20
  Speaker 7: said to Leonard, you know, I like that song. How
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: long did you work on that? And Leonard said, I
• 21:24
  Speaker 7: told him that I'd worked on it for two years.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Which was a lie. Cohen later confessed it took him
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: much longer. Then Cohen asks Dylan how long it took
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: him to write the song I and I.
• 21:35
  Speaker 7: And Bob said, yeah, fifteen minutes.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Dylan is picasso with Leonard.
• 21:40
  Speaker 7: It's not the first thought, best thought school at all,
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: and he talks about, you know, being in a hotel
• 21:46
  Speaker 7: room in his underwear banging his head on the floor
• 21:49
  Speaker 7: because he couldn't solve this song, Hallelujah.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen spends five years writing Hallelujah. He finally records
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it in nineteen eighty four. It's for an album called
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Various Positions. When Cohen finishes recording the songs, he takes
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: them to his record label, which is CBS. To the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: head of CBS, who's this legendary figure named Walter Yetnikoff,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: who's the guy who releases Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruce
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Springsteen's Born in USA? Not a dumb guy. Jetnikoff listens
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to Cohen's songs and says, what is this? We're not
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: releasing it. It's a disaster. The album ends up being
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: released by the independent label Passport Records. It barely makes
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: a ripple. And if you go back and listen to
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: that first Hallelujah and try to forget how beautiful future
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: versions would be, the song's failure makes sense. It's not
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: there yet. There's an essay written by Michael Barthel about
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: the trajectory of Hallelujah, and he calls Cohen's original version
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: so hyper serious that it's almost satire. Ah No, kind
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of turgid, isn't it. But Cohen's not done. He keeps
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: tinkering with it. He plays it in concerts, and he
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: slows it down. It becomes twice as long. He changes
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the first three verses, leaving only the final verses the same.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: The song becomes even darker this time around.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll see your flag on the marvel large.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: But listen, love, love is not some kind of victory Marge, No.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: It's cold.
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Maybe it's severa Brokale how Land, how Land.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: One night, Cohen is playing this version at the Beacon
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Ballroom in New York, and the musician John Cale happens
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: to be in the audience. Cayl is a legend, used
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to be in the Velvet Underground, a really pivotal figure
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: in the rock and roll a vant garde. He hears
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: this song come out of Cohen's mouth and he's blown away,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: so he asked Cohen to send in the lyrics. He
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: wants to do a version of it, so Coen factes
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: him fifteen pages. Who knows what the lyrics actually are.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: At this point, Cale says that for his version he
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: took the cheeky parts. He ends up using the first
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: two verses of the original combined with three verses from
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the live performance, and Cale changes some words. Most importantly,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: he changes the theme and brings back the biblical references
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: that Cohen had in the album version.
• 24:36
  Speaker 7: Maybe there's a God about all I ever love?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: From love?
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: How does shoot at someone?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Who?
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Are you?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: You?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And it's not a cry you can hear at night.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: It's not somebody you've seen the line.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: It's a call and answer for Alganillluia.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Hell Cale is really the one who cracks the code
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: of Hallelujah. According to Alan Knight, this cover version appears
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: on a Leonard Cohen tribute album put together by a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: French music magazine. It was called I'm Your Fan. Came
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: out in nineteen ninety one. Almost nobody bought I'm Your Fan,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: except weirdly me. I think I found it in a
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: remainder bin in a little record store on Columbia Road
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. Another person who bought I'm Your
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Fan was a woman named Janine who lived in Park
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Slope in Brooklyn. She was good friends with a young
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: aspiring singer named Jeff Buckley. He used to house sit
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: at her apartment, and one time, when Buckley's there, he
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: happens to see the CD of I'm Your Fan. He
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: plays it. He hears John Cale's version of Hollelujah and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: decides to do his own version of that version. He
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: performs it at a tiny little bar in the east
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: village called Cheney, where he happens to be heard by
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: an executive from Columbia Records. So Columbia Records ends up
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: signing Buckley and he records his version of Hollelujah for
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the album Grace, which ends up being Buckley's first and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: only studio album. It came out in nineteen ninety four.
• 26:15
  Speaker 9: Remember moved in you and the Holy Dove was moving too,
• 26:22
  Speaker 9: And every breathed Withdrew was Hallanluia.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Now I'm guessing that Buckley's version is the one you're
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: most familiar with. It's the famous one, the definitive one.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: It's not really a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: a cover of John Cayle's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: only with Cale's piano swapped out for a guitar, and
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of course Buckley swaps out Cale's voice for his own
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: extraordinary voice Hallelujah. All every subsequent cover, and there have
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: been hundreds, are really covers a Buckley covering Kale covering Cohen.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So the evolution finally stops. But wait, not really.
• 27:34
  Speaker 7: Buckley records a song in nineteen ninety four, still nobody
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: particularly pays attention to it. I mean again, in retrospect,
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: we think of Jeff Buckley as this very important figure
• 27:43
  Speaker 7: and this big influence on Radiohead and Coldplay, but nobody
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: bought Grace. Nobody bought Jeff's record. When it came out,
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: it peaked at number one hundred and sixty on the
• 27:52
  Speaker 7: charts or something. It was a huge disappointment after all
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: the hype around him, so that didn't make it a hit.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Buckley is this incredibly handsome man, looks almost ethereal like Jesus,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: with that incredible voice. But none of that is enough
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety seven, when something tragic happens. Buckley's in
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Memphis and he goes swimming in one of the channels
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of the Mississippi. He's wearing boots and all his clothing
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and singing the chorus of a Whole Lot of Love
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: by led Zeppelin, and he vanishes, never seen again. And
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: that tragedy suddenly propels his work and Hallelujah into the spotlight.
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: And it's really kind of you know, as you hit
• 28:31
  Speaker 7: the new century, that's when the snowball kind of starts.
• 28:35
  Speaker 7: The first few covers, the first few soundtrack placements. It's
• 28:38
  Speaker 7: fifteen years since Leonard recorded.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: This song, fifteen years and think about how many incredible
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: twists and turns that song takes before it gets recognized
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: as a work of genius. It just happens that the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: independent label Passport Records releases the first version. The album
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: it's on is rejected by CBS Records. Then Leonard Cohen
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't give up, keeps tinkering and performing new versions of Hallelujah.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: John Cale, one of the most influential musicians of his era,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: happens to hear Cohen doing that. He revises the song
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: some more. Cale's version goes out on the obscure French
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: CD I'm a Fan, which goes nowhere except Janine's living
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: room in Park Slope, and Janine happens to have a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: house sitter who happens to play it, happens to like it,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and happens to have an ethereal amazing voice. Buckley's version
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: goes nowhere until he happens to die under the most
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: dramatic and heartbreaking of circumstances. And then finally we recognize
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the genius of this song. But think about how fragile
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: and elusive that bit of genius is. If any of
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: those incredibly random things don't happen, you probably would never
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: have heard Hallelujah. I don't think this crazy chain of
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: happenstance matters so much with conceptual innovations. Paul Simon One says,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: A Bridge over Troubled Water one of the most beautiful
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: pop songs ever written. It came so fast, and when
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: it was done, I said, where did that come from?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like me. The song came out perfectly.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: You can evaluate it right away. It doesn't require fifteen
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: years worth of twists and turns and random events. The
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: world is really good at capturing conceptual creations, or at
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: least we don't miss as many conceptual works because they
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: don't require that the stars be perfectly aligned. But if
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: you're Seyson and the first version you produce is just
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a starting point and you never know exactly what you're
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: doing or why, or whether your work is finished or not,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the stars really do have to be aligned. Seyson was
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: his own worst enemy in a way. He threw up
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: barrier after barrier. He wasn't thinking of us when he
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: painted his paintings. That was really John Elderfield's point. The
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: art of the experimental innovator is elusive.
• 31:19
  Speaker 8: There are some of them which now are in museums
• 31:23
  Speaker 8: which we know he had tried to destroy. I mean,
• 31:26
  Speaker 8: and you can see in some of them the cases
• 31:29
  Speaker 8: of where he slashed the canvases.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Why would he destroy his own canvases?
• 31:33
  Speaker 8: You know, he had certain ideas about what he wanted
• 31:37
  Speaker 8: to do and felt he actually never was actually getting
• 31:40
  Speaker 8: to that point. There are other paintings done much later
• 31:44
  Speaker 8: where he simply abandons them. And Picassa said that, you
• 31:48
  Speaker 8: know what actually engages us is Saisan's doubt, his uncertainty.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: He's obsessive, you know, he's.
• 31:56
  Speaker 8: Absolutely just totally obsessive.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello Deportee in its original, flawed form. It comes
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty four, the same year, by the way,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that Hallelujah first came out, and I'm not sure that's
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a coincidence, because nineteen eighty four is a very particular
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: moment in pop music. The biggest album of that year
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: was Michael Jackson's thriller Pop Music Gloss to Perfection. There's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: not a single stray note or emotion on that record.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: It's the antithesis of songs like Hallelujah or Deportee. Along
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: comes Costello. He wants to make an album in the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: midst of that cultural moment, and he's not interested in
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: glossy perfection. His marriage is breaking up, he's having financial difficulties.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: He says later that Langer and Winstanley were ill equipped
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: for dealing with someone of my temperament at that time.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: A nurse with a large sedative syringe might have been
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: more appropriate. Costello writes a series of dark, emotional, bitter songs,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: gritty and spare, to match his moods. Something not nineteen
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: eighty four. Meanwhile, Langer and Winstanley had been brought on
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: board to produce Hits, polished exquisite.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Every little bit was pondered over and you know, thought
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: about and put together very carefully. I mean, you had
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: bands like Scrittly Polity at that time, you know, spending
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: nine months on a song, and Trevor Horn spending four
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: weeks on the snare sound for Two Tribes.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Two Tribes was an album by a hugely popular band
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: called Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and they spent a month
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: just getting a particular drum sound.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Right, So we weren't that pendictte but we were dealing
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: with a world that was, you know, perfection. It was
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: we were trying to make pop perfection.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: You can imagine what happened when that world collides with
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Elvis Costello, and some of it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: Just sounded like I mean, even the band were kind
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: of not very excited by some of the material. So
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: it wasn't a great experience. But we did it very quickly,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: but just quickly. Mean in the time it took Trevor
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: On to get a Slayer down to two tribes, so
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: it's about three or four weeks.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole album, it was a mess perfectionism in
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: a hurry. That's how you get to the bitter words. Congratulations,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you've just bought my worst album. Goodbye Cruel World is
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: not good. It's unlistenable, But it's what happens next that matters.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: You Know how people always say, put your failures behind you,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: get on with your life, never look back. Alvis Costello
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: does none of those things, because he says on he's
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: not Picasso. He carries around a little black book where
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: he writes draft after draft after draft of the songs
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: he's thinking about. He changes lines in the middle of
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: songs he's already recorded. He re arranges songs at different
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: tempos or in different time signatures. He cannibalizes his own work,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: creating new songs out of old songs. And I don't
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: know where to start or where to stop. He doesn't
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: want to. S sign is named to the painting. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: thank god there are people like him and Saizon in
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: this world, because without the obsessives and the perpetually dissatisfied,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: and the artists who go back over and over again
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: repainting what others see as finished, we would never have
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: seen the beauty of deportee.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: And you don't know weirdest stopped, all wed stop, All
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: this pillow talk is nothing.
• 35:39
  Speaker 6: Marve then.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Fine talk.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: In shop down when ack.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: you've heard, do us a favor and rate us on iTunes.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: You can get more information about this and other episodes
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: at Revisionististory dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Our show is produced by mea LaBelle, Roxanne Scott, and
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flaonon Williams is our
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: engineer and our fact checker is Michelle Siraka. The Panoply
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: management team is Laura Mayor, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weissberg.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glad Party, Party,