Sony Pictures Classics to release HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on July 1, 2022 before expanding to additional markets.
By Harvey Kubernik
Sony Pictures Classics has just announced a Leonard Cohen Tribute Performance will take place after the New York premiere screening of HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song at the Tribeca Festival. Judy Collins, Sharon Robinson, Amanda Shires and Daniel Seavey will perform. Performance to follow the film premiere at the Beacon in New York City on Sunday, June 12th.
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Songis a definitive exploration of poet-author-singer- songwriter Leonard Cohen as seen through the prism of his internationally renowned hymn, “Hallelujah.”
This feature-length documentary weaves together three creative strands: The songwriter and his times; the song’s dramatic journey from record label reject to chart-topping hit; and moving testimonies from major recording artists for whom “Hallelujah” has become a personal touchstone.
Approved for production by Leonard Cohen just before his 80th birthday in 2014, the film accesses a wealth of never-before-seen archival materials from the Cohen Trust including Cohen’s personal notebooks, journals and photographs, performance footage, and extremely rare audio recordings and interviews.
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine. Produced by Dayna Goldfine, p.g.a. Dan Geller, p.g.a. Executive Producers Jonathan Dana, Morgan Neville, Robert Kory, Michael Drews, and Robin Sagon. Consulting Producers Alan Light and Celeste Schaefer Snyder. Featuring interviews with Judy Collins, Clive Davis, Brandi Carlile, Rufus Wainwright, Eric Church, Hal Willner, John Lissauer, Dominique Issermann, Regina Spektor, Amanda Palmer, Glen Hansard, Larry “Ratso” Sloman and many more.
Producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine in media materials supplied by publicists supplied a Directors’ Statement.
“There is a religious Hallelujah, but there are many other ones. When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's Hallelujah. That's the way it is.” — Leonard Cohen.
“This project began as a very specific exploration of “Hallelujah” and its international impact — whether to entertain (like the audiences who flocked to Shrek), commemorate life’s important moments at weddings and funerals, or to serve as a communal healing, like the song’s use during the Covid-19 memorial service on the eve of the January 2021 Presidential inauguration.
“When we took up our camera and microphone, it was originally to look at the song through the eyes of interviewees who had been involved with recording it (producer and arranger John Lissauer); singing it with Leonard Cohen himself (Sharon Robinson); or covering it on their own (Judy Collins, Brandi Carlile, Rufus Wainwright). While those initial interviews proved we were on to an entertaining and captivating story, they also illuminated something deeper about the song itself and especially about the man who wrote it.
“We found ourselves needing to expand the film’s reach to include many of Leonard’s intimates — those who served as his emotional and spiritual counselors (Rabbi Mordecai Finley; Nancy Bacal, his childhood friend of nearly 80 years; his longtime girlfriend Dominique Issermann), as well as his intellectual sparring partners (Adrienne Clarkson; music writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman).
“These people, along with many others, speak in depth and with firsthand knowledge about Cohen’s lifelong focus on the purpose and sanctity of the human condition. Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song gives voice to the deepest questions about faith, belief, skepticism and the psychological and religious constructs that serve to both support and obstruct us throughout our lives — or as Leonard Cohen would call it, “the broken Hallelujah.”
In addition, the anthology, Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah & Songs from His Albums, will be available digitally this June, and coming this fall on CD and limited-edition translucent blue vinyl (2LP). Comprised of 17 tracks from Cohen’s expansive career, the album features an unreleased and unforgettable live performance of “Hallelujah” from the 2008 Glastonbury Festival.
I first heard Leonard Cohen’s voice late one night in January 1968 on the “underground” FM radio station KPPC-FM (106.7) broadcasting from a church in Pasadena, California. My transistor radio in West Hollywood could pick up the faint signal, especially after the midnight hour. The deejay, probably B. Mitchell Reed or Charles Laquidara, back-announced “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen from Canada, a “poet who has just cut his debut LP for Columbia Records.” And then he proceeded to recite the matrix number, as jazz and classical deejays in town used to do, and spun the entire album. It was sort of scary, a dirge-like grumble sequenced between the blue-sky harmonies of Magical Mystery Tour and the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday.
“Suzanne” was a poem before a group in 1966 called the Stormy Clovers performed it and then it was recorded by Judy Collins on her 1966 album In My Life. In 1967, actor/singer/television host Noel Harrison cut the song on the Reprise record label and it cracked the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His version reached number five on the hallowed CHUM Hit Parade radio survey in Canada.
How could I have imagined years later I would attend an Allen Ginsberg poetry reading with Leonard, sit across from him at Canter’s Delicatessen in West Hollywood, that over the course of my journalistic career I’d interview him by phone, while sitting at his kitchen table; that I would talk to the players and engineer of that first album, or shake hands with the fabled Columbia Records executive John Hammond, who signed him to the label? Or that I would be at Cohen recording sessions food running, and providing hand claps and percussion on a couple of tracks on his Death of a Ladies Man collaboration with producer Phil Spector at Gold Star recording studio in Hollywood?
In a 1978 interview for Phonograph Record Magazine around the release of the Spector/Cohen Death of a Ladies Man, Leonard and I discussed his album in a house I seem to remember was in Brentwood, California. Lost love, personal chaos, doubt, romantic dilemma, alienation and lust are present in strong force. "And don't forget humor," Cohen added. He further stressed, "I worship women," and suspects that, "Everybody will now know that within this serene Buddhist interior, there beats an adolescent heart.
“Working with Phil, I've found that some of his musical treatments are very...foreign to me. I mean, I've rarely worked in a live room that contains 25 musicians – including two drummers, three bassists, and six guitars.
"This is the most autobiographical album of my career. The words are in a tender, rather than a harsh setting, but there's still a lot of bitterness, negativity, and disappointment in them. I wish at times there was a little more space for the personality of the story-teller to emerge, but, in general, the tone of the album is very overt, totally open.”
In our 1978 dialogue, Leonard talked about Los Angeles. He was starting to find his regional nosh spots and markets that stocked humus, feta cheese and fresh challah. A native of Montreal, who has spent much of his time in recent years in the South of France and in other European hideaways, he recently moved to Southern California himself. "I like it. It's so desperate here that it's really not bad at all. And, besides, this is the only city in the world where I've ever written a song while sitting in a driveway in a parked car."
I was invited into both of Cohen’s homes in Southern California during 1978-2000, and we shared a few meals together.
The last visual I have of Leonard was in 2014, looking like a cross between Dustin Hoffman and John Cassavetes, was sticking his right hand across a table at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax Ave. and offering a long and firm grip. I turned to SiriusXM deejay Rodney Bingenheimer who mused, "We recorded on one of his albums...'' I then devoured a plate of dill pickles as Leonard cashed out at the register.
Leonard would plotz if he knew another one of his favorite restaurants, Greenblatt’s Delicatessen on Sunset Blvd., closed in 2022.
My 2014 book, Leonard Cohen Everybody Knows, has been printed in six foreign language editions.
Long before the commercial renaissance and media worship of Leonard Cohen started, I was ground floor on his literary and musical expedition. Numerous books on Cohen this century have utilized my 1974, 1976, and 1978 catalog interviews with permission.
On November 7, 2016 when Leonard Cohen waived a physical goodbye at age 82, just after the release of his 14th album, the uncompromising and urgent You Want It Darker, I was invited on December 2016 to guest deejay on Los Angeles radio station The Sound 100.3 FM Classic Rock KWSD My Turn program. KWSD is Southern California’s classic rock station with over 1.3 million listeners. The broadcast aired in January 2017. The studio overlooked the street in the mid-Wilshire district area where Leonard lived in a duplex. I dedicated “Hallelujah” to him.
In 2021 I was asked to provide a back cover endorsement for author Michael Posner's Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories; The Early Years, published by Simon and Schuster.
Like Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan before him, Leonard Cohen in 1967 was about to join John Hammond at Columbia Records, who received the approval from new label head Clive Davis to sign him to a recording agreement.
In May, Songs of Leonard Cohen began in Studio E. on East Fifty-Second Street with Hammond himself at the helm. He brought with him the noted jazz bassist, Willie Ruff, a veteran of stints with Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie, to provide ballast to Cohen’s twitchy guitar musings. Jimmy Lovelace is the drummer on “So Long, Marianne.”
‘John Hammond, (also a class act), would schedule a session then cancel and reschedule a month late – which drove Leonard crazy, staying at the Chelsea Hotel,” emailed Columbia staff producer John Simon. “So, they assigned him to me. We went to my folks’ house in Connecticut (they were away), to go over material. Leonard stayed up all night going through my dad’s library. I slept. He didn’t. He was a man, while the other rock acts I worked with were boys. He was an established poet. Real bright and clever with words. And he had that finger-picking triplet style that was very impressive. Sort of a classical technique.
“I’m proud of the experimentation I did use wordless women’s voices instead of instruments, mostly Nancy Priddy, my girlfriend at the time. About the chorus in ‘So Long, Marianne,’ I guess it was the logical step to try adding words after we’d done the wordless thing. I’m an arranger not an engineer.
“The engineer, Fred Catero, with an A – a wonderful guy. I mixed my first hit with Fred, the Cyrkle’s ‘Red Rubber Ball.’ Then, Fred, talented as he was, moved up to being a recording engineer. Smoked a long-stem pipe at times, walked to work in the New York winter in a tee shirt.”
“We did the Cohen session in Columbia’s smallest studio,” Catero told me in a 2013 interview.
“Maybe 20 X 40 at the most. I came into the room. Incense or candles were burning. Nobody was there. Just a chair and a huge mirror in the corner of the room. A stand up dressing room mirror. 5 feet by three feet. ‘What is this about?’
“We’re waiting and finally Leonard comes in with his guitar. We were introduced by Hammond. I go into the studio. Two Neumann mikes. One for the guitar which I aimed at an angle down, so it’s not picking up too much voice, and then the vocal mike, not in front of him, almost where the same mike is for the guitar is facing upward. ‘Cause they tend to look down anyway as they play.
“I’m adjusting the mike, and Leonard is very quiet and then said in a quiet voice. ‘See that mirror?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I want it in front of me.’ ‘OK. What’s the mirror for?’ ‘Well, let me tell you.’ He leans forward and whispers, ‘When I’m playing sometimes I get lost in my music. And then a line to recite will come and all I do is look up and see where I am.’ I’ll never forget that.”
On October 27th, near the end of his recording sessions, Leonard Cohen headed over to Steve Paul’s The Scene at 301 W. 46th Street in New York to monitor Nico who was headlining, promoting her new album, Chelsea Girls. Opening was the West Coast-based, Kaleidoscope, making their New York debut.
The Scene was a very trendy hang out below street level, basement club that gave a Parisian, Left Bank vibe to the place,” Kaleidoscope member Chris Darrow explained to me in a 1998 interview.
“The host for the club was Tiny Tim, who announced all the acts and would play a song or two as well. We were opening for Nico, who I had met in LA, and she was playing as a solo act…. just her and a Hammond B3 organ. “The opening night was very crowded and Frank Zappa and members of the Mothers of Invention showed up to show their support. There were very few west coast groups that had played in the east yet, and we ‘long haired hippies’ were the antithesis of the New York vibe at the time. During the week I had a chance to get close to Tiny Tim, who I liked very much.
“That night Leonard Cohen came up to me in the bar light. He was the palest guy I had ever seen he almost seemed to glow. He was wearing a black leather suit coat and carrying a black leather briefcase. He loved our band and was wondering if we would be interested in playing on his forthcoming album. I didn’t know who he was at the time and told him to talk with our managers who were at the bar.
“The next day, Solomon Feldhouse, David Lindley, Chester Crill, and I were in his apartment, trying to play some of his songs. He was having trouble finding musicians that could play his stuff. Since he wasn’t a great guitar player. His guitar playing was minimal at best it was hard for some people to figure his music out.
“Cohen gave us the impression that he was having trouble finding the right sounds for a few of his compositions. He seemed happy when we were able to come up with some solutions to his musical needs.
“The producer Bob Johnston was there. I ended up playing my rare, 1950’s Premier Bass and my 1921, Gibson F-4 mandolin on ‘So Long, Marianne’ and bass on ‘Teachers.’ The slow build of ‘So Long, Marianne’ is one of the secrets of its success and, at 5:39 seconds long, it has a hypnotic, repetitive groove that sustains itself through the entire song. The twin, acoustic guitars, playing two separate time signatures, creates a smooth bed for the lyrics to lie on. The mandolin part comes in at just over 3 minutes and knocks the song up a notch and adds a different tonality that is not expected. The memorable chorus gets slightly more powerful each time it repeats and brings the song all together at the climax.
“‘Teachers’ is a darker, minor key song, that uses one of Solomon’s middle eastern instruments, the Caz, and Chester and David’s twin fiddles, to give it a very exotic, international flavor. Once again, the there is a rather insistent rhythmic feel to the song, which counters perfectly with the ethnic sounds.
“There were no credits on the ensuing record, so not many people are aware of our inclusion in it. We were on Epic Records, a division of Columbia, so I could never figure out why we weren’t listed.”
“In 2013 I hadn’t seen Leonard Cohen since the recording session thirty-five years earlier,” marveled my dear pal Chris in 2002. “Then one day I spotted him in downtown Claremont at a local Greek restaurant called Yiannis. I said, ‘Remember me? He graciously replied, ‘Of course I do. You guys saved my album.’”
Grateful for their instrumental input, Cohen recorded in his journal of the time. “The Kaleidoscope delivered me...May I bless them as they have blessed me.”
(Additional Kaleidoscope and Cohen pairings are “Sisters of Mercy,” “Winter Lady” and “The Stranger Song,” and were all later heard in director Robert Altman’s film, McCabe and Mrs. Miller).
In one of our Melody Maker interviews, Cohen revealed the back story about his songs later surfacing in Altman’s movie.
“Robert Altman actually built the film around my music. The music was already written, and when he heard it, he wanted to ask me to let him use it. I was in Nashville at the time and had just gone to the movies to see a film called. Brewster McCloud.
"I thought it was a fine movie. That night I was in the studio and received a call from Hollywood. It was from Bob Altman saying he would like to use my music in a film. Quite honestly, I said, 'I don't know your work, could you tell me some of the films you've done?' He said MASH, and I said that's fine, I understand that's quite popular, but I'm really not familiar with it. Then he said there was a film I've probably never seen called Brewster McCloud. I told him I just came out of the movie and thought it was an extraordinary film, use any music of mine.”
From mid-May to the end of November in 1967, Cohen had done 25 tunes with Hammond and John Simon and some sessions with Bob Johnston in three Columbia studio rooms.
"My first producer was John Hammond and I didn't know the ropes at all,” admitted Leonard in our 1976 interview. “We recorded some numbers, and then his wife got sick and he became ill. Then I switched producers to John Simon, whom John Hammond suggested.
“I put the tracks down with guitar and voice, and used a bass sometimes. Simon took them and worked on them, and he presented me with the finished record, but I felt there were some eccentricities in his arrangements that I objected to. John Simon was great, and much greater than I understood at the time.”
“In June of 1968, Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins were standing with Leonard on a Saturday afternoon at Doug Weston’s Troubadour club in West Hollywood,” reminisced songwriter/music publisher/recording producer Kim Fowley to me in a 2013 interview.
“Hedge and Donna, who worked with my friend producer Nik Venet at Capitol Records were on the bill. I walked by The Troubadour and there was Leonard Cohen looking out the back window down at the back alley where I was. He was with two girls. Leonard didn’t know me who I was. He looked like a guy who was a gigolo from the south of France.
“I knew about him from the music trade magazine ads, ‘Suzanne’ and his new Columbia LP, ‘cause my friend Chris Darrow and the Kaleidoscope guys had played on it. And Chris touted it Leonard Cohen to us around our recording sessions and the LA love-ins in Elysian Park.
“And I suggested when I saw him glancing down from a window at me next to Doheny Drive, ‘Leonard. Let’s have a poetry duel.’ And he said, ‘OK.’ And they started giggling. Judy and Joni looked like their covers,” suggested Kim.
“So, we slung some words back and forth and I got him on cabbage. He could not come up with anything to rhyme with the word cabbage,” boasted Fowley. “They all laughed, tightly held on to him, shut the window. I thought I could get on the guest list that night,” lamented Kim. “But I did notice his impact on women.”
I was on the UCLA campus in Westwood, California when Leonard Cohen appeared in 1970 at Royce Hall. Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was one of Cohen’s singers that evening.
I later attended a 1974 spell-binding Cohen date in downtown Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He must have done four encores. Leonard turned to the musicians, grabbed a book from his pocket and started to read poetry while the band vamped behind him. I hadn’t seen anything like that since a Doors’ concert in November of 1968 at the Inglewood Forum when Jim Morrison stopped the action, in front of 17, 505 fans, asking an audience member for a cigarette and proceeded to preview passages from his upcoming The Lords and New Creatures poetry book.
I was rather stunned when Cohen invited everyone in the audience backstage to say hello. I introduced myself to Leonard in a hall way, “can we do an interview the next time you play L.A? I’m trying to be a music journalist and I have to pay the rent.” He responded, “That would be fine my friend.”
In December 1974, a Columbia Records publicist arranged an interview with Leonard at the Continental Hyatt House in West Hollywood. Cohen was in the midst of a multi-night engagement at Doug Weston’s Troubadour in West Hollywood. One evening I was there with Justin Pierce and Sharon Weiss, later to become Leonard’s publicist during 1988-1993. Bob Dylan and Phil Spector sat at a table next to us. Paul Body was the doorman and Robert Marchese managed the venue.
The following afternoon I conducted my first interview with Leonard Cohen for Melody Maker.
"In the early days I was trained as a poet by reading in English, poets like Lorca and Brecht, and by the invigorating exchange between other writers in Montreal at the time,” underscored Leonard.
“My tunes often deal with a moral crisis. I often feel myself a part of such a crisis and try to relate it in song. There's a line in a poem I wrote that sums this up perfectly: 'My betrayals are so fresh they still come with explanations.' As far as the use of Biblical characters in such tunes as 'Story Of Isaac,' and 'Joan Of Arc,' it was not a matter of choice. These are the books that were placed in my hand when I was developing my literary tastes."
“I don’t have any reservations about anything I do. I always played music,” Cohen reminded me. “When I was seventeen, I was in a country music group called the Buckskin Boys. Writing came later, after music. I put my guitar away for a few years, but I always made up songs. I never wanted my work to get too far away from music. Ezra Pound said something very interesting in ABC of Reading. ‘When poetry strays too far from music, it atrophies. When music strays too far from the dance it atrophies.”
During the very early eighties I went to a couple of recording sessions Leonard did with engineer and producer Henry Lewy at Kitchen Sync studios in Hollywood who had worked with Leonard on Recent Songs. I was producing sessions in an adjacent room with Daniel Weizmann, Harry E. Northup, Ray Manzarek and Chris Darrow. A former Southern California deejay, Lewy was impressed when I mentioned his jazz program on KNOB-FM, The Housewive’s Helper in the early sixties and not his work with Joni Mitchell. Lewy nodded and Cohen smiled. We ate at Café Figaro on Santa Monica Blvd.
Sometime in the eighties, I saw Leonard one night at Canter’s Delicatessen. We were both ordering some food to go at the counter. A newly shorn Cohen volunteered he was going into retreat at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center 60 miles away from Los Angeles. Why? “I shaved my head for a woman.”
This response is from the same mensch who once advised Justin Pierce and I in a 1974 limo ride with him to the Canadian Embassy when he was renewing his passport in Los Angeles when I asked advice at age twenty-two about going steady with a girl,” and his cautious slow answer was, “relationships are complicated.”
I’ve always felt the secret sauce glue of Cohen’s tune “Hallelujah,” both in demo form and in its initial recording, can be traced to musician and multi-instrumentalist/arranger John Lissauer, who was very involved in Cohen’s 1974 album New Skin For The Old Ceremony.
In 1984 Leonard reached out to Lissauer again and they collaborated together on songs that were featured on Leonard’s next album, Various Positions, which housed the very first retail offering of “Hallelujah.”
I first encountered John Lissauer at the Cohen ’74 Troubadour shows. In 2013 I interviewed Lissauer. Portions of our dialogue were published in Leonard Cohen Everybody Knows.
I’ve always felt Lissauer has been overlooked for his essential contributions to the Cohen copyright which has been sung by countless artists and now further immortalized by this 2022 film, HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.
Lissauer and I discussed the origins of “Hallelujah.”
‘‘At the time I heard ‘Hallelujah’ it was still in the formative stage. It was early. And this whole thing about it taking four years to write. I don’t think that’s true. I heard it when it had four verses and he hadn’t finished the song yet. In fact, I helped him with the chords and the structure of the song. It was somewhat collaborative but not officially. And I never really pushed for that. And I played it on the piano, and he said, ‘Oh. I love that feel.’ So, I changed it from his little 6/8 way into what it became on that record.
“Leonard is older and his voice is getting lower and lower. In fact, the key on ‘Hallelujah’ was scary. If you listen to that recording of it, it’s down in the depths. And it’s startling.
“I find him a studio, Quadrasonic in Midtown. I put the band together. And I brought in Anjani Thomas. So, Leonard and I sit around the studio and he plays me what becomes the beginnings of ‘Hallelujah.’
“When we first started to record ‘Hallelujah,’ it wasn’t, ‘Oh boy. This is gonna be this.’ It was really good and it was gonna be really powerful. We were building it as we went. And it wasn’t until we were three-quarters through that we all said, ‘Holy mackerel. This is a cornerstone song.’
“I said to Leonard at the time, ‘This is the one. This is what we’ve been waiting for. This might be your best record, Leonard. Between ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love,’ ‘If It Be Your Will,’ and ‘Hallelujah.’ This is gonna break through and touch people in this country.’
“It even had a ‘those were the days’ kind of quality. And I worked at making that an anthemic song-along. And it worked great.’’
“Hallelujah” also had a prayer-like quality. Apparently, Columbia Records heard only the pain and none of the joy that Leonard and his producer identified. The imperious head of the label, Walter Yetnikoff, hated the album.
‘We brought it up to Walter Yetnikoff,” recalled Lissauer. “Leonard and Marty Machat [Cohen’s lawyer/manager] went up there and played the album for him. I was there but not sitting in the room. I was waiting and expecting Yetnikoff to say this was exactly what Columbia wanted. And instead he just says, ‘It’s terrible. It’s un-releasable. I don’t know what this is.’
“I assume that this album is dead. And I really think I’ve ruined this guy,” Lissauer underlined.
The album was licensed domestically to the independent label Passport Records and sank without a trace. CBS affiliates in Europe had some success with it. Leonard hit the road again; playing live would be its own reward.
Many years later, the music would catch up with Leonard and his most devoted listeners. Hidden on side two of Various Positions was a minor miracle; the song “Hallelujah,” would in time, become an essential part of the cultural landscape, a new standard embraced by singers in every genre, a hymn for the post-secular world in search of deliverance.
In December 2008, three versions of Leonard’s composition “Hallelujah” occupied the UK singles charts simultaneously; Jeff Buckley and Alexandra Burke in the top two spots, and Mr. Leonard Cohen himself at number thirty-six.
My brother, Kenneth Kubernik, a musician and author, in Leonard Cohen Everybody Knows reflected on the amazing journey of “Hallelujah.”
“John Lissauer recognized its ecclesiastical undercurrent that begged for development; soon Lissauer had transformed it into an agnostic cri de coeur which has catalyzed generations and genders. ‘Hallelujah’ by the early 2000s had become the alt-anthem, covered by hundreds of artists, most notably k.d. lang and Jeff Buckley.
“For all his nods and wonks at self-deprecation, Leonard had written a signature statement as bold, beguiling, timeless as any lonesome daydream penned by his early hero Hank Williams.’’
During my 2013 interview with Lissauer, we revisited the global impact of “Hallelujah.”
“The song has a life of its own. A lot of time it’s in the other artists’ performances of it. That’s just magic stuff. You can’t plan it. Buckley’s is great, k.d. lang’s. too. I’ve heard some that are silly by a couple of tenors. I’ve heard some gospel versions that didn’t do it for me. R&B tinged. How much soul can we put in this? But you know, there’s a lot of loneliness to it. Someone just sent me some simple folkie versions, which are beautiful.
“When Leonard was doing his first Madison Square Garden thing in New York about five or six years ago, I went along with some friends and my new wife Lillian. On the speaker system of Grand Central Station and Madison Square Garden, they’re playing my recording of ‘Hallelujah’ on a loop. It’s the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. So, we’re standing there and everyone is transfixed. Looking up at the speakers and crying and applauding. And I’m just standing there. Just a guy hearing this achievement that was unknown forever. And it was really quite something. That was almost worth the price of admission.
“One of the reasons for his popularity and worldwide audience that continues to expand,” emphasized Lissauer in our 2013 conversation. “Leonard is the most committed performer and artist. I mean, he’s the most serious and sincere. He never loses concentration. He takes responsibility for his stuff. And he’s only gotten more generous and more complete. And now, he’s letting the full Cohen out. Before it used to be a bit of the dark side only. Now, as he says, he’s letting the light shine through. And the humor, and the humanity and the twinkle is still there. It is much more complete.
“And it is less planned and more spontaneous than ever before. His body of work is ridiculous, you know. It really is. Leonard is one of those artists you knew who was brilliant but just didn’t catch on in a big way.”
Following the Sunday, June 12th debut screening of HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song at the Tribeca Festival, Judy Collins, Sharon Robinson, Amanda Shires and Daniel Seavey will perform at the Beacon in New York City.
Judy Collins is an award-winning singer-songwriter whose career has spanned six decades with countless hits. Her stunning rendition of Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” from her landmark 1967 album, Wildflowers, has been entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Judy’s dreamy and sweetly intimate version of “Send in the Clowns,” a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, won "Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards. Story goes that in 1966 Leonard Cohen made a special trip to Judy’s apartment to play her his song, “Suzanne,” and, while there, asked her why she wasn’t writing her own songs. Her response was to sit down at her Steinway that very day and write, “Since You’ve Asked.” Judy has been writing ever since then. Spellbound, her 55th album, was released in February 2022. It marks the first time ever she wrote all the songs on one of her albums.
Sharon Robinson is a Grammy-winning songwriter, singer and record producer. While she is best known as a frequent writing partner with Leonard Cohen, she has also written songs for a number of chart-topping artists, including The Pointer Sisters, Aaron Neville, Brenda Russell, Diana Ross, Don Henley, Michael Bolton, Randy Crawford, Patti LaBelle, Roberta Flack, The Temptations, and others. Introduced to Leonard Cohen by Jennifer Warnes, Sharon first toured and wrote songs with Cohen in 1979, and years later joined the touring company as a background singer and soloist, for an extensive last world tour, doing performances for millions of fans around the world.
A truly singular creative force, Grammy Award-winning singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Amanda Shiresis the founder of the supergroup The Highwomen featuring Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, and Brandi Carlile; a member of Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit. Solo she has released a series of critically acclaimed solo albums, collaborated with the likes of John Prine and Justin Townes Earle, toured with such acts as Todd Snider, and earned the 2017 Emerging Artist of the Year prize from the Americana Music Association (AMA). Shires also made waves with her standalone single “The Problem,” a powerfully empathetic song about a woman’s right to choose. In 2017, Shires paid tribute to Leonard Cohen with a cover of “I’m Your Man.”
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, and producer Daniel Seavey made his national debut in 2015 performing his rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” on the 14th season of American Idol. Since then, the 23-year-old singer-songwriter and producer has amassed millions of fans worldwide as one fifth of the Los Angeles based band Why Don’t We, garnering over 3 billion global career streams, over 930 million YouTube views, 7 million Instagram followers, two RIAA Platinum-certified singles, five RIAA Gold-certified singles. two Top 20 singles at Pop radio, and two Top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart.
(Longtime Cohen head Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows published in 2014 and Neil Young Heart of Gold during 2015. Kubernik also authored 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In2021 the duo collaborated on Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters, featuring interviews with D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Albert Maysles, Murray Lerner, Heather Harris, Steve Binder, Morgan Neville, David Leaf, Dick Clark, Curtis Hanson and Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
In 2004 Harvey wrote Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and on Your Screen published by the University of New Mexico Press that spotlighted Andrew Loog Oldham, Ice Cube, Paul Thomas Anderson, Melvin Van Peebles and Steven Van Zandt.
.
Kubernik’s writings are in several book anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. Harvey penned liner note booklets to the CD releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.
In 2020, Harvey served as a consultant on the 2-part documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time directed by Alison Ellwood that debuted on the M-G-M/EPIX cable television channel.
During December 2021, Kubernik was an interview subject and a consultant on a documentary, The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, produced at Varsity Stadium September 13, 1969 in Canada, featuring the debut of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. Klaus Voorman, Geddy Lee of Rush, Alice Cooper, Shep Gordon, Rodney Bingenheimer, promoter John Brower, and Robby Krieger of the Doors were filmed by director Ron Chapman. Pennebaker Hegedus Films is exec producing. It’s scheduled for a late spring 2022 theatrical release.
In summer of 2019, Harvey was interviewed by director Matt O’Casey for his BBC4-TV digital arts channel Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird. Cast: Christine McVie, Stan Webb of Chicken Shack, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Christine’s family members, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Mike Campbell, Neil Finn, and producer Richard Dashut.
Kubernik was interviewed for the BBC-TV documentary on Bobby Womack, Across 110th Street, directed by James Meycock. It spotlighted Bobby Womack, Ronnie Wood, Damon Albarn of Blur and the Gorillaz, Regina Womack, and Antonio Vargas.
Harvey served as Consulting Producer on the 2010 singer-songwriter documentary, Troubadours directed by Morgan Neville. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in the documentary film category and screened on PBS-TV in their American Masters series.
Kubernik appears in director Matthew O’Casey’s 2012 Queen at 40 documentary on BBC Television and released as a DVD Queen: Days Of Our Lives in 2014 via Eagle Rock Entertainment.)
