Song:Hallelujah
Album:Fragments Of A Rainy Season
Of course Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is now considered a classic mostly because of the late Jeff Buckley's cover version. But legendary Welsh musician John Cale was the first to cover the song on a Cohen tribute CD and he now closes his show with it. Of course Cale is best known for his days with 60s group The Velvet Underground but there's more to him than that. He was born Mar. 9, 1942 in Garnant, Wales. He performed on the BBC as a teen and then went to the US on a music scholarship. He formed The Velvet Underground with Lou Reed & Sterling Morrison and of course they were a very influential band. Cale left in 1968 over a power struggle with Reed. He's been recording as a solo artist ever since. Cale recorded Hallelujah for the 1991 Leonard Cohen tribute CD I'm Your Fan. He added it to his live repertoire and is on this 1992 live CD which is also available on DVD. Cale's version is on the soundtrack of Basqiat, Shrek and the TV series Scrubs. Nothing wrong with Buckley's version of the song but he based it on Cale's version of Hallelujah. John Cale's most recent CD Circus Live was released in 2007. Here's John Cale performing Hallelujah 1992.
John Cale's version, besides being the template for Jeff Buckley, sounds a lot more genuine.
ReplyDeleteBuckley's arch emoting makes his version hard to suffer through.
As usual, American Idol is to blame. When Jason Castro performed Hallelujah a couple of years ago, he credited it to Buckley. I'm sure he's never heard Cale's version. The rest is history.
ReplyDelete