A word on this whole "Hallelujah" nonsense. I was privileged to meet Jeff Buckley. By most other accounts, and certainly in my experience, he was at ease with people who liked his music, and wanted to share the music he liked with others. In the course of a five minute conversation with him, he recommended three bands he thought I might like, from the wildly obscure to the very popular. He obviously took great delight in interpreting other people’s songs, and I don’t think he would have condemned the interpretations of others, however they may have reached the public consciousness. The comparisons of worth between the Leonard Cohen original and his own would have been pretty dull to him, I think- he just wanted to get on to the next song, or the next voice, that entranced and inspired him. If more people are inclined to seek out, say, his version of “Satisfied Mind”, or “The Way Young Lovers Do”, or “Corpus Christi Carol”, because of The X-Factor, then so much the better. There is no innate worth in music. It’s just another thing that we share with each other- another way to relate.
