Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah – A New Biography
by Tim Footman
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Chrome Dreams
Why does it feel like books on musicians are so insistently amateurish? Authors get stately, insightful tributes handled with gravity and professionalism. Musicians, it seems, are usually stuck with dashed-off, over-dramatic, under-researched tributes, lying like hidden traps to snatch up hungry fans.
Hallelujah, the 11th bio on Cohen (entering a crowded, largely out-of-print field) doesn’t present most of these faults, but aesthetically bears the same marks of that half-assed school of music biography. Clunky paper stock, bad cover art, unattractive formatting – it feels like the kind of self-penned book assigned by college professors, and reads like one too. In this case that doesn’t much impair the reading experience, although Tim Footman’s tone is uneven, varying between overly analytical and the too casual. The casual parts are the nicest ones, welcoming and usually interesting, although they generally achieve little more than biographical summation.
Bigger problems come into play when the author gets serious, shifting from story-telling mode to opinionated pontificating. He speaks to us as if we were both Cohen fanatics and absolute know-nothings, granting inclusion into a fan club while also providing unneeded basic information.
This comes less in the form of biographical fluff than commentaries on the songs themselves. Told in a loosely chronological order, Hallelujah uses the release of each new album as an excuse to delve into critical specifics, specifying what’s wrong with the production and style, the problems with song craft and tone. Never mind that some of us have opinions on this stuff already, this kind of pedantic flexing feels mostly useless and excessive, especially for an enigmatic artist whose personal life could benefit from some more cutting examination.
Aside from this, Hallelujah, warts and tangents and all, is not a bad read. The appendix on the unlikely popularity of the song of the same name, which has grown more and more out of control away from Cohen’s hands, is overlong, but provides interesting insight on its success. Sections on his younger life, his enfant terrible career as a poet, his unrealized potential, his brief bohemian flirtations on a Greek island, are the most interesting, and also the most skimmed over.
The same can be said for the musician’s actual life. We learn that “Famous Blue Raincoat” was inspired by an incident years earlier, when Cohen splurged on an expensive Burberry impermeable while living in London. But no hint to why this coat was especially important. There’s a brief glimpse into the I’m Your Man recording sessions, including a mad Phil Spector (uttering “I love you, Leonard” as he places a magnum to the singer’s forehead) and brief appearances from Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, but not enough make the episode feel remotely satisfying. If Footman had chosen to zoom in one aspect of Cohen in the way he does in the “Hallelujah” appendix, the book might have been more successful. But he feels short on facts throughout, which may be why he so often veers into unnecessary judgment.
Judging by the ephemeral nature of this kind of fan-inclined biography, it’s hard to tell exactly where this book ranks, although that same classification suggests that it hardly matters. As it stands, Hallelujah is a fitfully fascinating, capably written, often frustrating examination of the artist, illuminating without revealing very much.
