0:15

Pushkin. In

0:19

nineteen eighty four, Alvis Costello

0:21

released his ninth album, Goodbye

0:23

Cruel World. I bought it the week

0:25

it came out, because I bought every Alvis Costello

0:28

album back then the week it came out. There's

0:30

a theory in psychology the music

0:32

you listen to at ages nineteen and twenty

0:34

is the music that imprints itself most deeply

0:36

on your consciousness. If you

0:38

make a list of your favorite songs, you'll see

0:41

what I mean. Anyway, I was

0:43

twenty in nineteen eighty four, so I

0:45

remember Goodbye Cruel World. I listened

0:47

to it right away. And this episode

0:50

is about one song on that album.

0:52

It's called The Deportees Club. I

0:55

still have it on vinyl. It goes like this,

1:09

Oh God, it's awful. My

1:16

name is Malcolm Blackwell. Welcome

1:18

to Revisionist History, my podcast

1:20

about things Forgotten are Misunderstood.

1:30

This week, I want to go back to Elvis Costello

1:32

in nineteen eighty four. I

1:34

should say you don't have to know anything

1:37

about Elvis Costello or even like his

1:39

music to be interested in this story.

1:42

I'm not talking about Deportis Club as

1:44

a song, but as a symbol.

1:47

I'm interested in understanding how

1:49

creativity works. And I've chosen

1:51

Deportees Club as my case study

1:54

for the purely arbitrary reason that

1:56

I'm obsessed with it and maybe, hopefully

1:59

you will be two once we're finished. Deportees

2:05

Club is the second to last song on the B

2:08

side of Goodbye to a World. The

2:10

album cover is a picture of a little mountain

2:12

top with two trees on it, with Costello

2:14

and his band members in various strange

2:17

poses. It's all very eighties.

2:20

The record was produced by two legends of

2:22

the British music scene at the time, Clive

2:24

Langer and Alan Winstanley. You've

2:26

probably heard some of their work dated

2:29

records with Madness, Noyd Cole David

2:31

Bowie virtually all of the great English

2:33

new wave hit songs of the nineteen eighties and early

2:35

nineteen nineties. Clive Langer

2:38

and Allan Winstanley were the guys

2:40

behind the curtain. I don't know if

2:42

you've ever heard come On Eileen by Dexy's

2:44

Midnight Runners. Come On Eileen.

2:46

Oh, I swear what he means at

2:49

this moment you mean

2:51

everything. Now. I'm a terrible singer,

2:54

but maybe you could make that out that song.

2:56

Langer and Winstanley

3:02

Clive Langer knows Elvis Costello. Of course

3:06

they would bump into each other in the way that people

3:08

in a small always bump into each other,

3:10

and New Way music in the nineteen eighties was

3:13

a small world. At one point,

3:15

Langer has his own band and he was doing a show

3:17

in a riverboat in the river Mersey. Costello

3:20

calls him up and he said, oh, I'll come up

3:22

and play a few songs before you go on.

3:25

That's Langer. We met at a pub

3:27

on Loreston Road in Hackney in North London.

3:30

He's slightly spidery, with close

3:32

cropped white hair and oversized glasses

3:34

and the kind of graciousness that only the English

3:36

seemed to possess. An absolutely delightful

3:39

person. My father is English, an

3:41

all older, charming englishman. Remind

3:43

me of my father. We had some tea.

3:46

It was all very civilized. Okay,

3:48

back to Elvis Costello. He

3:51

came up and played all his best

3:54

songs, I mean his his you

3:56

know, Allison and everything son.

4:04

Alison's Costello's first big hit.

4:13

Then I had to go on and do my first ever show with

4:15

the same line up, and we weren't as good,

4:17

you know, so I don't know. I didn't know quite

4:19

how to take that. If you detect

4:22

a little bit of friction in that, you're not wrong.

4:24

Alvis Costello is a genius, and like

4:27

a lot of geniuses, he has a really

4:29

strong personality. A

4:32

few years passed and Costello's

4:34

record label decides they want to broaden his commercial

4:36

appeal. He has a fanatical

4:38

following among those who know New Way music,

4:41

but the label wants a big commercial hit,

4:44

so they turned to the hit makers Langer

4:46

and Winstanley, and that two of them

4:48

produce a record for Costello called

4:50

Punch the Clock, which has a number

4:52

of absolutely exquisite songs,

4:55

including ship Building, which Lango

4:57

co wrote with Elvis Costello,

5:02

Birth the

5:06

News, Coaching

5:09

Shoes Far You

5:13

collaborate on Punch the

5:15

Clock. Yeah, and you

5:17

like that album? Yes? He

5:20

doesn't, and he doesn't know why

5:23

is he unhappy with it? I think it

5:26

was just too commercial for

5:28

at that time, and he wanted to write something

5:31

simpler, more live more.

5:34

You know, he's more of a purist than

5:36

I am, so I was brought up with psychedelic

5:39

pop in the mid sixties, so I was

5:41

kind of like, Oh, we can do this, we can do that.

5:43

You know, and he's like, oh, I

5:45

want it to sound real and black Bob

5:47

Dylan or something, you know. But

5:50

and when you get that right, that's amazing. I

5:53

want to hear a little bit more about Punch the Clock,

5:55

about whether those differences in perspective

5:58

had an impact on the way the record turned

6:00

out. Not so much. On Punch

6:02

the Clock we didn't have tension. We had tension later,

6:04

which I'll talk to you about what we did have.

6:06

When we did the playback and Punched the Clock,

6:09

we got quite drunk and played

6:11

it back really loud, of course

6:13

they did, and how much would you kill to have been

6:15

in the room with them? And he

6:18

kind of freaked out, So it's all rubbish.

6:21

It's terrible. It's terrible. And

6:23

I was to, you

6:26

know, calm him down a bit and we

6:28

all carry it on. When

6:30

the time comes to make the next album, Costello

6:32

turns to Langer and win Stanley again, only

6:35

this time the first thing he said is

6:37

that I want to call it good Bye Cool World. I

6:40

think it's going to be my last album, which

6:42

he didn't even tell the band, so

6:44

he was confiding in me. They do

6:46

a first run through recording

6:48

all the songs, live. Langer

6:51

is the producer, the one who's supposed to be running the show,

6:53

but immediately there's an issue. Elvis

6:56

basically takes over because he's quite

6:58

a forceful, powerful guy, very

7:00

eloquent and you know, lovely,

7:03

but he could sort of barge

7:05

in and start changing things. But you know,

7:08

so, I remember saying to him, thanks for

7:11

letting me be here to listen to remote your record,

7:13

you know, but I don't

7:16

think it should go like that. Shouldn't be like this, you

7:18

know. So

7:20

it was a bit. We're a bit of a standoff.

7:22

I think he went out and bought a half bottler gin

7:25

and I asked Langer and why

7:27

Costello said this was going to be his last album.

7:30

It's not like he was an old man ready to

7:32

retire. He wasn't even thirsty.

7:34

It was just that he'd had a lot on his

7:37

back, you know, he'd

7:39

been to a lot. I

7:41

don't know if he wanted to carry on playing the game at

7:45

that point. The result

7:47

is disastrous. I hated

7:49

Good By Cruel World when I first heard it, and

7:52

remember I'm a massive Elvis Costello

7:54

fan. A couple of years ago, Costello

7:56

did a television variety show called spectacle.

7:59

Lad he's a gentleman. Will

8:01

you please welcome to the stage. I wants

8:04

the nickolo And in the episode

8:06

where he interviews Nick Low and Richard Thompson,

8:08

the camera pans the audience and twice

8:11

you see me grinning madly as

8:14

I said. I'm a massive Elvis Costello

8:16

fan, and believe me when I say goodbye.

8:19

Cruel World was unlistenable, especially

8:22

Deportise Club. It was angry

8:24

and loud and upsetting. And

8:33

I'm not the only one who feels that way.

8:42

In nineteen ninety five, the album is rereleased

8:45

by Ricodisc Records, and Elvis Costello

8:47

writes in the liner notes, congratulations,

8:50

you've just purchased our worst album.

8:53

You have to kind of admire as honesty.

9:02

Except on that same re

9:04

release, Costello includes a

9:06

new version of Deportis Club, one

9:08

of the songs on the original album he hates

9:11

so much he gives it a new melody

9:13

and plays it by himself. An acoustic

9:16

version, shortens the title to deeport

9:19

fiddles with some of the lyrics, and

9:22

it never appears anywhere else, just

9:24

on this random rerelease by Raycodisc

9:27

Records, whatever that is, and I would

9:29

never have heard it except that my friend

9:31

Bruce ran across it and played it for

9:33

me. Bruce, by the way, was also

9:35

in the audience of that Elvis Casillo TV show,

9:38

grinning madly. Anyway,

9:41

Bruce and I used to make mixtapes for each other,

9:43

and he puts this new version Deeporte

9:45

on a mixtape for my birthday, and I

9:48

become obsessed with it. I'll bet I

9:50

sing parts of it to myself almost every

9:52

day. I don't really know why, but

9:54

it might be one of my favorite songs ever.

9:57

There's a line in it that jumps into my head

9:59

whenever I'm sad. It's so perfect,

10:02

a little couplet about the dissolution of romantic

10:05

love and you don't

10:07

know where to start or where

10:09

to stop. All this pillow

10:11

talk is finely talking

10:15

shop. Can

10:18

we play it? Yeah? I'm

10:20

in the pub with Clive Langer, the producer

10:22

of the original awful version Deportise

10:25

Club. Strangely, he'd never heard

10:27

the new, obscure and amazing version

10:29

of the song he produced so long ago. I

10:32

want to hear his new version.

10:34

Yeah, yeah, So

10:37

I found it on my iPhone and Langer

10:39

leaned his head over the table so that his ear

10:41

would be right next to the tiny phone speaker.

10:45

This one nine

10:56

shady five blastom

11:00

bunch trump

11:09

that distress

11:14

Sire's

11:31

dad. You know, it

11:34

sounds like he's found the song, but he

11:36

didn't know at the time either that that's what I

11:39

thought. I mean, that's what's sort of fascinating that. Yeah,

11:42

either of you in the moment. No,

11:44

Sometimes you know, if it's not sounding right, maybe

11:47

I don't know, maybe we were not focused

11:50

enough. You know, maybe we

11:52

were making a record, but we were miles

11:54

away. You know. In

11:57

the end, they Elvis Costello

11:59

and his producers all thought

12:01

they had put out something mediocre. What

12:05

they didn't understand until much later was

12:07

that that mediocrity contained a bit of genius.

12:10

It's just that it hadn't become genius

12:12

yet. That's

12:22

what I want to talk about, time and

12:24

iteration. What happens when genius

12:27

takes its sweet time to emerge. I

12:30

know that this is just one three minute song.

12:32

Maybe you don't even like it, but every

12:34

time I hear it, I think the same thing, which

12:37

is, this is something that gives a lot of people

12:39

in the world pleasure, including me, And

12:42

it almost didn't happen. If

12:44

Alvis Costello doesn't go back and revisit

12:46

Deeportise Club, turn it into Deeporte.

12:49

We miss all that beauty, and

12:51

the thought of that breaks my heart.

12:58

There's a theory about creativity that I've

13:00

always loved. It's an idea

13:02

that an economist named David Gallinson came

13:05

up with. Gallinson is an art

13:07

lover, and it strikes him when looking

13:09

at modern art, that there are two very

13:11

different trajectories that great artists seem

13:13

to take. On the one hand,

13:16

there are those who do their best work very early

13:18

in their life. They tend to work quickly.

13:20

They have very specific ideas that they want

13:23

to communicate, and they can articulate those

13:25

ideas clearly. They plan

13:27

precisely and meticulously, then

13:30

they execute boom. Gallenson

13:32

calls them conceptual innovators.

13:35

Picasso is a great example. He

13:37

bursts on the scene in his early twenties and

13:39

electrifies the art world the turn of the

13:41

last century. I think that someone

13:43

like Picasso is who we have in mind

13:45

when we think of that word genius. But

13:52

Gallenson says, wait a minute, there's

13:54

another kind of creativity. He calls

13:56

it experimental innovation. Experimental

13:59

innovators are people who never have a clear

14:02

easily articulated idea. They

14:04

don't work quickly when they start

14:06

off, they don't really know where they're going. Work

14:09

by trial and error. They do endless

14:11

drafts. They're perpetually unsatisfied.

14:14

It can take them a lifetime to figure out what they

14:16

want to say. Who's

14:18

a good example? Sayson? Every

14:21

bit as famous and important a painter's.

14:23

Picasso may be the greatest of the Impressionists

14:26

who reinvent modern art in Paris in the late

14:28

eighteen hundreds. With Seson's

14:31

genius and Picasso's genius, they

14:33

could not be more different. Why

14:36

don't we start with your favorite? If you have a favorite

14:38

in the world, maybe my favorite

14:41

at the moment is that one good Bye. Talking

14:44

to a man named John Elderfield. He's

14:46

a Seson expert, and he took me to that gallery

14:49

at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where

14:51

they have all of their Seeson's, easily

14:53

a few billion dollars worth the paintings in one

14:56

room. And it took only about five

14:58

minutes wandering from picture to

15:00

picture with Elderfield to see experimental

15:03

genius in action. So this is

15:06

one of the many portraits of his

15:08

wife's says, I'm made, and

15:10

it's one of four pictures

15:13

done in a short period of time when

15:15

they were living together in Paris. The

15:18

seeson we're looking at is a picture of a

15:20

middle aged woman seated. Her

15:22

head is tilted slightly to the side. As

15:25

with a lot of Sazon's portraits, we can

15:27

see only one of her ears he

15:29

didn't like doing the second year. She's

15:31

sitting quietly, almost floating in

15:34

the chair. And I think it's arguably,

15:36

you know, one of the greatest portraits

15:39

that he did. It's one of a

15:41

series of four similar portraits. Elderfield

15:44

says that the first two are a little smaller,

15:47

looser, maybe one trace from another,

15:49

and then a third much like the one we're looking

15:52

at, but without any background painted in

15:54

just the figure. Is this very typical

15:57

of the way he worked, So he essentially

15:59

comes back to her four times,

16:02

and yeah, and then he right.

16:05

Notice my assumption here, because

16:07

what I was thinking when I said that bit about

16:09

he gets it right the fourth time was

16:11

that if Sazon did four versions, he

16:14

must have been marching towards some kind of preordained

16:16

conclusion. He has an idea and

16:19

he's perfecting it. But that's not says

16:21

on standard practice is

16:23

you do a sketch, work out the problems.

16:26

Do a finished version, says on

16:28

kind of starts in the middle. The fourth

16:31

version of Sazon's portrait of his wife, the one

16:33

we're looking at, is less finished than

16:35

his second and third versions. Well, for example,

16:37

here you can see this unfinished parts.

16:39

So how putatively unfinished parts.

16:42

We light the area of the dress. There where

16:44

it's light, you can really see the grounds

16:46

of the canvass, and all the way through the lower

16:49

part. Then you can see who's been putting

16:51

these breast strikes down and not actually

16:54

filling them all together. Sayson

16:57

didn't work according to some clear linear

16:59

plan. He basically just did versions

17:02

over and again, iteration after iteration,

17:05

trying to stumble on something that sees

17:07

his imagination. Many

17:09

of Sann's paintings are unsigned because

17:12

he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's done.

17:14

He does portraits of his art dealer, Ambrose

17:17

Villard, and he makes him come for a hundred

17:19

sittings, a hundred a hundred. Normally

17:21

they would be how many and now I mean normally

17:24

for portress it would just be a relatively

17:26

shown number, I mean five or something.

17:29

Why does he need a hundred exactly.

17:31

I mean, what's so, what's he doing all the time?

17:34

Sesan was never finished? This

17:37

is what David Gillinson means by experimental

17:39

genius, and Gillinson points out that

17:41

you can see this creative type in virtually

17:44

every field. Herman

17:50

Melville publishes Moby Dick when he's thirty two,

17:53

writes it in a heartbeat. He's Picasso.

17:57

Mark Twain publishes Huck Finn when he's

17:59

in his late forties, and it takes him forever

18:01

because he ends up obsessively rewriting

18:03

and rewriting the ending. He says

18:06

on Orson

18:09

Welles does Citizen Kane when he's twenty four.

18:11

Picasso Alfred Hitchcock doesn't reach

18:13

his prime until his mid fifties, after

18:15

he spent his entire career making one

18:18

thriller after another, playing with a

18:20

genre over and over again.

18:22

It's his own. But

18:25

there's one field where I think Gallenson's

18:27

theory plays out the most powerfully, and

18:30

that's music. It

18:32

goes like this, the fourth,

18:35

the fifth, the minor five, the

18:37

major lift, the baffled

18:40

game. Compola,

18:42

Lleluiah, halleluiah,

18:48

halleluialleluia.

18:54

That's the song Hallelujah. It

18:57

was composed by the Canadian songwriter Leonard

18:59

Cohen. But basically everybody is

19:01

in a cover of Hallelujah. Rufus

19:03

Wainwright, You Two, Jeff Buckley, bon

19:06

Jovi, John Cale, Bob Dylan, I

19:08

could go on. It's featured in countless

19:11

TV and movie soundtracks. If

19:13

you ride the New York City subway on a regular

19:15

basis, you'll probably hear a busker singing

19:17

it virtually every day. Like a

19:19

good Canadian, I go to a Canada Day

19:21

celebration every year at Joe's Pub in Manhattan,

19:24

where local artists sing cover versions of

19:26

Canadian songs. Every year

19:28

someone does a version of Hallelujah. Every

19:31

year. It brings down the house. And

19:34

here's what's interesting about that song. It

19:37

is so not Picasso, it

19:39

is, says On. Textbook

19:42

says On. A

19:46

few years ago, the music writer Alan

19:49

Light wrote an absolutely wonderful

19:51

book, an entire book on the song Hallelujah.

19:54

It's called the Holy or the Broken, And

19:56

one of the big themes is how peculiar

19:58

Leonard Cohen is. He's a poet,

20:01

a tortured poet. He is a writer

20:03

in that way that he labors over what

20:06

these lyrics are line by line,

20:08

word by word, throws a lot away, spends

20:11

a great deal of time, and Hallelujah, famously,

20:14

out of all of these, is probably the song that he

20:16

says bedeviled him the most.

20:19

That's alan like, he came by my house one

20:21

day to talk about Hallelujah. He sort

20:23

of was chasing some idea

20:26

with this song and couldn't find

20:28

it and just kept writing and writing and depending

20:31

when he tells the story, wrote fifty or sixty

20:33

or seventy verses, which is for this song,

20:36

which I mean, you've been

20:38

writing about music for many, many years. Have you

20:40

ever heard of a musician who

20:42

wrote eighty different? I don't. I don't think

20:44

so. I mean then I don't know what that. I don't know if that means

20:46

variations on verses. I don't know if that means entirely

20:49

like how much of this is exaggeration,

20:51

But it doesn't matter. It's a whole other, whole other

20:54

level. Well, there's the famous story that

20:57

you know, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan have this kind of mutual

20:59

admiration thing, and apparently

21:02

they met up in the eighties at some point

21:04

they were both in Paris, and they went

21:06

to meet at a cafe and Dylan

21:09

said, oh, I like that that

21:11

song Hallelujah, which is a fascinating

21:14

piece of this story. That really the first person who

21:16

paid attention to Hallelujah as an important

21:18

song was Bob Dylan. But he said to Leonard, you

21:20

know I liked that song. How long did you work on that? And

21:23

Leonard said, I told him that I'd worked

21:25

on it for two years, which was a

21:27

lie. Cohen later confessed

21:29

it took him much longer. Then

21:31

Cohen asks Dylan how long it took him

21:33

to write the song I and I and Bob

21:36

said, yeah, fifteen minutes. Dylan

21:38

is picasso with Leonard. It's

21:40

not the first thought, best thought school at all.

21:43

And he talks about, you

21:45

know, being in a hotel room in his underwear

21:47

banging his head on the floor because he couldn't

21:49

solve this song, Hallelujah.

21:53

Leonard Cohen spends five years

21:55

writing Hallelujah. He finally records

21:57

it in nineteen eighty four. It's for an album

21:59

called Various Positions. When

22:02

Cohen finishes recording the songs, he

22:04

takes them to his record label, which is

22:06

CBS to the Head of CBS.

22:09

Who's this legendary figure named Walter Yetnikov,

22:11

who's the guy who releases Michael Jackson's

22:13

Thriller and Bruce Springsteen's Born in USA?

22:16

Not a dumb guy. Yetnikov

22:19

listens to Cohen's songs and says, what

22:21

is this? We're not releasing it. It's a disaster.

22:25

The album ends up being released by the independent

22:27

label Passport Records. It barely

22:29

makes a ripple. And if you go back and

22:32

listen to that first Hallelujah and try

22:34

to forget how beautiful future versions

22:36

would be, the song's failure makes

22:38

sense. It's not there yet.

22:41

There's an essay written by Michael Barthel about

22:44

the trajectory of Hallelujah, and he calls

22:46

Kohen's original version so hyper

22:49

serious that it's almost satire. Kind

23:02

of turgid, isn't it. But

23:05

Cohen's not done. He keeps

23:07

tinkering with it. He plays it in concerts,

23:09

and he slows it down. It becomes twice as

23:12

long. He changes the first three verses,

23:14

leaving only the final verses the same. The

23:17

song becomes even darker this time

23:19

around. Yeah, your

23:23

flag on the marble large,

23:27

But listen, love, Love is

23:29

not some kind of victormage.

23:32

No, it's cool, it's

23:34

every broken hole.

23:47

One night, Cohen is playing this version at the Beacon

23:49

Ballroom in New York, and the musician

23:51

John Klee happens to be in the audience. Kale

23:54

is a legend, used to be in the Velvet Underground,

23:57

a really pivotal figure in the rock and roll

23:59

avant garde. He hears this song

24:02

come out of Cohen's mouth and he's blown away,

24:05

so he asked Cohen to send him the lyrics.

24:07

He wants to do a version of it, so Cohen

24:09

factses him fifteen pages.

24:12

Who knows what the lyrics actually are. At this point,

24:15

Kle says that for his version, he took

24:17

the cheeky parts. He ends up

24:20

using the first two verses of the original

24:22

combined with three verses from the live

24:24

performance, and Kle changes

24:27

some words. Most importantly, he

24:29

changes the theme and brings

24:31

back the biblical references that Cohen

24:33

had in the album version. Baby

24:37

There's a God above all.

24:40

I have a love from loves?

24:43

How to shoot at someone? Who

24:45

are you? And

24:49

it's not a cryken hear

24:51

at mine? It's not somebody

24:54

you see the line, It's a con

24:56

and it's a wrong Hello,

25:03

Kale is really the one who cracks the code

25:05

of Hallelujah. According to Alan Light,

25:09

this cover version appears on a Leonard

25:11

Cohen tribute album put together by a French

25:13

music magazine. It was called I'm

25:15

Your Fan. Came out of nineteen ninety

25:18

one. Almost nobody bought I'm

25:20

Your Fan, except weirdly me.

25:23

I think I found it in a remainder bin in

25:25

a little record store on Columbia Road in

25:27

Washington, d C. Another

25:29

person who bought I'm Your Fan was a woman

25:32

named Jeanine who lived in Parkslope

25:34

in Brooklyn. She was good friends

25:36

with a young aspiring singer named Jeff

25:38

Buckley. He used to house sit

25:40

at her apartment, and one time, when

25:42

Buckley's there, he happens to see the CD

25:45

of I'm Your Fan. He plays it. He

25:47

hears John Cale's version of Hallelujah

25:50

and decides to do his own version of that

25:52

version. He performs it

25:54

at a tiny little bar in the east village called

25:56

Chennai, where he happens to be heard by

25:58

an executive from Columbia Records. So

26:01

Columbia Records ends up signing Buckley, and

26:04

he records his version of Hallelujah for

26:06

the album Grace, which ends up being

26:08

Buckley's first and only studio album.

26:11

It came out in nineteen ninety four. I

26:15

remembering moved

26:18

in you and the Holy Dove

26:20

was moving to and every

26:23

breath Withdrewsllujah.

26:37

Now I'm guessing that Buckley's version is

26:39

the one you're most familiar with. It's the

26:41

famous one, the definitive one.

26:44

It's not really a cover of Leonard Cohen's

26:46

Hallelujah. It's a cover of John Kle's

26:49

cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah,

26:51

only with Kle's piano swapped

26:53

out for a guitar, and of course Buckley

26:56

swaps out Kle's voice for his own

26:58

extraordinary voice Hallelujah

27:03

Allah. All

27:22

every subsequent cover, and there

27:24

have been hundreds, are really covers a

27:26

Buckley covering Koe covering Cohen.

27:29

So the evolution finally stops.

27:32

But wait, not really. Buckley

27:35

records a song in nineteen ninety four, still

27:37

nobody particularly pays attention to it. I mean

27:39

again, in retrospect, we think of Jeff Buckley

27:42

as this very important figure in this big influence

27:44

on Radiohead and Coldplay, but nobody

27:47

bought Grace. Nobody bought Jeff's

27:49

record. When it came out, it peaked at number one hundred

27:51

and sixty on the charts or something. It was

27:53

a huge disappointment after all the hype

27:55

around him, so that didn't make it a

27:58

hit. Buckley is this incredibly

28:00

handsome man, looks almost

28:02

ethereal like Jesus, with

28:04

that incredible voice. But none

28:07

of that is enough until nineteen ninety seven, when

28:09

something tragic happens. Buckley's

28:12

in Memphis and he goes swimming in one of the

28:14

channels of the Mississippi. He's wearing

28:16

boots and all his clothing and singing the chorus

28:18

of a Whole Lot of Love by led Zeppelin, and

28:20

he vanishes, never seen again.

28:24

And that tragedy suddenly propels his

28:26

work and Hallelujah into

28:28

the spotlight. And it's really kind

28:30

of you know, as you hit the new century, that's

28:33

when the snowball kind of starts. The first

28:35

few covers, the first few soundtrack placements.

28:38

It's fifteen years since Leonard

28:40

recorded this song. Fifteen

28:50

years, and think about how

28:52

many incredible twists and turns that song

28:55

takes before it gets recognized

28:57

as a work of genius. It

29:03

just happens that the independent label

29:06

Passport Records, who leases the first

29:08

version for the album It's on, is rejected

29:10

by CBS Records. Then

29:13

Leonard Cohen doesn't give up, keeps tinkering

29:15

and performing new versions of Hallelujah. John

29:17

Cale, one of the most influential musicians

29:20

of his era, happens to hear Cohen

29:22

doing that. He revises the song

29:25

some more. Cale's version goes out

29:27

on the obscure French CD I'm

29:29

a Fan, which goes nowhere except Janine's

29:31

living room in Park Slope, and Janine

29:34

happens to have a house sitter who happens

29:37

to play it, happens to like it, and

29:39

happens to have an ethereal amazing voice.

29:42

Buckley's version goes nowhere until

29:45

he happens to die under the most dramatic

29:47

and heartbreaking of circumstances. And

29:49

then finally we recognize

29:51

the genius of this song. But think

29:54

about how fragile and elusive that bit of

29:56

genius is. If any of those incredibly

29:59

random things don't happen, you

30:01

probably would never have heard Hallelujah.

30:11

I don't think this crazy chain of happenstance

30:14

matters so much with conceptual innovations.

30:17

Paul Simon once says of Bridge over

30:19

Troubled Water, one of the most beautiful pop

30:21

songs ever written. It came so

30:23

fast, and when it was done, I said, where

30:26

did that come from? It doesn't seem

30:28

like me. The song came out

30:30

perfectly. You can evaluate

30:32

it right away. It doesn't require a

30:35

fifteen years worth of twists and turns

30:37

and random events. The world is

30:39

really good at capturing conceptual

30:41

creations, or at least we

30:43

don't miss as many conceptual works

30:46

because they don't require that the stars be

30:48

perfectly aligned. But if

30:50

you're Sayson and the first version

30:52

you produce is just a starting point,

30:55

and you never know exactly what you're doing

30:57

or why, or whether your work is finished or

30:59

not, the stars really do have

31:02

to be aligned. Sayson

31:04

was his own worst enemy in a way. He

31:07

threw up barrier after barrier. He

31:09

wasn't thinking of us when he painted his paintings.

31:12

That was really John Elderfield's point.

31:15

The art of the experimental innovator

31:17

is elusive. There are

31:20

some of them which now are

31:22

in museums, which we know he had tried

31:24

to destroy. I mean, and you

31:26

can see in some of them, the cases of

31:29

where he slashed their canvases. Why

31:31

would he destroy his own canvases? You know,

31:34

he had certain ideas

31:36

about what he wanted to do and felt that he

31:38

actually never was actually getting to that

31:40

point. There are other paintings

31:43

done much later where he simply

31:45

abandons them. And Picassa

31:47

said that, you know what actually engages

31:50

as is says Zune's doubt,

31:53

his uncertainty. He's obsessive,

31:55

you know, he's absolutely just totally

31:58

obsessive. Albus

32:08

Costello Deportee

32:10

in its original flawed form. It

32:13

comes out in nineteen eighty four, the same

32:15

year, by the way, that Hallelujah first came

32:17

out, and I'm not sure that's a coincidence,

32:20

because nineteen eighty four is a very particular

32:23

moment in pop music. The biggest

32:25

album of that year was Michael Jackson's

32:27

thriller Pop Music Gloss

32:29

to Perfection. There's not a single

32:31

stray note or emotion on that record. It's

32:34

the antithesis of songs like Hallelujah

32:36

or Deportee. Along

32:40

comes Costello. He wants to make an

32:42

album in the midst of that cultural moment,

32:45

and he's not interested in glossy perfection.

32:48

His marriage is breaking up, he's having

32:50

financial difficulties. He says later

32:52

that Languor and Winstanley were ill

32:54

equipped for dealing with someone of my temperament

32:57

at that time. A nurse with a large

32:59

sedative syringe might have been more appropriate.

33:02

Costello writes a series of dark, emotional,

33:05

bitter songs, gritty and spare,

33:09

to match his mood. Something not nineteen

33:11

eighty four. Meanwhile, Langer and

33:13

win Stanley had been brought on board to produce

33:15

Hits, polished exquisite.

33:18

Every little bit was pondered

33:20

over and thought about and put

33:23

together very carefully. I mean, you had bands like

33:25

Scritty Polity at that time, you know, spending

33:27

nine months on a song, and Trevor

33:30

Horne spending four weeks on the

33:32

snare sound for Two Tribes.

33:35

Two Tribes was an album by a hugely

33:37

popular band called Frankie Ghost to Hollywood,

33:39

and they spend a month just getting a particular

33:42

drum sound, right. So we weren't about

33:44

pendicaty, but we were dealing with the world

33:47

that was, you know, perfection.

33:50

It was we were trying to make perfection. You

33:53

can imagine what happened when that World collides

33:55

with Albus Costello, and some of it just sounded

33:57

like I mean, even the band

33:59

were kind of not very excited

34:02

by some of the material, so

34:05

it wasn't a great experience. But we did

34:07

it very quickly, but just quickly, I mean

34:09

in the time it to travel on to get

34:11

a snare, so down to two tribes, so

34:14

it's about three or four weeks. Yeah, the whole

34:16

album, it was a mess, perfectionism

34:19

in a hurry. That's how you get to the bitter

34:22

words. Congratulations, you've just

34:24

bought my worst album. Good

34:26

Bye Cruel World is not good, it's

34:28

unlistenable, But it's what happens

34:31

next that matters. You

34:33

Know how people always say, put your failures

34:36

behind you, get on with your life, never

34:38

look back. Alvis Costello does

34:40

none of those things, because he

34:42

says on he's not Picasso. He

34:45

carries around a little black book where he writes

34:47

draft after draft after draft of the songs

34:49

he's thinking about. He changes

34:52

lines in the middle of songs he's already recorded.

34:54

He rearranges songs at different tempos

34:57

or in different time signatures. He cannibalizes

35:00

his own work, creating new songs out

35:02

of old songs. And I

35:04

don't know where to start or

35:06

where to stop. He doesn't want

35:08

to sign his name to the painting. And thank

35:11

god there are people like him, and says on in

35:13

this world, because without the obsessives

35:15

and the perpetually dissatisfied, and

35:18

the artists who go back over and over

35:20

again repainting what others see

35:22

as finished, we would never have seen

35:25

the beauty of deportee. And

35:28

you don't know where

35:30

to start off to

35:33

stop. All this

35:35

pillow talk is

35:37

not in Marvin Finlet

35:42

talking

35:45

the shop. When

35:50

you've been listening to Revisionist History,

35:53

if you like what you've heard, do us a favor

35:56

and rate us on iTunes. You can

35:58

get more information about this in other episodes

36:00

at revisionist history dot com or

36:03

on your favorite podcast app. Our

36:06

show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne

36:08

Scott and Jacob Smith. Our

36:10

editor is Julia Barton. Music

36:13

is composed by Luis Guerra and

36:15

Taka Yasuzawa. Flawn

36:17

Williams is our engineer and our

36:19

fact checker is Michelle Siroca.

36:23

Panomply management team is Laura

36:26

Mayor, Andy Bowers and Jacob

36:28

Weissberg. I'm Malcolm Glauder.

36:31

PARTI PATI