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by abuiles
3541 days ago
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One of the episodes of Revisionist History talks about genius and
different types of innovation, through the episode they talk about
Cohen and how his song Hallelujah was not an overnight success. Cohen
worked on it over 5 years to get it to a point where he was
comfortable with! Dylan is also mentioned in that episode, since they had some kind of
mutual admiration. Apparently Dylan and Cohen meetup at some point
and Dylan asked Leonard how long it took him to write Hallelujah and
he lied saying "2 years". Then Cohen asked Dylan how long it took him
write "I and I" and Dylan said: "oh, like 15 minutes". If you are interested in exploring more, I annotated a bunch of fun facts from
that episode https://www.listeningcrowd.com/podcasts/1-revisionist-histor... |
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>Over the decades, Dylan and Cohen saw each other from time to time. In the early eighties, Cohen went to see Dylan perform in Paris, and the next morning in a café they talked about their latest work. Dylan was especially interested in “Hallelujah.” Even before three hundred other performers made “Hallelujah” famous with their cover versions, long before the song was included on the soundtrack for “Shrek” and as a staple on “American Idol,” Dylan recognized the beauty of its marriage of the sacred and the profane. He asked Cohen how long it took him to write.
> “Two years,” Cohen lied.
> Actually, “Hallelujah” had taken him five years. He drafted dozens of verses and then it was years more before he settled on a final version. In several writing sessions, he found himself in his underwear, banging his head against a hotel-room floor.
> Cohen told Dylan, “I really like ‘I and I,’ ” a song that appeared on Dylan’s album “Infidels.” “How long did it take you to write that?”
> “About fifteen minutes,” Dylan said.
> When I asked Cohen about that exchange, he said, “That’s just the way the cards are dealt.” As for Dylan’s comment that Cohen’s songs at the time were “like prayers,” Cohen seemed dismissive of any attempt to plumb the mysteries of creation.