Song of the Day: Sunday Morning in the Church of Cohen

Some spiritual substance--if it be your will.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

By now many know (especially after the 2022 documentary) that the album that brought Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” to the world was rejected by Columbia Records and it was at first only released abroad. It took Jeff Buckley and John Cale (oddly, via Shrek) to turn it into a phenomenon. But Leonard’s greater hymn —no getting tied to a kitchen chair—was also on that album and unlike “Hallelujah” remained rather obscure far longer. This was “If It Be Your Will.” He called it a “prayer.” It finally broke through thanks to the wild and emotive performance of Antony in an earlier Cohen doc I’m Your Man.

So, years before that happened, here is Leonard with ace back-up singers Julie and Perla performing the song on Austin City Limits, then Antony’s widely-hailed version and finally, more recently, by Mavis Staples—then back to Leonard and the Webb Sisters on his later world tour, where I saw them do it twice. Cartoon of the Day below that. Then, if it be your will, subscribe, it’s still free!

Cartoon of the Day

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, drew extraordinary acclaim, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.