Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah! (update)

This weekend one of the most revered singer-songwriters in history arrives in Britain and Ireland for a tour that will take him from the gardens of Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin to the main stage at Glastonbury.

In 15 years away from the stage, Leonard Cohen has endured psychological crisis, spiritual transformation and the loss of his fortune in a financial fraud, yet he treats such personal dramas as the stuff of art. "We basically all lead the same kind of lives," he said recently. "Gain and loss, surrender and victory - popular music has to be about those subjects."

It is all there in one song in particular, an epic, gospel-tinged ballad of desire and rejection, love and sex, God and man, failure and transcendence, the inevitability of death and triumph of the spirit against the greatest odds. Performed by a 73-year-old man with a shattered voice, it is a song with the power to turn a rock arena into a cathedral.

The song is Hallelujah. Written and rewritten by Cohen over the years, it has come to be regarded by many as the greatest song of all time. It has been recorded and performed by more than 100 artists in a dozen different languages, including versions by Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bono, KD Lang, Rufus Wainwright and, most famously, Jeff Buckley. It has featured on the soundtracks of dozens of films, from Shrek to the dark satire Lord of War

On Tuesday a spry 73-year-old man in a double-breasted suit and fedora will step on to the stage at the Manchester Opera House. For those of us in Britain who love his music, this moment will be both an epiphany and a relief. It is 15 years since Leonard Cohen last toured – after four nights in Manchester, he'll play several more dates in the UK this summer, including the O2 Arena and the Glastonbury Festival. And, like millions of other fans, I had come to believe that he had hung up his Spanish guitar and Jew's harp for good. But now the man who gave us "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah" is on the road again – or, in the words of one of his recent songs, "back on Boogie Street". The rasping voice, scorched by a million Marlboro Lights, is deeper. The vocal range is narrower. But none of which matters to his fans, who will just be pleased to see him performing again.