Magic that venues such as Bataclan provide cannot be destroyed

The horrors that occurred in the venue last Friday night will not be forgotten – but the Bataclan will rise again

Jeff Buckley was a great man for cover versions. He's most closely associated with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, but he also found time to put down his take on Lilac Wine, Strange Fruit, Just Like a Woman and dozens more in studio and especially in concert.

Many will have also come across his fine version of Van Morrison's The Way Young Lovers Do on his Live At Sin-é EP and album. But there's another version of that song that trumps the one recorded in the downtown New York cafe for poise and panache. That's the version from Buckley's show at the Bataclan in Paris during his European tour in 1995 and included on the "Live from the Bataclan" EP. It's a wonderful thing, Buckley pushing and soaring and going far and deep into the mystic.

That’s the thing about music – you never know what kind of journey it’s going to take you on. Buckley had a rare gift for finding nuance and sensibility within a song and bringing emotional qualities to the fore which others rarely mined. When he explored a song, no corner was left untouched.

The other thing about music, especially live music, is that it provides an escape. You go to a show to dig a groove, to get away from the old routine, to be wowed and awed.

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No doubt all of those who went along to the Bataclan in Paris last Friday night to see the Eagles of Death Metal had similar thoughts. It was the end of the working week and it was a band who saw it as their duty to provide good times for their audiences. Like so many other historic venues worldwide, the Bataclan was a club used to these occasions. After all, it had hosted countless shows since it was transformed from a cinema to a music venue in the early 1970s.

Instead, in the space of a few hours, the Bataclan became associated with terror, mayhem and senseless, cold-blooded slaughter. Terrorists select their targets with publicity in mind and the Islamic State murderers knew exactly what they were doing when they burst into the club and opened fire on the 1,500 people inside.

The attack will change behaviour in the short term. There will be more security at shows for a start and smaller venues will have to carry out new risk assessments. Audiences too will be wary about what could happen when large crowds gather together.

The horrors that occurred inside the venue last Friday will never be forgotten, but the Bataclan will rise again because fear cannot win out. Venues provide music fans with a sense of place. They're where we go to experience the ordinary become extraordinary in the shape of moments such as Buckley's The Way Young Lovers Do. That's what we want to think about when we think of the venues we know and love – and that's something that can never be taken away.