![]() “I was the one that put the boundaries on that,” Verdal told CBC reporter Paul Kennedy in 2006, adding, “Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I had for him… I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.” The hunger two gifted and beautiful people have for one another illuminates the lyrics, giving them a spark that seems to resonate from the inside. Other details proffered within the song speak to a romantic longing that, seemingly, remained unfulfilled: “And you want to travel with her/and you want to travel blind… for you’ve touched her perfect body/with your mind.” Like the song’s character, Verdal did indeed feed Cohen “oranges that come all the way from China” together, the pair savored the dazzlingly beautiful view, offered by Verdal’s waterfront apartment, of the St. Since then it has been recorded by dozens of artists, becoming as much of a 1960s standard as “Respect” or “Yesterday”-a masterwork that defines one era and continues to inspire our own.Īs has been explained by a number of music scholars, “Suzanne” is Suzanne Verdal, the beautiful, free-spirited wife of an artist Cohen knew in Montreal during the early 1960s, a time when that city was an epicenter of bohemian culture in North America. It was given substantial revisions by the time of its first presentation as a song, by Judy Collins on her 1966 album, In My Life. According to writer Judith Skelton Grant, who published an article on Cohen in the journal Studies in Canadian Literature, “Suzanne” began life as a poem. His experimental novel, Beautiful Losers (which one critic described as “the most revolting book ever written in Canada”), was published in 1966 and soon gained a reputation as a benchmark of countercultural expression. Born to a Jewish family in Montreal in 1934, Cohen published his first book of poetry at the age of 22. Leonard Cohen was already well-known by the time of the song’s ascendance, but not as a performer. A look into “Suzannes”’s history reveals how, in the making of art, the real people who serve as inspiration, unfortunately, though perhaps inevitably, get left behind. Such is the case with “Suzanne,” the haunting composition that has become one of Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen’s best-known works. Once created, a great song can exist independently of its creators, taking on a life of its own as it rises to iconic status within the cultural landscape.
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