Leonard Cohen achieved something quite remarkable with his debut single, "Suzanne," which went on to become one of the most beloved songs of all time, in addition to the most covered: Neil Diamond, Peter Gabriel, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin are just a few of the musical legends to put their own spin on the tune over the years.
In fact, it was a cover of "Suzanne" that was released before Cohen's version. Judy Collins recorded the song for her album In My Life, which came out in 1966; that same year, Cohen also published the lyrics as a poem. He put finally performed the song himself on his first studio album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, releasing it as a single in 1968.
As Cohen explained in a 1994 interview with the BBC, the music for "Suzanne" came to him before he knew who the song was about.
"The song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman's name entered the song," the Canadian singer-songwriter recalled.
"And I knew it was a song about Montreal," he said. "It seemed to come out of that landscape that I loved very much in Montreal, which was the harbor, and the waterfront, and the sailors' church there, called Notre Dame de Bon Secour, which stood out over the river, and I knew that there're ships going by, I knew that there was a harbor, I knew that there was Our Lady of the Harbour, which was the virgin on the church which stretched out her arms towards the seamen, and you can climb up to the tower and look out over the river, so the song came from that vision, from that view of the river."
The song's title was inspired by the beautiful dancer wife of Cohen's glamorous friend.
"At a certain point, I bumped into Suzanne Vaillancourt, who was the wife of a friend of mine, they were a stunning couple around Montreal at the time, physically stunning, both of them, a handsome man and woman, everyone was in love with Suzanne Vaillancourt, and every woman was in love with Armand Vaillancourt," Cohen said.
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"But there was no...well, there was thought, but there was no possibility, one would not allow oneself to think of toiling at the seduction of Armand Vaillancourt's wife," he continued.
"First of all, he was a friend, and second of all as a couple they were inviolate, you just didn't intrude into that kind of shared glory that they manifested. I bumped into her one evening, and she invited me down to her place near the river...She had a space in a warehouse down there, and she invited me down, and I went with her, and she served me Constant Comment tea, which has little bits of oranges in it. And the boats were going by, and I touched her perfect body with my mind, because there was no other opportunity. There was no other way that you could touch her perfect body under those circumstances. So, she provided the name in the song."
Vaillancourt, who now goes by Suzanne Verdal, confirmed that her relationship with Cohen remained physically platonic on her website years later, writing, "Leonard Cohen and I were lovers in a rarified soul connection. Not as lovers of the flesh."
Neither the songwriter nor the song's inspiration could have predicted that "Suzanne, ranked #284 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, would become one of the most enduring classics of Cohen's career. ("I didn’t know that I’d be able to sing ‘Suzanne’ 40 years later,” he once remarked.)
Related: 1968 Folk Rock Classic, Ranked Among 'Greatest Songs of All Time,' Took 2 Years to Write
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