Leonard Cohen – Suzanne

Michael J Roberts writes of Suzanne by Leonard Cohen

“Leonard Cohen took the opportunity to walk through a door that Dylan had kicked down with his cowboy boots and he stretched the poetic dimension of what folk-pop music could accommodate in doing so”.

Suzanne was the first song on his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen released in 1967, a peak year in pop history and one that Cohen’s low key ramblings seemed entirely oblivious to. Cohen seemed the obvious inheritor of Bob Dylan’s ‘poet laureate of rock’ mantle, as Bob was holed up in Woodstock, taking stock and keeping out of the limelight after a motorbike accident. The lyric for the song had first appeared as a published poem in 1966 and was released as a song by Judy Collins the same year. The tune is an understated and flowing one, but restricted to a small range, letting the poetry speak in a way that has more in common with modern rap music, or a spoken word tradition than classic pop.

The song works its hypnotic, lilting charms and its searing poetry weaves a powerful spell:

“Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, you can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her, and you know that she’s half crazy, but that’s why you want to be there, and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China”

You can read more about this song and 32 more! This is an excerpt from Michael J Roberts’ excellent eBook “33 Great Songs 33 Great Songwriters”

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