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“The song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman’s name entered the song. And I knew it was a song about Montreal…” -Leonard Cohen
Suzanne
  • Year Inducted: 2006
  • Written In: 1967
Songwriters
Leonard Cohen Songwriter
© Photo Credit www.leonardcohen.com
Artists
Judy Collins
Nina Simone
Neil Diamond
Peter Gabriel
Françoise Hardy
Noel Harrison
Pauline Julien
Harry Belafonte
Roberta Flack
Graeme Allwright
Catherine McKinnon
Chad Mitchell
Tom Northcott
Joan Baez
Genesis
In 1966, Leonard Cohen penned Suzanne with the landscape of the Old Port in Montreal in mind. Leonard Cohen revealed, “the song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman’s name entered the song. And I knew it was a song about Montreal…”

The beautiful poem and love song was originally inspired by the view of the Montreal harbour from the observation tower of the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours chapel, known as the Sailors’ Church. Remnants of the chapel are found in the lines, “And the sun pours down like honey/ On our lady of the harbour” which are in reference to the Our Lady of the Harbour statue that stands, with arms outstretched, towards the St. Lawrence river.

It was after Cohen’s chance meeting with Suzanne, the wife of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, that life was breathed into the piece. She invited him to her home located near the river where the pair shared a cup of tea. “Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river,” begins the beautiful and descriptive narrative of the woman who “feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.”

Suzanne is poetry set to music. The beautiful and descriptive narrative was published in Selected Poems 1956-1968 (Toronto 1968) and later released on his debut LP, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967. Judy Collins would be the first to record the song after having heard it sung to her over the telephone by Cohen, himself, and Noel Harrison would take the single to Number 56 on the pop charts. The song would go on to become one of Cohen’s most covered singles with over 100 versions to its credit.

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