“Probably both, and hopefully those are the same, or somewhat the same.” It’s the multitude of meanings, we agree, that gives the songs their broad resonance. “He had moved people in the right direction, toward gentleness. Are you kidding me? You have no idea. Leonard was inspired to write the song So Long, Marianne after he met Marianne during the late 1960s and it featured on his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen. According to Sylvie Simmons’s Cohen biography, I’m Your Man, Elrod met Cohen at a Scientology class, the same year he met Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who would become his Zen master. I didn't begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like 'Hey Jude' that I could appreciate. As long as someone like him was in the universe, it was OK for me to be here. Oh yes, you have. Leonard Cohen is an exceptional singer-songwriter, and this album offers 17 of his greatest hits. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death and romantic relationships. In fact, they were so close that Cohen was godfather to her son. The pair met while they were living on the Greek island of Hydra while Marianne was still married to the Norwegian writer Axel Jensen. This article originally appeared on CBC Music on Nov. 11, 2016. "It's so curious, because I couldn't get a date," he said. Cohen said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. You could 'hear the boats go by' and you could 'spend the night beside her.' Cohen was a man of so many appetites — erotic, romantic, spiritual — but he was also, always, steering into an escape. When Marianne Ihlen met Leonard Cohen on a Greek island in the early 1960s, she already had a child from a previous relationship, whom the iconic singer helped to raise. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Leonard sat in the room with us, singing ‘The Stranger Song’ softly  to himself, not paying any attention at all to what was happening on the bed. She also spoke beautifully of it in retrospect. When they poured across the border I was cautioned to surrender, this I could not do; I took my gun and vanished. Adam Cohen wurde am 18. And I met John Cale. Collins discovered Leonard Cohen, sort of. Trump, Brexit and ALL those celebrity deaths – is 2016 the most bizarre year in history? “We both feel that the song should be self-explanatory,” Robinson says, before correcting herself. “This relationship was a gift to me. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. “I don't know when it started, but I connected her name with the song, and I've been feeling very bad about that ever since. “She was his most dreamy spiritual influence,” says Suzanne. By the time that first record came out, which rescued me, I was already in such a shattered situation that I found myself living at the Henry Hudson Hotel on West 57th Street, going to the Morningstar Cafe on Eighth Avenue, trying to find some way to approach the waitress and ask her out. “The only thing that bothered me was that she always called me Marianne.” Then the couple moved to a cabin in the Tennessee backwoods. "But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. I would get letters of longing from around the world, and I would find myself walking the streets of New York at three in the morning, trying to strike up conversations with the women selling cigarettes in hotels. I was walking on tiptoe — anything for the poet. Robinson takes a poem home and studies it. Though she and Cohen parted ways in the ’60s, she asked her close friend, documentarian Jan Christian Mollestad, to notify Cohen of her impending death from leukemia. “I try not to ask Leonard, ‘What does this mean? And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. Photograph: James Burke/LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. He was always good at approximating the angles and bent neck of a man who listened with understanding and appreciated women with his whole body. / I closed the book on us at least a hundred times.”, When Leonard wrote and composed, which was most of the time he was home, Suzanne was writing, too, in her journal (“describing what a bad chap I am,” says Leonard). Those are the opening lines of “The Partisan” on Cohen’s 1969 Songs From A Room album. “When I met Leonard, in 1966, he came to my house and was sent to me by one of our mutual friends who said, ‘This guy has just written some songs and he wants you to tell him whether you think they’re songs and whether there’s any point in sending them around to various singers, and he’d like to start with you.’ When he came to see me, he sang a few songs to me and of course I started recording him right away, and actually launched his career.”, She also wrote about their close relationship in her book, Judy Blue Eyes — My Life in Music: “I remember being in bed with a man I did not know who was coming down from an acid  trip and wanted me to ‘comfort him,’ no sex involved. His passing follows that of his ex-girlfriend and longtime muse Marianne Ihlen, who died earlier this year. I was very ... that's when reactions set in. The Chelsea Hotel indeed! IT was the letter of love that touched the world - singer Leonard Cohen’s last words to his most passionate partner. I wasn’t very good at the things that a woman wanted, which I don’t know if many men are [laughter].”, Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner, Leonard Cohen, the women he loved, and the women who loved him, also wrote about their close relationship, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, ← Aakuluk Music: Nunavut's first record label is ready to rock the Arctic. More recently the song made it to number 190 on Pitchfork Media's "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s" list. This is an excerpt from the ARTE documentary "Girls in Pop Songs" shot in 2011. You know?! Son, Adam Cohen, born 1972; and daughter, Lorca Cohen, born 1974. Leonard Cohen was the poet of brokenness. Rarely, if ever, do they talk about the meaning of the words. Still the missus loves the CD, playing it … I think it's always like that. In 1967, Cohen told the Village Voice, “I really am for the matriarchy.”. Polly Samson. If that was the only way I'd exploited a relationship then I'm going straight to heaven. Mostly because she was married to a friend of mine and I couldn't touch her with anything else!". But thematically I wanted to be broader than he was. It's an indiscretion for which I'm very sorry. Very complicated.”, It was an on-again/off-again arrangement as the couple moved back and forth between Montreal and Hydra. Directed by Nick Broomfield. He was already a master of words by the age of 33 thanks to early successes: a published poet at age 15; the author of two critically acclaimed novels by 32. His pursuit of beauty, appreciation of beauty, the ways in which he exulted and coveted and captured beauty in his words — what man couldn’t understand that? You’re just too old for me.’”, "I loved Nico,” he told Ram in 1990. Here's everything you need to know, Sadly, Marianne died in late 1960s but the couple spent most of the 1960s together, Leonard and Marianne Ihlen met while on the Greek island of Hydra while she was still married to her husband Axel Jenson, After Marianne divorced, she and Leonard moved in together and he soon asked her and her six-month-old son to move to Montreal with him, During their time together Leonard wrote 'So long, Marianne' which was dedicated to his lover and has been regarded by Pitchfork Media as one of the greatest songs of the 1960s, The Canadian songwriter and singer of Hallelujah grew close, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). I can impossibly be all that much. Endless love, see you down the road…” When I read the lines "stretch out your hand," she stretched out her hand. Rosemary Barton: I know you don't have the letter in front of you, but can you remember part of it? “I go to his house, we sit in the kitchen and chat, and have something to drink or eat.” Work begins with a verse or two that Cohen presents her with, on paper. Marianne Ihlen was the girlfriend and muse of Leonard Cohen for several years during the 1960s and she was the subject of the famous song "So Long, Marianne". All those things … and I touched her perfect body with my mind. Cohen’s one-time partner, and the famed subject of his beloved song “So Long Marianne,” Marianne Ihlen died earlier this year on July 29 at the age of 81. It has since been covered an estimated 500 times. For his part, Cohen complains about Florida-bred Suzanne’s “Miami consumer habits. “I can’t speak for him of course.” This desire not to cross a line, to respect Cohen as an artist, is an endearing constant during our conversation. He then drove me all the way home to Norway in this car. The Canadian songwriter and singer of Hallelujah grew close to Marianne Ihlen back in the 1960s while they were living on the Greek island of Hydra and she became his muse over the next few years. Leonard Cohen and girlfriend Marianne Ihlen are remembered in Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love. What woman wouldn’t be flattered to be the focus of such a fiercely artistic, intellectual, romantic man? "And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. In seiner Kindheit lebte er auf der griechischen Insel Hydra, in New York und in Los Angeles.Nach der Trennung seiner Eltern verbrachte er seine Jugend in Paris und Südfrankreich. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of recorded music I’ve ever heard. You could really trust in him. Though Cohen had given Suzanne a filigreed Jewish wedding ring, the union had never been formalized. Endless love, see you down the road. Soon after Marianne and Leonard starting living together on the Greek island and a few months later he drove her to Oslo to finalise her divorce to Axel. “I wrote it to make us laugh,” she remembers. Her energy, her enormous presence. The longtime friends and one-time lovers go back ages. And what a ladies’ man! He was a gentleman, prone to a self-deprecation that has come off as self-confidence since his youth. In 1968 in Manhattan, Cohen met 19-year-old Suzanne Elrod in an elevator. His charm was old-world and European, but it was not pure instinct or birthright. ", "The song 'Suzanne' is journalism," Cohen says in the book Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters. However, I think it has been sort of an opener for the rest of life for us both, for better or worse.”, Cohen called her the “perfect Aryan ice queen,” and quickly became besotted with Nico, singer and Velvet Underground guest vocalist, following her all over New York. Marianne in a white, Greek room. Marianne Ihlen was the girlfriend and muse of Leonard Cohen for several years during the 1960s and she was the subject of the famous song "So Long, Marianne". “A Case of You” may also be about Cohen, but there’s an equal chance it’s about James Taylor. She lived near the water in Montreal. I trusted Leonard completely in very intimate situations and although we never had an intimate exchange of that kind ourselves, he was a constant ally I could take into battle with no fear of betrayal.”. Leonard Cohen After the divorce, Leonard invited Marianne and her six-month-old son to live with him in Montreal, Canada, which she accepted and they lived together throughout the 1960s, spending their time commuting between New York, Montreal and Hydra. I have to say that. Someone who would always see himself as the one who was left behind even as he was taking to the sea, putting cities and countries and oceans between himself and the goddesses who could no longer inspire brilliance, who were best preserved in memory rather than contend with their gradual transformation from muse to mere woman. The songwriter and singer of Hallelujah dedicated the song to her and she inspired him to write a number of others. But when he went back to Montreal it didn't take long before I received a telegram: ‘Have house, all I need is my woman and her son. She detailed the humble and sweet beginnings of their courtship in Hydra. His intellect was deep and precise — even his conversational musings were an intricate choreography of language — so much so that every sentence was a complex seduction. Marianne Christine Stang Ihlen (Norwegian: [mɑɾiˈɑ̀nə ˈìlɛn]; 18 May 1935 – 28 July 2016) was a Norwegian woman who was the first wife of author Axel Jensen and later the muse and girlfriend of Leonard Cohen for several years in the 1960s. But at that point I was knocked out. LEONARD Cohen sadly passed away today, the announcement was made on his official Facebook page and the news was confirmed by his son Adam. In many ways Leonard was a boudoir poet.”, “Chelsea Hotel #2”“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,You were talking so brave and so sweet.Giving me head on the unmade bed,While the limousines wait in the street.”, “I named Janis Joplin in that song,” Cohen told BBC Radio 1 in 1994. “I wasn't exactly pampered in being used to meeting a man who behaved the way he did. It was like ... is it really possible to be so fond of me as he says he is? Leonard Cohen died Thursday at 82 years old. 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