From Lyrics to Music: Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"

In songwriting, Adam tells me that one can never separate the lyrics from the music and, by judging each of them thus, form one's opinion of the song. I concur that most songs are more than the sum of their parts, and to judge them on the merit of their individual components would be to do them a disservice. All too often, however, it is music which gives us a strong first impression of a song. It works its craft on us before we can even begin making sense of the lyrics. Listeners in our generation tend to assess songs, and even entire genres based on this preliminary impression. The great danger is that by doing so, we risk precluding songs which require an appreciation that begins with the lyrics. These songs are certainly not musically worthless, but they are very often so musically subtle that their nuances go unnoticed.

Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" was my first Cohen song. I remember when I first listened to it, and I can't say that it was love at first blush. I sat there with Cohen's baritone coming nasally through the speakers, but not before it had traveled the full length of his impressive Jewish nose. It felt somnolent and weary; it dragged at my consciousness like a leaden weight. Surely, I told myself, there was more to one of the most-covered songs of the 20th century, surely there was more worth to be found in the work of a man whose reputation rivaled even Bob Dylan's. Then I looked at the lyrics. And understood why it was a song that made his career.

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Origins | San Sebastian 1988 | London 2008 | with Judy Collins 1976 | Isle of Wight 1970
Nina Simone | Joan Baez

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
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

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I found it extremely beautiful. This is Cohen at its best - plain language, bare of pretentiousness, indulging in the richness of imagery and allusion.

It is a song about love, or rather, it is a song about coming to terms with the sorts of love that we learn to dread most - unrequited love, love that never crosses into Eros, love that will never culminate in consummation. Unattainable love within love. Cohen conveys this masterfully by comparing such love to religious faith. I found this astonishingly clever.

Cohen assumes that the object of his desire knows best what he deserves, and that he is saved simply by having himself denied consummation by what he desires to know - carnally or spiritually - and by having done so, that which he desires has shown him, perhaps, a greater love than he is capable of expressing. It is at once a small act of self-consolation and a large leap of faith, and in both cases, a blind and solipsistic thought.

Cohen's brilliance cuts through the swathes of text with ease. It shines forth from the smallest of details. How he does it, I do not know. The way in which he managed to transform a piece of tiredly iterated dogma into adroitly crafted verse impressed me the most:

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"

Within half a verse, he sets up a narrative and executes a twist. And that's not all. The Biblical allusion is made a great deal richer with the masterful use of language, which then contributes to thematic development. Take for instance the metaphor for the Cross at Calvary - "lonely wooden tower". In one masterful stroke, the potent mythos of Crucifixion and miracle is brought to bear upon a theological point ("And when he knew... sea shall free them), which is then, in the broader structure of the song, transformed into a greater metaphor for unattainable love.

The song achieves concinnity by embracing the motif of water:

Suzanne takes you down to the river. You hear the boats go by. Tea and oranges from China - colonial trade - by ships. She lets the river answer. Now Jesus was a sailor. He walked upon water. Watching from his wooden tower like a sailor from a mast. He knew for certain that only drowning men could see him, "All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them". He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone. Suzanne leads you to the river. She is our lady of the harbour. She shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers. You want to travel with him - over the water - you want to travel with her.

The motif only achieves the fullness of meaning when translated into the music. The melody is repetitive, iterating itself in short melodic sequences. The piece is strongly rooted upon the tonic chord; the chords come in patterns of I-V-I, I-ii-I iv-V-I. The V-I resolutions are overwhelmingly strong, whilst the I's movement to ii and back is harmonically insignificant. What transpires is an absence of direction and a steady, rhythmic pulse - the expanse of an open body of water, the regularity of its flow and the movement of the waves.

In the absence of lyrics, the music suffocates the senses. But when working in tandem with the lyrics, it achieves a mood which might conceivably be described as contemplative. The departures from the tonic become nagging moments of tension.

I like to think of them as the small agonies that we suffer on a constant basis on account of unattainable love.

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I'm not sure if I've made my case well, and if this example should suffice. I am sure, however, that since "Suzanne", in the absence of compelling musical material, I have been thoroughly convinced of the worth in attempting to understand songs by starting with an appreciation of their lyrics, and working my way up from there. It is a difficult process of elucidation, but it can sometimes bring that which is beautiful, yet regretfully overlooked to our attention. And the rewards, perhaps, may be far greater, than if we were simply to abandon the process, and forgo them unknowingly altogether.

[fin]