‘Take This Longing’: Leonard Cohen’s unrequited ode to Nico
Leonard Cohen was never shy about his ladies’ man persona. Across all of his albums, books and poems, he articulated love and desire unlike anyone else, treating the feeling of lust like some God-like state and turning the women he wanted into goddesses. But nowhere is that clearer than when he didn’t get what he wanted but was instead left in a state of yearning.
Later in life, Cohen would come to regret being so open about the muses behind his music. Talking about ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’, a song written about a brief love affair with Janis Joplin, he expressed guilt over being so upfront about its inspiration. “I named Janis Joplin in that song,” he said. “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; it’s an indiscretion for which I’m very sorry, and if there is some way of apologising to the ghost, I want to apologise now, for having committed that indiscretion”.
But in 1991, he had yet to learn that lesson, as once again, he was an open book regarding the woman that inspired his song ‘Take This Longing’, sharing how his unrequited love for the former Velvet Underground singer Nico moved him to pick up the pen.
It was one of those moments that felt like love at first sight. Cohen was new in New York and was bored and, admittedly, lonely as he struggled to find his place in the scene. So, in a bid to find some company, he was doing rounds at popular bars and venues when he stumbled upon a beautiful singer. “When I first came to New York — I guess it was around 1966 — Nico was singing at The Dom, which was an Andy Warhol club at the time on 8th Street. I just stumbled in there one night, and I didn’t know any of these people,” he said to Q Magazine.
Utterly hypnotised by the German singer’s voice, he weaved his way through the stranger to position himself as close to her as possible. “I just walked up and stood in front of her until people pushed me aside,” admitting romantically, “I started writing songs for her then.”
However, the key factor is that Nico never lets him get closer than a friend. Despite his advances, Cohen confirmed that it was never anything more than an unrequited crush, stating, “She told me to forget it because she was only interested in young men.”
Cohen was a romantic, though. Even as the two struck up a friendship, spending time together talking about art and music, he harboured an ever-growing desire for her that was only fueled by the more he learnt about her and from her. In his own words, he was “perplexed by her conversation and paralysed by her beauty.”
All of that comes through in ‘Take This Longing’, a song so full of desperation and yearning that its choruses take the form of a beg. “Oh, take this longing from my tongue,” Cohen asks for Nico, longing for a chance with her as he croons, “Let me see your beauty broken down / Like you would do for one you love.”
It seems as though the maddening one-sided desire he felt for Nico proved endlessly inspiring as he casts her role in this song as one of grandeur. He essentially pledges all of his happiness to her, singing, “Everything depends upon / How near you sleep to me” as he’s slowly driven crazy from his position on the sidelines, watching other men get what he wants and not treating her in the way he felt she deserved.
Throughout his career, Cohen wrote so many incredible and moving love songs, but few can hold a candle to this one, proving that maybe what the ladies’ man really needed was some good old-fashioned rejection.
