The Leonard Cohen song that Joni Mitchell said made her feel like “a juvenile”
Throughout music history, there are several moments where the stars seem to align for a cosmic second, and two artists come together. Music and love combine into the most inspiring force as desire and admiration mix: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.
Mitchell’s discography is undeniably coloured by the history of men she loved. As a confessional songwriter who borrowed from her life or turned her world into poetry as a way to understand it, the people she was with became characters or mythical figures in her work. Sam Shepherd became the fleeting love interest of ‘Coyote’. James Taylor’s love was captured in ‘See You Sometime’ and ‘Just Like This Train’. She lamented her relationship with David Crosby on ‘That Song About the Midway’ and mourned her life with Graham Nash on ‘River’. However, there is something different about the songs she wrote for Leonard Cohen.
While there are rumours that perhaps ‘A Case Of You’ is about her fellow Canadian singer, ‘Rainy Night House’ certainly is, recalling a night she spent at his childhood home. “You are a holy man on the FM radio,” Mitchell sings, holding Cohen up as a kind of God-like being as a sign of her deep respect for him and awe at his talent.
That’s what started the whole affair. When the two met at Newport Folk Festival in 1967, they both greatly admired one another’s work. As they got to know each other, getting an initial view of each other’s creativity and genius that only grew. “Joni was some kind of musical monster, that her gift somehow put her in another category from the other folksingers,” Cohen said of the artist, “There was a certain ferocity associated with her gift. She was like a storm. She was a beautiful young woman who had a remarkable talent.”
In return, Mitchell praised him too. In particular, she especially loved one song that sparked her interest in both his music and the man making it. “Leonard did ‘Suzanne’, I’d met him, and I went, ‘I love that song. What a great song.’ Really. ‘Suzanne’ was one of the greatest songs I ever heard. So I was proud to meet an artist,” she said.
But beyond simply liking the song, ‘Suzanne’ felt not only inspiring but aspirational, encouraging her to push her own writing further and go deeper into her work. To her, Cohen’s work felt mature and existed in a realm that she wanted to reach. In her memory, ‘Suzanne’ stands out as a turning point, encouraging her to love into a new phase of her own work.
“The thing I most remember about the transition from the early material was, you know, when I met Leonard Cohen at the Newport Folk Festival, and I heard ‘Suzanne’ and his writing. It made me feel like a juvenile, and unworldly. That was one thing that started to make my music grow up,” she said.
“He made me feel humble because I looked at that song, and I went, ‘Woah. All my songs seem so naive by comparison.’ It raised the standard of what I wanted to write,” she continued. As a lover of her music, Cohen likely would have protested this thought. But Mitchell’s love for ‘Suzanne’ spurring her forward is a testament not only to the power of music to inspire but to the power of love to encourage.
