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When Leonard first experimented with a singing career probably both he and the record industry were not too confident that it would last. More than any other, the song Suzanne supplied confidence.

It was inspired by some time that he got to spend with a woman who was married to a good friend of his.

We have no reason to suspect that their relationship was anything other than a mental one. I can also well imagine that the husband could have easily been present during times that they were together.

I get the feeling that it was because she deeply loved someone else that she was able to inspire him the way she did.

The world probably has room for more songs about the fallout we experience as a result of other people loving each other.

In the song we don't get to hear anything about Suzanne's husband but I can't help but feel that he must have been a very gracious person. It was a gift that he gave Leonard and the rest of the world that he was the kind of person who probably afforded his wife her freedom.

Leonard in the past has complained a bit that he too easily allowed himself to lose the publishing rights to that song for far too small a price, but I think the long term blessing of that song has been enormous. Who knows what he might be doing now if not for the success of that song?

Maybe it was something like that he realized when he later wrote
"I guess they won’t exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep."

I raise my glass to Suzanne's husband

I raise my glass to Suzanne's husband

... in that I join you.


~ Lizzy

I read somewhere over the years that Suzanne & her husband were the kind of couple that everyone aspires to be. They were so good together that it was unthinkable to try & come between them.

Madison Wrote:
>read somewhere over the years that Suzanne & her husband were the kind of couple that everyone aspires to be. They were so good together that it was unthinkable to try & come between them

I think that is the attraction of poetry, the longing for perfect relation.

then he added:
>Anything that doesn't kill you only serves to postpone the inevitable.

Anything that doesn't satisfy you only serves to postpone the inevitable

My understanding of the song was that Leonard had almost all of it written, but that he felt it lacked something, maybe unity. It's all about the things you'll see if you take a long, slow walk around Old Montreal. Then he met Suzanne, and she gave him tea with orange rind in it, and by giving her name a certain amount of control in the context of the song, he was able to bring it all to a higher level - as if she were showing him all this stuff again, and it was new to him, newly alive.

But, yeah, I think her husband must have been a gracious, secure man to allow (crappy word) these visits, and my understanding is that he and Leonard were also friends. But hey, how often has Our Guy written about men with such mystery and generosity?

Not sure what this is all about. I thought her husband was a sculptor and LC's friend. She inspired the verses, but it is not biographical. Indeed, when their paths crossed decades later she seems to have drifted through life and to have become a tragic person, a dancer. She was terribly hurt that LC didn't even say hello to her.

The way life goes:

http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/suzanne/