- Year of release
- 1967
- Global sales
- 5 million
- Genre
- Folk/Singer-songwriter
- Buy this album
- Buy CD
Spearheading the late 60s singer-songwriter revival, and offering an emotionally chilling antidote to close 1967's summer of love, Cohen's debut album comprised a suite of songs whose heartbreaking and unflinching inquiry into the nature of human relationships earned him the unofficial title "master of romantic despair".
Best tracks:
Suzanne
Master Song
Sisters Of Mercy
So Long, Marianne
Top facts:
- Cohen was an established author before he became a songwriter – his entrance heralded by folk singer Judy Collins, who had already turned three of his poems into songs before Cohen had entered a recording studio.
- Cohen's talent was nurtured by producer John Hammond, who had encouraged the early careers of Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan. Illness precluded him from completing the album sessions however, which were overseen by John Simon.
- Suzanne was named after friend Suzanne Vaillancourt, a noted Montreal beauty, but also the wife of his friend (hence the restrained eroticism of the line "for you've touched her perfect body with your mind").
- The other woman named on the album, in So Long, Marianne, was Marianne Jensen, whom Cohen met and lived with on the Greek island Hydra before they moved to Montreal.
- Gothic rock band Sisters Of Mercy took titular inspiration from the final track on side one.
- Cohen would later appear as the villain Francois Zolan in an episode of TV cop series Miami Vice in 1986.
If you like this, try:
Van Morrison: Astral Weeks
Tim Buckley: Starsailor
Lou Reed: Berlin
Tom Waits: Closing Time
Carole King: Tapestry
