Suzanne Elrod
Suzann Elrod is best known for her relationship with Leonard Cohen, and for bearing Adam Cohen, and Lorca Cohen, his only two children.[1] The pair first met in 1968.[2] She bore Adam in 1972 and Lorca in 1974. According to Cohen, in the documentary "The Songs of Leonard Cohen", she inspired his song "The Gypsy Wife", which he composed shortly after their final breakup.[3]
Cohen's earlier song, "Suzanne" was inspired by another woman, Suzanne Verdal, with whom he had been friends, and occasional lovers, in Montreal, during the breakup of her marriage with Armand Vaillancourt.
Accounts differ about how Elrod met Cohen.[4] According to CBC News, Cohen and Elrod met, in 1968, while attending a class in the then relatively new cult, Scientology. CBC reports Elrod soon moved in with Cohen, at the famous Chelsea Hotel. The couple subsequently moved, for a time, to rural Tennessee, and to the Greek Island of Hydra, where Cohen lived with his first muse Marianne Ihlen.[5] CBC reports that the 1973 song "I tried to leave you" reflects the fragility of their relationship, as Cohen did try to leave Elrod the year Adam was born.
A People magazine profile of Cohen, published in 1980, contained multiple quotes from Elrod.[6] According to that profile, when the pair were together, and Cohen was writing music, Elrod too was writing, including a first novel. According to that profile, one strain on their relationship was Elrod's "Miami consumer habits".
Aviva Layton, wife of Cohen's good friend Irving Layton described Elrod flying to Greece, and evicting Marianne Ihlen and her son Axel from Cohen's rustic cabin.[7][8] Ehlen, Cohen, and her son had shared that cabin, for many years, and Cohen had agreed to let her continue living there, when he broke up with her, several years before he met Elrod.
In her review of Sylvie Simmons's biography of Cohen Janet Maslin describes how Simmons tried to be discrete, herself.[5] Instead, she wrote of Simmons, "the author sits back and lets Ms. Elrod do the damage."
In a 2012 profile, in New York magazine, Adam Cohen describes being raised by Elrod and Cohen as “a circus with two tents.” He said Elrod was just as eccentric as his father.[9]
References
- ↑ Tim de Lisle (2004-09-17). "Who held a gun to Leonard Cohen's head?". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/sep/17/2. Retrieved 2016-11-12. "His hero is Federico García Lorca. Cohen named his daughter after him: "She's a lovely creature, and very inventive. She really deserves the name.""
- ↑ Michael Dwyer (2021-04-07). "The many voices that get in the way of the real Leonard Cohen". Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-many-voices-that-get-in-the-way-of-the-real-leonard-cohen-20210406-p57gun.html. Retrieved 2021-06-29. "Significant others Marianne Ihlen (he wrote the song for her) and Suzanne Elrod (she named herself after the song) are hosed down and wrung out almost to the point of cruelty as our rake messiah saunters by smelling fabulous."
- ↑ Leonard Cohen (1979). "Leonard Cohen on The Gypsy's Wife, with live performance (1979)". YouTube -- a clip from "The Songs of Leonard Cohen". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2byWWMmf20. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
- ↑ Andrea Warner (2016-11-11). "Leonard Cohen, the women he loved, and the women who loved him". CBC News. http://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/17576/leonard-cohen-women-he-loved-women-who-loved-him. Retrieved 2017-04-05. "According to Sylvie Simmons’s Cohen biography, I’m Your Man, Elrod met Cohen at a Scientology class, the same year he met Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who would become his Zen master."
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Janet Maslin (2012-09-13). "Searching the Soul of a Soulful Singer: ‘I’m Your Man,’ Leonard Cohen Biography by Sylvie Simmons". New York Times. p. C1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/books/im-your-man-leonard-cohen-biography-by-sylvie-simmons.html. Retrieved 2017-04-05. "Soon enough, Ms. Elrod would be on Hydra, redecorating. “I kept the authenticity of the house,” she says, speaking highly of “its Greek peasant simplicity.”"
- ↑ Pamela Andriotakis, Richard Oulahan (1980-01-14). "The Face May Not Be Familiar, but the Name Should Be: It's Composer and Cult Hero Leonard Cohen". People magazine. http://people.com/archive/the-face-may-not-be-familiar-but-the-name-should-be-its-composer-and-cult-hero-leonard-cohen-vol-13-no-2/. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
- ↑ Helen Mitsios (2020-11-24). "Love and the muse". Spin magazine. https://www.spin.com/featured/love-and-the-muse/. Retrieved 2021-06-29. "In a candid interview with Aviva Layton, ex-wife of famous Canadian poet Irving Layton (and Leonard’s good friend), we learn that Suzanne flew to Hydra to evict Marianne and Little Axel from the Cohen abode. He had let Marianne stay on after the affair was over."
- ↑ Andrew Anthony (2019-06-30). "Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen: the love affair of a lifetime". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jun/30/leonard-cohen-marianne-ihlen-love-affair-of-a-lifetime-nick-broomfield-documentary-words-of-love. Retrieved 2021-06-29. "Though Ihlen retained a connection to Hydra, returning each year, her residency came to an abrupt end in 1972 when a young woman carrying a baby knocked on the door of the house she had shared with Cohen. She asked Ihlen when she would be moving out."
- ↑ Carl Swanson (2012-04-08). "He Has Tried in His Way to Be Free". New York magazine. http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/adam-cohen-2012-4/. Retrieved 2017-04-05. "He describes her as his father’s “crazy concubine,” who is “every bit as much or more eccentric than my father.”"
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