I used the line 'giving me head' and I've always disliked the locker-room approach to these matters.' I deeply regret associating a woman's name with a song. He later apologised saying: 'That was the sole indiscretion in my professional life.

From Chelsea Hotel: One of the biggest regrets Cohen had was letting slip in a BBC 1994 interview that this song was written about Janis Joplin. I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, You were talking so brave and so sweet, Giving me head on the unmade bed, While the limousines wait in the street. Suzanne was his first hit and for many the first time they heard his beautiful sonorous voice. Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river She's wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor From Suzanne: Written about meeting Suzanne Vaillancourt and being invited back to her Montreal port home, the song details Cohen's infatuation with his friend's wife. He gallantly gave up his bed for them and wrote these words as he watched them fall into an exhausted sleep.

In a snowstorm in Canada, he met two young female hitchhikers with nowhere to stay. The sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long From The Sisters of Mercy: This is the only song Cohen wrote in one sitting. Though Cohen would produce dark, funereal imagery at will, all his work is undercut with a wry and playful sense of humour.

If you looked too deeply into the process you’d end up in a state of paralysis.” These are sacred mechanics and you have to be careful analysing them as you would never write a line again. “It is a mysterious process, it involves perseverance and perspiration and sometimes, by some grace, something stands out and invites you to elaborate or animate it. In an interview with The Irish Times from 2012, Leonard Cohen described his lyric-writing process as a form of 'sacred mechanics'.

Leonard cohen the goal lyrics