Suzanne Verdal inspired Leonard Cohen’s song „Suzanne“. This is the story of the woman behind the song.

This clip is an excerpt from the ARTE documentary „Girls in Pop Songs“. More information here:

His album Death of a Ladies‘ Man was produced by Phil Spector, the reclusive genius of girl-group pop. „I was flipped out at the time,“ Cohen said later, „and he certainly was flipped out. For me, the expression was withdrawal and melancholy, and for him, megalomania and insanity and a devotion to armaments that was really intolerable. In the state that he found himself, which was post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian, the atmosphere was one of guns – the music was a subsidiary enterprise … At a certain point Phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, ‚Leonard, I love you.‘ I said, ‚I hope you do, Phil.'“