Leonard Cohen is known for quite a few different themes in his music. However, some of his best works have been written about the women that he loved. And when you really listen to the whole of his discography, there is one woman that seems to hold weight over others: Nico.
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Cohen tried his best to woo the famed German Velvet Underground collaborator. It didn’t work out, even though he penned a heartfelt song for the avant-garde singer/songwriter.
The pair met in New York in the mid-1960s when Nico was at the height of her fame in the city’s growing art movement, along with the likes of The Velvet Underground and artist Andy Warhol. Cohen was smitten immediately, and he said so himself.
“When I first came to New York, I guess it was around 1966, Nico was singing at The Dom, which was an Andy Warhol club at the time on 8th Street,” said Cohen. “I just stumbled in there one night and I didn’t know any of these people. I saw this girl singing behind the bar. She was a sight to behold. I suppose the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen up to that moment. I just walked up and stood in front of her until people pushed me aside, I started writing songs for her then.”
The Unrequited Love Story of Leonard Cohen and Nico
Plenty of fans and contemporaries would push rumors that the two were romantically involved. Cohen, however, denied that their relationship was ever romantic and that it was always platonic. Though, it wasn’t from any lack of trying on Cohen’s side. According to him, after their first meeting, Nico was very direct about not being interested in him.
“Within five minutes of our conversation, she told me to forget it, because she was only interested in young men,” said Cohen, who was just a few years older than Nico. “But she said, I’d love to be a friend of yours, and we became friends.”
It’s clear that he enjoyed that friendship. But one can’t deny that Cohen’s heart was at least a little bit broken.
“It was only after many weeks, after being perplexed by her conversation and paralysed by her beauty, that she told me she was deaf,” Cohen said.
This is actually true. Nico was famously bullied by members of The Velvet Underground for her partial deafness, as it caused her to have trouble staying in key.
“She responded to everyone with whatever came into her mind because she could hardly hear a thing. Which explains her particularly strange style. But I definitely wrote ‘Take This Longing’ thinking of her.”
Photo by Tony Russell/Redferns
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