In the
liner notes for
Leonard Cohen: The Best Of,
Leonard Cohen writes the following about this
song:
I wrote this for an
American singer who died a while ago. She used to stay at the Chelsea, too. I began it at a
bar in a
Polynesian restaurant in
Miami in
1971 and finished it in Asmara,
Ethiopia just before the
throne was overturned. Ron Cornelius helped me with a
chord change in an earlier
version.