The “unearthly” songwriter Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen agreed was one of the greats
When it comes to making the decision of who the greatest North American songwriters are, it tends to be those who don’t necessarily have the most complex structures or arrangements, but those who can weave a story in a way that audiences can relate to on a widespread scale. Yes, Joni Mitchell ought to be considered in this group despite her often labyrinthine compositions, but Bob Dylan is much less likely to conjure up something that feels lofty. If you’re after a middle ground between these two, perhaps Neil Young is the name you’ll gravitate towards.
However, two of the most perfect examples of this are Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen, and while neither of them exactly operated within the same space, there’s an undeniable similarity between the two in the way they create stories that feel like miniature epics. From a track like Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’ to Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, we’re taken on journeys through the medium of songwriting, and both are just as impactful as the other in how they capture a raw, emotive response from their respective listeners.
Both knew exactly how to navigate their way through a multitude of topics in their songs, and were celebrated for these gifts that they possessed. Furthermore, both artists knew how to tell the stories of ordinary folk, and never used their platform to talk about the excesses of rock and roll. They were instantly relatable, and rather than provide a sense of escapism for their listeners and plunge them into a world that they’re never going to be a part of, they drew them even further into the lives that they knew, and made them perceive things in a variety of ways.
Despite not always sharing an obvious common ground in how their art sounds, when it comes to their influences, there are some definite overlaps between the American and the Canadian poets. Of course, you can trace both of their works back to Dylan, but a slightly more surprising common love of theirs happens to be Roy Orbison.
Orbison may have been best known for popular hits such as ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ and ‘Only The Lonely’ in the 1960s, but beyond this, both Springsteen and Cohen credit his efforts as being revolutionary to the progression of pop music. On the surface of things, you could say that these songs that Orbison was crafting were equally as simplistic as those his disciples were creating, but beneath this were plenty of more intricate structures that were created with a complete disregard for established principles and conventions.
Speaking about his love of the ‘Big O’, Springsteen declared that nobody ever wrote ballads like him before, and that he changed the entire landscape when it came to this facet of his songwriting. “Roy’s ballads were always best when you were alone and in the dark,” he proclaimed. “Roy scrapped the idea that you needed verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus to have a hit. His arrangements were complex and operatic; they had rhythm and movement, and they addressed the underside of pop romance. They were scary. His voice was unearthly.”
Cohen may have been less vocal about his love of Orbison, but there are plenty of documented examples of him having treated him as a songwriting deity. According to guitar manufacturer Gibson, they attested that Cohen “so idolised Orbison that he’d sometimes instruct his band to ‘Orbisize’ certain songs,” by which he desired to make them more Orbison-like. Not only that, but it was claimed that during rehearsals, “Cohen would tell the band to ‘make it like Roy Orbison would do it.’ The musicians had a picture of Orbison pasted into their chart folder.”
It’s undeniable that both artists were touched by the work of Orbison, and while his influence may have manifested in different ways for both Springsteen and Cohen, his importance as a songwriter was not lost on these two greats that followed him.
