The one songwriter who inspired Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan
There’s being a muse, and then there’s being a super muse. In the ranking of god-tier artists who sit at the very top of their game, we assume they take on that role.
The best of the best are the start of the trickle-down approach, where their work runs through decades and generations, influencing a whole lineage to come. But perhaps there needs to be a level above that when the likes of Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan were all looking up to one man.
These are names that go beyond the label of merely being inspirational artists. They feel too big for that. Martha Wainwright once said, “all roads led to Bob Dylan,” attempting to capture the fact that it feels completely and utterly impossible for any artist holding a guitar to be afraid of the impact Dylan has had. Given the looming legacy he built in the 1960s and continues to share today, Wainwright makes the point that no one is immune.
It’s the same story for the rest. It would be tough, or perhaps even impossible, to work in the vein of rock or punk or post-punk, any of those darker, heavier sounds, and not at least once steer close to the influence of Lou Reed, either with his work in The Velvet Underground or his more experimental solo stuff.
Working in the world of poetry? Folk? Literary music in general? There’s no getting away from the legacy Leonard Cohen left behind as one of the names leading the charge for a complete merger of the worlds of written and sung words. Even beyond his actual work, Cohen’s talk about his work ethic alone is enough to be a looming impact that artists have been caught up in ever since, honouring his teachings of working every day and truly treating art as work.
So, with three top-tier legends, all sitting at the very pinnacle of the music world, what medal do we bestow upon a man who inspired all three? Surely a golden crown.
That man is Hank Williams, the humble country singer who was an early pioneer of country music, who touched and captured the hearts of a mainstream pop audience. He blurred the lines between tradition and modernism, and so for Reed, Dylan, and Cohen alike, that was vital.
In a list of his all-time favourite albums left behind by Reed, Hank Williams’ Singles took pride of place as a key one. Meanwhile, the track ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ also made an appearance in a playlist of his all-time favourite songs.
For Cohen, Williams was a foundational teacher. “I became aware that in Hank’s recorded songs were the archetype rules of poetic songwriting,” he wrote, “The architectural forms are like marble pillars.” He later honoured him in ‘Tower Of Song’, singing, “I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet, but I hear him coughing all night long, Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song.”
As Williams lives a hundred floors above him, Cohen was making it clear that he felt meek in comparison. Dylan’s praise was plain and simple because what more can be said other than, “To me, Hank Williams is still the best songwriter.”
To be called the best by not one, not two, but three of the greats – surely that warrants a whole new upper floor to be built into the god-tier, just for him.
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