The incredible singer songwriter Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82.
As Rolling Stone put it, “Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet.”
Yet, Cohen cited Roy Orbison as one of his own biggest influences. According to this 2009 article from Gibson, “Cohen so idolized Orbison that he’d sometimes instruct his band to “Orbisize” certain songs. Cohen’s biographer wrote of Roy’s immense influence on Cohen, saying, “In rehearsal 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.”