{"id":589773,"date":"2026-07-17T03:14:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T03:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/589773\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T03:14:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T03:14:21","slug":"damien-leith-reflects-on-friendship-with-roy-orbisons-co-songwriter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/589773\/","title":{"rendered":"Damien Leith reflects on friendship with Roy Orbison’s co-songwriter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday mornings have been an exciting, if not slightly surreal time in Damien Leith’s home.<\/p>\n

It is the time of the week when the 2006 Australian Idol winner sits down in his home studio in Wollongong, New South Wales, turns on the computer and spends an hour online with a songwriting legend on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

On screen would be Joe Melson, the man the Orbison family credits with discovering Roy and the co-writer of his smash hits Crying, Only The Lonely, Running Scared and Blue Bayou.<\/p>\n

“He’d appear on the screen, dressed up to the nines like he was about to go on stage, and he’d have his guitar in his hand,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leith said.<\/p>\n

“He’d start each session like, ‘All right, Damien, I was just thinking about the lyric from last week’, and he would kick in where we left off.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Joe Melson and Roy Orbison worked together to write a string of definitive songs in the 1960s. (Facebook: Roy Orbison)<\/p>\n

“I rarely ever saw him with paper in front of him \u2014 he remembered everything and it blew my mind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over 14 years of weekly songwriting sessions, the pair wrote 81 songs, including a new one just weeks before his death earlier this month.<\/p>\n

How the friendship began<\/p>\n

In 2011, Leith was touring the US to promote a tribute album he had made to Roy Orbison.<\/p>\n

While in Nashville, his manager arranged a breakfast meeting with Melson, who was intrigued by his interpretation of one of Orbison’s biggest hits.<\/p>\n

“He was drawn to my version of Crying because I didn’t do it like Roy \u2014 everybody had always done a Roy version,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Damien<\/p>\n

Damien Leith performs on stage alongside his daughter Kikki. (Supplied: Damien Leith)<\/p>\n

“I changed the end entirely and I didn’t go to the same notes that Roy went to, and he really loved that.<\/p>\n

“He was all about artists finding their own sound and he wanted any singer to identify with the thing that makes them unique, and we became great friends.”<\/p>\n

The final session<\/p>\n

The Monday of the week Melson died, Leith spoke to Melson’s son-in-law.<\/p>\n

He told him Melson was not feeling up to meeting this week.<\/p>\n

“I thought, ‘Oh no, this doesn’t feel good’, because Joe rarely missed these things because he loved writing,” Leith said.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/p>\n

Damien Leith visited Joe Melson in the US many times during their friendship. (Supplied: Damien Leith)<\/p>\n

“The week before, we had sat down and he was in great form \u2014 he had all these brilliant ideas and we started writing a brand new song, which was the first one we had written from scratch in quite some time.<\/p>\n

“I just thought it was so strange that the week before he passed away we wrote a brand new song, which I think was him saying, ‘This session is for you’, and I really do kind of believe he pushed through on purpose.”<\/p>\n

He said the songs written by his friend will take on an extra level of significance when he plays them live as part of his Roy Orbison tribute show.<\/p>\n

“I think it will affect me quite a bit because when I’m singing those songs, I’m aware of why they were written and some of those stories have never come out, but they’re very personal,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Every time I sing these songs going forward, they will have a whole other meaning, and I’ll make sure the audience knows about it as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday mornings have been an exciting, if not slightly surreal time in Damien Leith’s home. It is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[264],"tags":[249985,18,117,19,17,249984,337,17289,68573],"class_list":["post-589773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-damien-leith","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joe-melson","tag-music","tag-roy-orbison","tag-songwriting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116933143261816333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}