In the 80s Roy started performing again, and other artists started covering his songs. His style is often described as operatic, and the comparison with Pavarotti singing Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma’ is pretty close. Although he was a rockabilly and country singer, Roy had staked out a territory, though limited, in which he was supreme. The arrangements became standardised too, do-wop backing singers, a string section, a drum beating a bolero rhythm. The scenario was pretty much the same, an insecure man afraid of losing his girl, a man who had lost love and was nursing his heartache. Some of his songs (not all his own compositions) were: Orbison stopped writing and performing, and gradually faded from people’s memories. Two years later, while he was touring, two of his sons burned to death in a house fire. Then, in 1966, his wife Claudette was killed by a semitrailer. For 10 years 1956 to 1966 he performed and wrote his songs, and had such a string of hits that Elvis and others were expecting him to be the next king of rock and roll. You could take any Roy Orbison song and make a film of it, or turn it into a novel. The expression was mainly in the soaring voice and the melodic lines, and the lyrics which expressed intensely dramatic stories with real power. As I knew, he performed wearing dark glasses, and without moving, but he had a real presence on stage, as intense at times as Edith Piaf. But the range, delivery and power was still there undiminished, and I actually preferred it to the higher tenor range of the CD. Roy was 52, his voice deeper and a bit time worn compared to the CD I’d listened to. Had it been filmed by someone sitting in the back row of a flea pit hall in Tulsa with a phone camera and with Roy the only musician, it would still have been mesmerising. This was a concert in which many popular artists and famed producers participated, one of the best produced concert films I have ever seen. So I went looking for more, and found the concert footage. The next thing was the unusual construction of the songs, and their beautiful melodic line. The first thing I noticed then was the incredible range and delivery of the voice.
I did listen to a ‘best of’ CD of Roy, thought it pretty good, and didn’t play it again until recently. I dodged Elvis, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and scores of other artists in rock pop: what the heck, you can’t listen to everything. First time around I missed out on Roy Orbison. I’ve been watching a film lately called A Black and White Night, a comeback concert benefit for Roy Orbison made in November 1988, the month before he died of a heart attack.
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