"He [Roy Orbison] could sound mean and nasty on one line and
then sing in a falsetto like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't
know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With
him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an
Olympian mountaintop and he meant business."—Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume 1 (2004)
Bruce Springsteen’s Born to
Run is a kind of summation of all his musical influences. But, in the 1975 LP’s
eight songs, there is only one reference to these idols: “Roy Orbison singing
for the lonely,/Hey, that’s me and I want you only,” he serenades the object of his
desire in the album’s classic opening track, “Thunder Road.”
A dozen years later, inducting his hero into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, Springsteen encapsulated the quicksilver quality he sought on the album
that made his reputation: “I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan
that sounded like Phil Spector. But most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy
Orbison.”
It was a natural—indeed, inevitable—desire, as attested to by another
artist who rose to prominence in the Seventies, Tom Waits: “When you were
trying to make a girl fall in love with you, it took roses, the Ferris wheel
and Roy Orbison."
Roy Orbison, who suffered a fatal heart attack at age 52 at his mother’s
Hendersonville, TN home on this date 25 years ago, knew all about the
desperation and exhilaration summoned by The Boss. They came not just from his
thrilling, three-octave range, but from a career packed with success and
heartbreak.
Between 1960 and 1964, Orbison recorded nine Top Ten hits. These and other songs of his from that time will probably play, and be covered, so long as rock 'n' roll continues to exist: “Only the Lonely,” “Running Scared,” “Blue Angel,” “Crying,” “Dream
Baby,” “In Dreams,” “It’s Over,” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.”
(On Slate, Forrest Wickman had a marvelous post earlier this year on the friendship and creative competition that resulted
when the solo artist and the rising young group shared the bill. In the succinct
words of Ringo Starr: “It was terrible, following Roy. He’d slay them and
they’d scream for more.”)
What brought a downshift in his career were not any failings of his
own, but simply fate. What looked to be a good shift to MGM turned out to be
unfortunate, as his new label wanted a certain number of albums produced, no matter
the quality.
Worse were searing personal losses: the 1966 death of wife
Claudette in a motorcycle accident, followed two years later by the death of
two of his three children when his home in Hendersonville burned to the ground.
At least by the time of his own death, Orbison was able to bask in
renewed appreciation of his work. The following was occurring within the last
few years before his demise:
*Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame;
*David Lynch’s use of his music in the film Blue Velvet;
*A high-profile collaboration with Dylan, George Harrison, and Tom
Petty in the supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys;
*New versions of his single “Crying” featuring Don McLean and K.D.
Lang, in a Grammy-winning duet with Orbison himself;
*A magnificent concert (preserved on video as Roy Orbison and Friends–A Black and White Night Live), with
appearances by Springsteen, Lang, Waits, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Jennifer
Warnes, T-Bone Burnette, Jackson Browne, and J. D. Souther;
*A recording of the CD Mystery
Girl, which, when posthumously released in 1989, became the biggest- selling
album of his career.
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