Roy Orbison And A Rock And Roll Regret

     On December 3, 1988, Roy Orbison played a show at The Channel night club in Boston. Dispite having become a huge fan, living only 15 minutes away, and working at the post office just across the river from the club, I decided not to attend. A regular on the summer schedule at the Club Casino at Hampton Beach, Orbison was touring constantly as he enjoyed unprecedented success during a much celebrated comeback.

     “There’ll be plenty of chances to see him,” I said.

     Had I known of Roy Orbison when I first started listening to music, I would not have embraced him, at least not publicly. When you’re young, you tend to gravitate toward bands that reflect how you want your peers to view you. So I went for the masculine sounds of artists like Led Zeppelin, The Stones, The Clash and Bruce Springsteen.

     All of these acts had what Springsteen would later refer to as “hidden love songs” – ballads disguised as rockers – and the occasional slow song, things you’d listen to in private, but not in front of your friends. At a party, if someone shouted, “Hey, how ‘bout some Zeppelin!” You didn’t play “Going To California”; you put the needle on “Communication Breakdown”, turned it up to 11, and got the hell out of the way. The quieter songs were for after everybody went home.

     Prior to 1986, Roy Orbison was, to me, little more than a lyric in one of those hidden love songs by Springsteen.

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely

Hey, that’s me and I want you only

     Unlike most of Bruce’s references, I didn’t bother looking Roy up. I just took it for granted that his relevance was in the past. Then, late that year, I saw David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

     In what became the movie’s most iconic scene, Dennis Hopper’s sociopath produces a cassette tape and says to Dean Stockwell’s drug dealer, “A candy colored clown they call the sandman,” then proceeds to tie himself up in psychotic knots as Stockwell performs a mini soirée, using a shop-light as a microphone while lip-synching Orbison’s “In Dreams”. I remember thinking, What a truly bizarre scene...but what a compelling song!

     Not long after, I saw Orbison on television for the first time. I don’t recall what song he was singing, but I do remember thinking that, behind the black suit and dark glasses, he was mouthing the words. His lips barely moved. He barely moved. His chest didn’t seem to rise or fall with any discernable urgency. But what came out of his mouth was like an elegant breeze blowing high above my standard listening plane causing the hair on my forearms to bristle. He ranged from baritone to the higher registers with equal strength. How could anybody sing like that?

     To possess such a voice was one thing, to master and control it was another. Orbison did not move around while performing, he commanded your attention simply by singing. What seemed boundless about Roy Orbison was the way he made you feel.

     In 1987, Orbison released a collection of up-dated versions of his greatest hits. In Dreams: The Greatest Hits was the first Roy Orbison album I bought (I know, compilation album, but I was playing catch-up). I played it endlessly. His compositions had a sort of creeping dramatic tension – “Running Scared”, “It’s Over”, and “Crying” come to mind – voice steadily rising in pitch as, one by one, another instrument joins the ascent toward the climactic crescendo. And when the songs ended, they really ended; there weren’t a lot of fadeouts in Roy Orbison songs.

     In January 1988, Cinemax broadcast the concert film Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night. Among the friends, all of whom were admirers and had volunteered to participate, were many of my heroes, including Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, and Tom Waits. Next time the show airs – it runs frequently on PBS and cable – check out the expressions on the faces of those backing musicians; the mixture of determination (If somebody screws up, it’s not going to be me), appreciation and awe for their bandleader, earned, not overnight, but over years. Roy Orbison: a true American Idol.

     Next came the formation of the Traveling Wilburys. Another collection of rock and roll giants – Tom Petty, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne – performers I’d been listening to for years, a band of rock and roll brothers, all of whom considered it an honor to be part of a project that included Orbison. Lynne later said of the recording sessions, “Everybody just sat there going, 'Wow, it's Roy Orbison!’”

     Roy Orbison was everywhere, and with all these musicians pining to accompany him, it was impossiple to have more credibility.

     At 23, I didn’t know a lot, but I’d had my heart stomped a time or two. It felt exactly the way Roy sounded. He sang of love; love hoped for, love unrequited, love lost. That he arranged it so beautifully and accessably seemed to make it hurt less. Orbison appeared confident being vulnerable, his dignity intact.There was healing in his songs, which made me reconsider my definition of masculinity.

     I still listened to the anthems of my waning youth with the volume turned way up, but didn’t turn it down when Roy’s songs came on. I decided it was cool to be a fan of Roy Orbison.

     So what then, did I do in December 1988, when Roy came to Boston? I figured, I’ll just wait until next time to go see him. IDIOT! Like I said, I didn’t know a lot, and by all accounts, The Channel show went off just fine without me.

     The next night, in what would be his final show, Orbison played the Front Row Theater in Highland Heights, Ohio. Two days later, on December 6, Roy Orbison died of a heartattack. He was 52.

     I would never see Roy Orbison perform live. It remains one of my deepest rock and roll regrets. But unlike most bad decisions, the weight of the fallout grew heavier with time.

     In death, Orbison continued to haunt and taunt me. In February 1989, Mystery Girl was released. An amazing collection of original material, the album arrived posthumously like a love letter dropped in the mail before the heart gave out. As with everything Orbison had done over his last few years, the liner notes for Mystery Girl read like a song-by-song, who’s who of past and future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, including “She’s A Mystery To Me”, written by Bono and The Edge.

     Just as in 1986, when Blue Velvet opened my ears to the extraordinary talents of Roy Orbison, seven years later, another movie underscored how transcendant those talents were.

     For those who don’t remember, Indecent Proposal was the movie where Robert Redford offered Woody Harrelson $1 million to sleep with his wife, Demi Moore. The movie was average at best, manipulative at least, but I stayed to the end. If I hadn’t, I would’ve missed the best part; Roy Orbison’s “A Love So Beautiful” – for my money, the best song on Mystery Girl – playing over the closing credits.

     Roy’s anguished moans above that mournful string arrangement momentarily blinded me to the film’s many flaws and I recommended the movie to friends as if it were a 4-star masterpiece. “Did you stay till the end?” I asked when met with shrugs of indifference. “No, the very end.” That’s when I realized Roy Orbison’s resonance had made me overrate the movie. I remember thinking, if he could do that on a soundtrack, imagine what it would have been like to have seen him in person.

     There’ll be plenty of chances...

     Perhaps Keith Richards best describes what I passed up in his recent autobiography, Life. It was 1965 and the Stones were on tour with Orbison in Dunedin, New Zealand – “almost the southernmost city in the world” – on a wet, dark Sunday Keith remembers as “The longest day of my life.”

But Roy Orbison!...What a beacon in the southernmost gloom....He was one of those Texan guys who could sail through anything...That incredible talent for blowing himself up from five foot six to six foot nine, which he seemed to be able to do onstage. It was amazing to witness.

     No doubt it was.

     Don’t wait until the next time, friends.

     Roy Orbison, my cautionary rock and roll tale.