It was an unusually wet and gloomy Monday afternoon in the early December of 1988 when I set out to interview Roy Orbison. Maybe it was some kind of premonition for only nine days after our encounter he died from a heart attack ‘cradled in the arms of his mother’ at his home in Nashville. That image would end up providing the media with a final tragic closing-shot for their emotive vision of Roy Orbison’s life as one long, remorseless tale of woe.
Just as I’d anticipated, he was a most singular-looking individual. Disturbingly thin – a condition much amplified by skintight polo neck and black slacks tapering off with aggressively pointed Beatle boots – his physique – he was also much shorter than photographs might otherwise indicate – actually reminded me of Mr Magoo, the cartoon blind man. And yet he also seemed quite ageless, his movements, gestures and reflexes betraying the agility of an albeit malnourished youth. And that face was just bizarre with his guinea-pig eyes beaming out like beatific orbs through truly weird multi-mirrored and tinted wine-red spectacles! The final touch was the pigtail of jet black hair. Actually I thought he looked perfect.
He looked perfect because in my imagination the Roy Orbison IVe listened to for most of my life always looked weird and alien and dark and totally aloof from life’s dull equations. I imagined him more like this human beacon beaming down these shards of perfect romantic torment that have cast light into more dark moods than I care to remember.
This is the essence of the great cathartic experience that is Roy Orbison, the essence that Bruce Springsteen picked up on in the celebrated speech he gave when inducting Orbison into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame back in 1986. To wit: ‘He had the ability, like all the great rock’n’rollers, to sound like he’d dropped in from another planet and yet get the stuff which was right to the heart of what you were living today. That was how he opened up your vision.’
When he spoke, the myth and the man naturally started to separate, but never in an uncomfortable way. Orbison, throughout the interview, referred to himself as ‘totally centred’, and frankly it was hard to disagree with him. A shy, remarkably wistful man, he embarked on each answer with a soft, almost bashful Southern burr to his voice. He was unswervingly gracious and polite, especially when discussing topics he must have had to chew over a million times before in such circumstances. His manner was clearly one of elation. As he was the first to admit, it seemed he could do no wrong. The tidal wave of regeneration that took its most crucial momentum from David Lynch’s perversely surreal interpretation of In Dreams’ as the glowing centrepiece of his film Blue Velvet had first surged into overdrive with the Travelling Wilburys project: a curious assemblage of the great (Orbison and waffy old Bob Dylan) and the not so great (George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne) being wacky and whimsical together in a recording studio. The resulting album has sold well – ‘Number nine with a bullet,’ he’d positively beamed – and with the radio newly reacquainted with that extraordinary voice the timing could not have been better for the release of Orbison’s first album of new songs in years.
However, fate stepped in and now all we have of him is that glorious body of music and the memory of a life marked with great tragedy but much greater good grace and resilience.
‘My earliest memories? Well, I was born in Vernon, Texas. Actually, I’ve since learned that I was born right on the Chisholm Trail, which is where they drove the cattle from Texas through to Kansas. That trail was the main street in Vernon. It was ranch country really, not very big in size. My dad was an auto mechanic, but we soon moved to Fort Worth, where he worked in defence building B-24S. Then he moved to West Texas, where he worked in oil. Started as a roustabout working up to drilling superintendent. Mom and Dad bought me a guitar for my sixth birthday. We were living in Fort Worth then, just above a drugstore – and my uncle Kenneth and James Littlejohn and a bunch of cousins would come by on their way to the European Theatre – or the Pacific, that was the other one – to sing and play the guitar. And because I’d learned to play, they’d let me stay up and do the singing. And what I recall of it was that their zest and gusto for life was what made those times so supercharged. So that if they were drinking they’d drink a lot, and when they were playing they’d play with all their heart and soul. So I never really knew any other way. And still, today, that’s how I do it – with everything I have. That spirit and intensity, the easy camaraderie of musicians, that lifestyle is ingrained in me. By the time I was seven I was finished, y’know, for anything else!’
One thing I’ve always wanted to know: where did you steal that growl from?
‘You mean on “Pretty Woman”? [Laughs.] I stole it from a Bob Hope movie I’d seen as a kid. I think it might have been Son of Paleface. He looked into the mirror and went, “Grrrr”. So I’ll give Bob Hope credit for that one! [Laughs.]’
You’ve been singled out as the only early rock pioneer vocalist who can still sing his songs in their original key and whose voice has become stronger and purer with age.
‘Actually, that’s true. It comes from my father. I think his voice has much the same young quality and it never deepened from the age of thirty to fifty. It’s a blessing, I guess. My octave range isn’t extremely wide, but what I do have, everything is very solid and useful. It’s the way my voice kinda portrays what I’m saying in the lyrics so nicely – that’s the real gift. It makes the song more binding. When I’m singing there’s never any conscious memorizing process going on with the lyrics. When I sing, I don’t think, “What does this mean?” It’s somehow already a part of me and the voice just takes over.
‘So I was singing and playing from a really young age. Sang on the radio when I was eight, I recall. The first singer I heard on the radio that really blew me away was Lefty Frizzell. He had this technique which involved sliding the syllables together that just about used to slay me! He left a definite impression. Later, it was certain blues and rhythm & blues singers that had the same effect for me. Hank Williams? I liked him well enough but didn’t reckon him as the genius I now perceive him to be – the guiding light of us all in a way. Actually, I found his stuff too tin pan alley-ish for my tastes back then.
‘I really don’t know where individual influences come from. There was a lot of diversification going on. Like at fifteen I tried to be a lead guitar player playing intricate melody lines and such. I didn’t get very far, so by sixteen I’d set my mind to playing just rhythm guitar to accompany my voice. So I was a singer until Jerry Lee Lewis recorded “Down the Line”, the first song I ever wrote. The same time that got released, the Everly Brothers recorded “Claudette”, the second song I’d written. So it kinda occurred to me that, y’know, maybe I have a talent for this.’
The emotional tenor of your work has always seemed to me a very heightened expression of a very adolescent state of mind. Do you agree?
‘Oh, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a condition I related to deeply. For me, adolescence was such a glorious time. The intensity of your emotions at that period in your development is something awe-inspiring, no matter how painful it might sometimes seem. I believe that none of us really grows out of that. At least I haven’t, or I just wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. Personally, even though I’ve since experienced a lot of personal growth, spiritual growth, working on relationships and things, I still feel there’s that connection. Even though the love I sang of then is probably not the love I know today. See, it’s only in the last twenty years of being married that I can understand what poets talk about when they say how love grows and becomes something you never dreamed it could be. But God has a way of giving you the lyric and the melody, and if it stands up over the years, then adolescence – that innocence – helps to keep its intentions pure. That innocence is the big ingredient that keeps my songs alive, that makes them stand tall.
‘Yeah, actually, I do find this obsession with “the Sun Sound” to be overrated. See, all it really was was the influence of the two-track over the one-track recording set-up, using the second track for echo – slap-back is what they called it back then. Plus, all of us – Jerry Lee, Elvis, John and myself – had to have big voices just to get heard in that room over the instruments because there was no separation.
‘Sam Phillips – he’s sure a big topic, boy! [Laugh.] See, I think what he got to achieve came by luck rather than inspiration. Sam was a very short-sighted man in many respects. In the studio he’d just bring out these old, thick 45 records of, like, Arthur Crudup singing “Mystery Train” and then tell me, “Sing like that.” The only other thing he’d say was, “Do it again.” He wasn’t one for advising his artists, was Sam. But he was blinded by the early lack of success his records had enjoyed. Like, Elvis only sold a few thousand on Sun.
‘I saw Elvis before I heard him on record. See, Elvis and John were coming from a country tradition to begin with – they were live performers on the country circuit. Country singers, after the war, went out and toured live. Pop singers – the Frankie Laines and the Johnny Rays – they didn’t tour, they made records. There was this distinction and Sam couldn’t see that what he’d got going on in his studio had the capacity to break that barrier and just explode. I once asked him why – we were next door to the Sun Studio sitting in a café, as I recall – why he’d sold Elvis to RCA. He just smiled one of his crazy smiles and said, “For Carl Perkins and $40,000.” He was clearly well pleased with the deal. But at the same time I owe Sam so much. It’s just that the money was so poor – he didn’t even pay union rates – and he had no publishing house outlet, so all of us just had to leave. The last time I really spoke to Sam was just after my first big successes for Monument. I went back to the studio to pay my respects. Sam just looked at me, smiled and said, “You’ll be back.” His brother Judd was in the same room. He just looked at me, rolled his eyes and said, “The hell he will.”
‘I first saw Elvis live in ’54. It was at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, and first thing, he came out and spat on the stage. In fact, he spat out a piece of gum, but that was right away shocking! And he was this . . . this punk kid, a real weird-looking dude. Just a real raw cat, singing like a bird. I can’t over-emphasize how shocking he looked and seemed to me that night. He had Floyd Cramer playing piano along with Scotty Moore and Bill Black too. Did “Maybelline”, then the kids started shouting. There was pandemonium in the audience ’cos the girls took a shine to him and the guys were getting a little jealous. Plus he told some real bad, crude jokes – y’know, this dumb off-colour humour – which weren’t funny and his diction was real coarse like a truck driver’s.
‘His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing, but . . . Actually it affected me exactly the same way as when I first saw that David Lynch film [Blue Velvet]. I didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it with.
‘In the “Ooby Dooby” days I was anything but timid in my performances. I was very much an extrovert, sensation-seeking fella. I moved around more than Elvis or anyone. But then it was over for me very quickly. I just felt that for my style it was a bit shallow. Plus the stationary image was done out of necessity because the microphone was there, most of my songs don’t have instrumental breaks, and I was most comfortable just being there where I could be most effective.
‘At Monument . . . I have to give Fred Foster his due. He didn’t necessarily know much about music, but he was the perfect patron for a young artist because his attitude was “Here’s the canvas, here are the paints – get on with it.” And even though he was credited producer, it was mostly him letting me produce my own sessions.
‘I always felt that each instrument and vocal inflection had to be special. And I’d work out vocal counter-melodies. In fact, I’d spend almost as much time on those as I’d spend on the song itself. For the instrumental accompaniment I’d get with the arranger who scored the charts and sing the lines I wanted. Looking back on it now, I feel I was blessed much like the masters, I guess – the guys who wrote the concertos. I’d just have it all in my head.
‘People say how dark and melancholy my songs appear, but that’s a misnomer, I feel. “Only the Lonely” isn’t a sad song, it’s just a lonely song. Each song highlights one feeling, and whatever that feeling, I think I’ve succeeded in showing the positive elements along with its gloomy side. Like “Crying”: I didn’t mean that song to be taken as neurotic, I wanted to show that the act of crying, for a man – and that record came out in a real macho era when any sign of sensitivity was really frowned on – was a good thing and not some weak . . . defect, almost.
‘“Runnin’ Scared” I got from a newspaper headline on a flight to New York. I could relate to the concept because every relationship I’d ever been in, the girl already had one going when we first met. Even as far back as kindergarten. “In Dreams” – now that song was given to me one night when I was literally falling asleep. I’d written a couple of songs in my dreams and I’d thought they were someone else’s. So I’m half asleep and my thoughts were still racing when that whole introduction just came to me. I thought, “Boy, that’s good. I need to finish that. Too bad these things don’t happen in my dreams.” I woke up the next morning, twenty minutes later I had the whole song written.’
There’s an element about what I call ‘the context of pop’ that is incredibly fickle. For everyone who’s succeeded in attaining longevity there have been periods of great acclaim tempered by periods when they’ve seemed incomprehensibly old-hat, almost obsolete for a time. Then it snaps back and they become utterly contemporary again . . .
‘Exactly, but that comes with the territory. It’s an outside influence that’s not even affected necessarily by stuff like marketing techniques. It’s something, some energy that comes in and says, “This is too plain, this is too accepted, too ordinary for now.” Then it kind of settles back down. But I’ve felt the sting of that. As the sixties turned into the seventies I didn’t hear a whole lot I could relate to so I kind of stood there like a tree where the winds blow and the seasons change and you’re still there and you bloom again. With time. Right now, I feel very, very viable. I genuinely feel that I can put this new album next to anything I’ve done in the past and it won’t seem diminished by the achievements I’m chiefly regarded for. See, being contemporary – you don’t chase it. Certainly, if I chased after what I thought might be contemporary, I’d be completely lost and coming up behind. In my case, I’ve always felt there were no limitations. I remember when I was at school, two or three years before it really began. I was totally anonymous – I mean, I was virtually unknown even at my home. Then, after thirty months, I had a number one record round the world. I didn’t see any limitations then. And still to be viable while being viewed as one of the pioneers of rock is in validation of that.
‘I was standing at the side of the wide stage at the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, and I thought Bruce Springsteen was just going to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, da-da . . .” y’know. Anyway, he went into this . . . soliloquy almost, about me and how my music had really touched him and I’m just wilting as he’s doing it in front of everybody. I mean, I was really touched, really deeply moved. I felt I had been truly recognized, y’know, justified. “Validated” may be the word. At least in that room, for one night . . . You can’t instigate these things. God just has his plans and I have mine.
‘Like, it was 1978 or something and I was together with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris and this tall young guy, real sweet, came up to me and said, just straight out, “I got into showbusiness because of you.” He told me he’d seen me play once in Winnipeg way back when and he just said, “You really moved me. Your performance that night made me decide to really go for becoming a professional musician.” And I only found out later – he was Neil Young.’
You said you were initially shocked by David Lynch’s interpretation of’In Dreams’?
‘Oh God! I was aghast, truly shocked! I remember sneaking into a little cinema in Malibu, where I live, to see it. Some people behind me evidently recognized me because they started laughing when the “In Dreams” sequence came on. But I was shocked, almost mortified, because they were talking about “the candy-coloured clown” in relation to doing a dope deal. Then Dean Stockwell did that weird miming thing with that lamp. Then they were beating up that young kid! I thought, “What in the world?” But later, when I was touring, we got the video out and I really got to appreciate not only what David gave to the song and what the song in turn gave to the film, but how innovative the movie was, how it really achieved this otherworldly quality that added a whole new dimension to “In Dreams”. I find it hard to verbalize why, but Blue Velvet really succeeded in making my music contemporary again.’
Do you feel this image that hangs over you like a shroud – the singer who lost both his first wife and later two children to accidents of fate, the solitary man enmeshed within a life of great tragedy – is a myth?
‘Well, yes, I do. See, those tragedies are things that happen to you. When I realized – and it took a while – that those kinds of things happen to everyone, I didn’t feel so isolated in my sorrow or as put upon as I did initially. But see, Barbara and I will be married twenty years this March, so it’s also a long time ago.’
But you haven’t seemed embittered by those tragedies. Unlike, say, Chuck Berry, whose experiences – albeit different from yours – have made him a very bitter man.
‘But that would be terrible. You have to be forgiving and you have to also acknowledge the love that people give to you. You have to remember the people who called up or took the time to come by and say, “Look. I’m with you.” But most of all, you have to recognize that it’s not a personal attack being made on you. It’s not your fault or any kind of weird process. And I don’t want to be intellectual about it, but you’ve got to somehow let the sorrows of the past go and become just another part of your experience. Looking back, I truly feel that I have spent most of my life in a state of genuine contentment. I’ve always felt myself to be self-sustaining from as far back as I can remember. A part of, but apart. I still feel that way. And once I got over the anguish of those times, a natural balance started to exert itself within me and that came from acknowledging how exciting the times I’ve lived through have been and how I’ve been a party to so many wonderful experiences . . . Now, having established a working relationship between myself and Jesus Christ, I feel I am truly centred and truly focused. There are churches I go to when I can get to them. Not the church I was brought up to believe in, the Church of Christ in Texas, when I was a young boy. I drifted away from that because they didn’t believe in dancing, but I was playing for dances. So there was a conflict – the Church or me. I’m only telling you that to get this in perspective because I still consider the Church to be Jesus Christ and that is my source of strength and balance. We’re all on a spiritual path, one way or another. It’s like I said, God has his plans, and I’ve got mine.’