I hope that my readers here at Word & Song won’t mind listening again to a great song about one man’s dream of escaping from his lonely life by dreaming of going back home. If you missed this song before, please do listen now and read about the tremendously talented Roy Orbison. And today I’m attaching a bonus version of Roy’s song which he recorded later in his career, surrounded by a stage full of talented singers and musicians.
Sometimes a Song leads us to surprising stories. In the case of today’s song, the story is about a singer/songwriter whose career survived several decades until his unfortunate death from a heart attack at age 52. He was a contemporary of the likes of teen heartthrobs Pat Boone (once a schoolmate of his), the Everly Brothers, and Elvis Presley. In fact, his first hit single was a song that he had previously tried to sell to both the Everly Brothers and to Elvis. That song was a 1961 RCA release called “Only the Lonely.”
Who was this masked man, you ask? He is a man whose mask of black sunglasses literally became his trademark: mild-mannered and unpresuming and immensely talented — and driven to live by his music — Roy Orbison, the fellow Life Magazine once dubbed “an anonymous celebrity.” Well, that’s show business.
I guess it’s everyone’s fate to be anonymous a good part of the time. There’s a charming story about just that (and the story cuts two ways) involving Roy Orbison and the Beatles, in 1963, right before their famous “invasion” of America. It seems that Roy and the boys were booked as joint headliners on a tour around the UK. Roy had plenty of fans in England, and while the boys were rising stars on their own side of the pond, Roy hadn’t ever heard of them. So when he got to England, he jokingly asked, “What IS a Beatle?” In answer he got a tap on the shoulder from John Lennon, who replied, “I am!” The truth is that both acts were rather anonymous to each other.
This was not a case of a warmup act being hired to front for the more famous act, either, although Orbison was the more experienced performer. So the question of who should “go on” first came up. Roy Orbison volunteered, and the Beatles stood backstage while he did his set, listening to the the roar of the audience, and watching Roy perform encore after encore after encore .. fourteen times .. each time to cries for more! At the fifteenth call for him to return to the stage, Paul and John had to physically restrain Roy so that they could begin their part of the show. But evidently the boys all got on swimmingly in a short time.
Still everywhere he went abroad on tour, Roy Orbison was mobbed by adoring fans. In August of 1963, with “It’s Over” and again in June of 1964, with “Pretty Woman,” Orbison became the only American with two number-one hits in England in a single year. And “Pretty Woman” reached number one in the US as well — right in the middle of the British Invasion, when the US charts were overwhelmed with hit songs by Brit bands. In the short space of two years, Roy Orbison toured England and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys, playing to rave reviews everywhere. But like all barnstorming acts, things were bound to stall out eventually …
As the 1960’s progressed, bands either led or followed the countercultural movement which was “in the air.” Roy Orbison was out of step with this movement, and while he continued working at his music, his record sales hit a slump that lasted for a decade — except that quite a number of well-known performers continued to record his songs and sing them in their concerts. By 1976, Orbison was making something of a comeback, and had taken to the road again, this time as a front act for The Eagles, who met and first worked together as a back-up band for a Linda Ronstadt concert and immediately became a huge success on their own. Perhaps inspired by Roy’s front work for the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt released her own huge hit cover of his “Blue Bayou,” which I believe is the best recording of the song ever made, including Orbison’s later reprise of his 1963 original. Some of you may argue that point with me, and I do think it’s a close call. Orbison was known for his tremendous vocal range which went from baritone through tenor and reached somewhere between three and four octaves. If you listen to Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Blue Bayou,” you will note that she begins in the tenor range — although she was a natural alto — in order to be able to make the stretch for the last note. Orbison did not attempt this high reach at all in his first version, though he sometimes did it in concert, singing falsetto. And he credited Linda Ronstadt’s revival of “Blue Bayou” with restoring his music to the public memory and with jump-starting his stalled career.
In the ten years which remained to him, Roy Orbison did revive his career, and shortly before his death in 1988 released a single album and another as a joint project — brainchild of his longtime friend, George Harrison — uniting Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and Roy as a fictitious band of brothers called “The Traveling Willburys.” Orbison received a number of posthumous awards, including a Grammy in 1990 for Best Rock Performance by a Group or Duo for “The Traveling Willburys” album.
Orbison is positively revered now by historians of popular music, particularly of rock n’ roll, and was highly appreciated in his own time by his musical peers across the genres. He ran in the same circles as Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, Bob Dylan, Mick Jaggar, George Harrison, The Beach Boys, and Bruce Springsteen, who for a long time ended all of his concerts with a set of Roy Orbison’s songs. Springsteen was chosen to deliver the speech when Roy Orbison was inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and paid him the high compliment of saying that he had set out in his own career to “sing like Roy Orbison” .. but that “NOBODY sang like Roy Orbison.”
A Note about the Shades
Roy Orbison was not blind. He WAS very nearsighted. On that tour with the Beatles I mentioned above, he lost his regular glasses. With no way to replace them, he had to wear his dark prescription sunglasses everywhere. And on stage, he found that they made his eyes more comfortable. And he said, no, he had not decided to wear the dark glasses just to look weird!
Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber.
Just listened to Linda’s 1977 performance, Simple Man, Simple Dreams. I am destroyed, and you are right.🥳
Glory to God!
Linda also sang once or twice with a bluegrass band I've enjoyed, The Seldom Scene. She sang backup vocals on their 15th anniversary album in the late 1980s.