Roy Orbison Forever

# Ooo-ooo-wahhh-ahhh

# Only the lonely

# Only the lonely

# Know the way I... People that are completely unique -

you don't so much admire them as just marvel at them.

# Only the lonely... #

I was sitting in the living room with me mum and me aunty,

and it came on the radio.

What a voice. Yeah. Fantastic.

And I always liked his stuff, bought his records.

Me mum and me aunty were going, "Ooh, it's too sexy!"

# Only in dreams

Sexy AND cool,

Roy Orbison was perhaps the most humble and influential rock star

the world ever knew.

# Dreams

All of us, in studying the craft of making a good record,

had studied Roy's work.

In many ways, my whole life

has been fashioned,

subconsciously, by him.

# Dreams... #

# I'm going back some day

# Gonna stay on Blue Bayou

# Where the folks are fine

# And the world is mine

# Blue Bayou... #

His unique voice, his unique sound,

his totally unique appearance

made Roy Orbison one of a kind, especially in Britain,

where his talent was embraced and supported by rock royalty.

# Golden days before they end

# Whisper... #

I think Roy and England had a love affair.

Roy loved the British and the British loved Roy.

# Pretty woman

# Walkin' down the street... #

By the 1980s,

Roy Orbison's status as a living legend was well and truly confirmed,

when some of the biggest names in the music business queued up

to be in his backing band for his Black And White Night concert.

# ..as good as you

Roy and I talked about doing a show

that would be a performance show for Roy.

So we set a time, finally -

September, 1987.

# I couldn't help but see

# Pretty woman... #

It had been a while since people

had focused on Roy's music quite this way.

A lot of care was taken to do

the songs justice the way I believe the show does.

# Rrrrrrrrrr! #

I'm being asked all the time how this wonderful cast came together.

Everybody just seemed to be available at that particular time.

If we would had done it a month before, a month later,

I don't think everybody could have been there.

I don't think the entire ensemble

was put together until we were all on the set of

the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel.

I know Bruce Springsteen arrived at the very last minute.

How did you get that?

My big memory of that night was

Bruce arriving, I think, for the sound check,

and then realising that his memory of the songs

was not the same as the ability to play them.

# Sweet dreams...

Then you go: # Sweet dreams

You might wanna go under me. Yeah, I may have to!

When he actually looked at the charts and realised

that there were odd counts in some of the songs,

I have an image of him sitting with his guitar,

with, like, a cassette Walkman,

comparing what he had obviously memorised,

over a couple of decades since the records came out,

to what was written on the page,

and frantically closing the distance between the two things

if he was gonna play on a couple of these songs.

I thought that's the measure of how much he loved Roy

because he was really dedicated.

# Sweet dreams, baby

# Oh, how long

# Must I dream? #

OK.

# Sweet dreams, baby... #

Orbison clearly inspired anyone who was anyone in music.

But just where did all the raw talent come from?

Born in 1936 in the small town of Vernon in Texas,

from an early age Roy was single-minded

in his pursuit of a career in music.

My mom and dad gave me a guitar when I was six years old.

I always wanted to be a singer.

My father asked me,

when I was about six or seven,

maybe even earlier...

I don't know whether I was playing the guitar at the time or not,

but he said, "Know what you're gonna be when you grown up?"

and I said, "I'll be a singer."

I was able to get on a radio show when I was eight years old -

an amateur hour -

and I showed up so often that they made me a part of the show.

And when I was 14, I think,

I moved to West Texas and formed a group.

Well, we were from Wink, Texas, and so we were the Wink Westerners,

and when we got a bit more popular, we became the Teen Kings.

# We'll hang out and raise some fun

# We'll stay out till after one... #

I met him the first time in Odessa and Midland, Texas.

He had a group that played

on the local television show there,

and the song was called Ooby Dooby.

# Ooby dooby, ooby dooby

# Ooby dooby, dooby, dooby, dooby, dooby

# Dooby doo... #

I made a demonstration record called Ooby Dooby,

and sent that then to Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee.

He asked me - could I be there in three days?

And so I grabbed my group together and we made the record

and I dropped out of the university

- the junior college that I was attending then -

and went on the road within two or three months.

What I thought at the time

was the smallest voice

was Roy Orbison.

Sam Phillips says he had to put

the microphone down his throat to pick him up.

But I think Sam had the wrong kind of microphone,

because his later records prove

that he's not only got a great, strong voice,

but he's one of the greatest singers in our business.

But he saw his own potential, as did others,

and he moved to a bigger label and had bigger records.

# Pretty woman

# Walkin' down the street

# Pretty woman

# The kind I like to meet

# Pretty woman... #

Searching for ways to fulfil that potential,

Roy looked across the Atlantic to an early-'60s music culture in Britain

that was more than ready to embrace something new.

# Mercy!

In the early-'60s,

I worked for Decca as a promotion man

and my job, apart from promoting records,

was to look after all the American artists who came over to London.

I was 21 years old, and it was a dream job.

# Are you lonely, just like me?

# Rrrrrrrrrr!

# Pretty woman, stop a while

# Pretty woman... #

Very American, Southern, polite -

and that was my initial impression of Roy.

Very softly spoken, very polite, very appreciative.

He was a gentleman - a real gentleman, actually.

And that's what he had - that kind of rather sweet,

Southern states of America charm that he had.

# Pretty paper

# Pretty ribbons

# Of blue

# Wrap your presents

# To your darling

# From you

# Pretty pencils

# To write - I love... #

He would invariably come with his wife Claudette

and his boys.

They'd have a little apartment,

and I would spend a lot of time with them as a family,

cos they were very family, and...

he loved having the boys around,

he loved having Claudette around.

And so I became

part of their family.

# Downtown shoppers

# Christmas is nigh

# And there he sits... #

He always reminded me of a preacher, he was so gentle.

Very, very sweet. Loved his kids, loved the family.

He was just a lovely guy, I mean, we were all mental.

We were young and mad. Roy was very...

a very polite American.

He was very sweet. We were Scousers -

hard cases, nutters.

He was a gentleman.

We were idolising Americans at this point.

You know, we had Cliff and we had Tommy Steele, but...

We were just kids from Liverpool, who knew nothing,

following Roy Orbison, a massive star,

whose songs we'd sung for years,

and we're there with him,

and watching him - a dream.

# Well, I got a woman as mean as she can be

# Some-a-times I think she's almost mean as me... #

The Brits were so enamoured of American...

of rock and roll, um...

they possibly appreciated them more than the Americans did.

The songs seemed more hip and the performances were more hip,

and that's what we were all about.

I think any British recording artist from that period

would probably tell you the same thing.