Over the years, though, Orbison and I had fallen apart. Oldies radio usually only offered two variations on that great Orbison flavor, either the aforementioned "Only the Lonely" or the inevitable "Pretty Woman." And as a former band geek, I had heard "Pretty Woman" one too many mutilated times in marching practice to ever want to play the song again.
My journey with Orbison was stunted because I didn't want to buy one of his records. How could I explain it to my friends with their Euro-mullets and Nico impressions, or to my mother, who was finally adjusting to the distorted noise of the Pixies? Besides, being a teenager, I wanted to avoid pleasing my mother too much. The imagined look of joy on her face when I returned home with an Orbison record was just too much for this so-called alterna-teen to bear. And so I let Orbison sit in the back of my mind, until my junior year of college. That's when I fell back into the bliss of admiration, via the films of David Lynch; first through the gorgeous Spanish reinterpretation of "Crying" featured in Mulholland Drive, and then further into the pit with Blue Velvet and Orbison's surreal fairy tale of "In Dreams."
And now, here we are today. Roy Orbison's recently-reissued 1963 album In Dreams, his third for Monument Records, is staring at me while I write this. In Dreams is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. No other album could create a reality this convincing, a reality of dashing, lovelorn Quixotes searching for love, searching for a home, searching for a bull to fight to push away the ocean of madness.
"Blue Bayou" is an ecstasy of falling and fighting with its driving marching rhythm, the operatic trumpets which are cowed by our hero, Roy, as he embraces the magic of the moon and the stars and the night. He becomes the white knight of the desert, and those who cannot love the fantastic will settle back into their ocean of "easy-listening" scorn. But for us true believers, there's the hybrid of big Broadway finish combined with a driving rockabilly rhythym section that makes up the teenage summertime melodrama "No One Will Ever Know."
Shit, the only song on In Dreams that I can't rave about is Orbison's Christmas song, "Pretty Paper." And it's not because the song dives into schmaltzy, red-green scented depths; it's just because I will always associate "Pretty Paper" with the unfortunate Christmas when my older sister and I had to help push the family car out ot the ditch, while my parents argued over who had the right idea to get us out of that ditch.
Article comments
1 - shane
Thanks for that beautiful piece of writing. Over the last few months I've really been getting into Roy. I used to just know "Pretty Woman" and "You Got It", but after hearing "You're Not Alone Anymore" from the Wilburys first album I knew I had to discover more about him. For my money, he's the best singer ever. Just when you think there's no way he can hit that final note of the song, he belts it out like some otherworldly deity. I agree with you about him needing to be rediscovered much like what has happened with Johnny Cash in the last decade or so.
One more thing, you're right on with your critique about the whole emo/screamo movement with their fake emotions and scripted torture.