Roy Orbison did not think the sum total of his life was tragic, according to a Rolling Stone interview in 1988. But the interview occurred scant weeks prior to his sudden death from a massive heart attack, cutting short a life that ought to have lasted longer than 52 years and a triumphant professional comeback.
What is that if not tragic?
One of the constants of Orbison’s life was his music. He toured relentlessly from the early days of success through his slow comeback in the eighties. He was faithful to it right up to the end.
In spite of the abuses of life on the road and the horrific tragedies that assailed his life in the last half of the sixties, Orbison’s voice remained undiminished in its tone and its range. To hear his first record Sings Lonely and Blue and his last record Mystery Girl is to hear virtually the same voice, able to hum low and soar high.
Mystery Girl was released posthumously in 1989 and peaked on the charts at no. 5, the highest position of any of his records. I was in my final year in junior high when it came out and I bought it. Probably an odd choice for a junior higher who out to have known nothing about the man.
Allow me to explain.
A fact about me that may be stranger than the previous one is that even as a junior higher I was a fiercely loyal Bob Dylan fan, which is saying a lot given that this was the eighties.
So I noticed, Roy Orbison’s resurgence because of the absurd supergroup The Traveling Wilburys which featured Dylan with his pals Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and, of course, Orbison.
My father bought the album when it came out in October 1988 and hated it because he felt it was beneath the collective, nay, even the individual talent of the group whereas I thought that was kind of the point.
Popular music was becoming a malicious thing, totally different from the time 20 years earlier when the individual Wilbury’s ruled the roost. So a grinning, chortling “pop” album from these bonafide icons, who so many claimed as inspirations, was positively subversive.
This was also my first exposure to Orbison, and I was transfixed by his voice, especially on the ballad “Not Alone Anymore.” But throughout the album, his vocal parts cut into the giggly atmosphere with poise and class, a decided contrast to the other Wilburys.
When the Traveling Wilbury’s began their chart climb to no. 3 and what would eventually be triple-platinum sales, people were already framing Orbison’s comeback in terms of the new solo album that was complete and on its way to stores at the beginning of the year.
Then on Wednesday, December 7, we heard of his death that had happened late the prior day, and his triumph turned into a tragedy. This was the first celebrity death that meant something to me and it seemed woefully unfair.
It was as if God had been trying to get Orbison all his life. He missed him in 1966 when Orbison’s first wife Claudette died in a motorcycle accident (Orbison was riding just in front of her), and again in 1968 when a house fire took the lives of two of his children, and again in 1979 when he had triple bypass surgery. But He finally got him just as things were looking up.
Mystery Girl as a whole is produced by Orbison’s second wife Barbara (whom he had married in 1969 and with whom he had two children) but a small army of dedicated friends are credited as producing and helping Orbison write the individual numbers.
Former ELO frontman Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty’s stalwart guitar player Mike Campbell are ubiquitous through the album. Producing and/or writing credits also include Orbison himself, T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, and, of all people, Bono.
More Orbison friends can be found in the musician credits including Petty, various Heart Breakers, George Harrison, Al Kooper, and Steve Cropper. But the album does not feel random or self-serving on the part of his admirers, at least not all of it.
“She’s a Mystery Girl” was written by U2’s Bono and The Edge and sounds like it, but that merely shows how effortlessly Orbison reaches the notes that Bono strains to get. In spite of this and the quirky “Wind Surfer,” the album has a remarkable continuity, owing, one assumes, to Barbara watching over the whole project.
Side one, dominated by Jeff Lynne’s production, is where you find the ballads and uptempo numbers that you would normally associate with Orbison’s sound. “You Got It” is the perfect nothing-changes-my-love-for-you opener, and what I call the dream sequence, “In the Real World” and “(All I Can Do Is) Dream You,” formally recognizes a major theme in Orbison’s work.
But on side two the sound branches to other areas with the formerly mentioned title-ish track being one example. Costello’s “The Comedians” is a cinematic tragi-comic take on Orbison’s working theme of heartbreak, while Steve Cropper and the Memphis Horns bring a Motown-feel to “The One and Only,” penned in part by Orbinson’s son Wesley.
Though much of the album sounds victorious, loss pervades the content as it has much of his work (even before his personal tragedies) and the confessional, Mike Campbell produced “Careless Heart” brings the album that starts with dedicated love to a close with love’s failure.
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In the second song on the album, “In the Real World,” Orbison sings “But in the real world/ There are things that we can’t change/ And endings come to us/ In ways/ That we can’t rearrange.”
The endings and the sorrows that he sang of made up part of the life he lived but not all of it. Though it seemed God was out to get him, Orbison thought differently.
In his final interview, Jim Sullivan writing for the Guardian quotes Orbison as saying: “You set out to whip the world . . . And then when you get beat up a little bit . . . In my case, you say, ‘Father, I’m gonna let you have it. I’ve done what I can do.’ You turn your will over to God.”
And then: “I’ve been developing a personal relationship with myself and with Jesus Christ and it just kind of smooths everything . . . If you have faith, then your whole life is put in a new perspective. You get to work, but enjoy the work at the same time. If you grow spiritually, you do what’s in front of you and let the results speak for themselves.”
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/04/roy-orbison-rocks-backpages
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/roy-orbisons-triumphs-and-tragedies-103421/
https://www.biography.com/musician/roy-orbison