Script

What do you think of when you hear the name Roy Orbison? Black glasses? A bad haircut? A soaring, operatic voice? A partially shaved bear in a Dracula costume? Pretty Woman? The Travelling Willburys? Maybe even David Lynch movies?

Perhaps nothing at all. Certainly not pimping or writing books about pimping or inventing rap music.

Of all of the founding fathers of Rock ‘N Roll - Elvis, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis – Roy Orbison is the most anonymous – a figure that most know, but few know much about.

We know his music. He had 22 songs in the Billboard Top 40 between 1960 and 1964, many of which remain firmly entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist. Only the Lonely. Crying. Blue Bayou. It’s Over. Pretty Woman. You Got It.

The music can be ethereal, enchanting. Other-worldly. Heartbreaking. Many other adjectives. The songs often defy the rules of the craft, ignore traditional structure. Typical early rock filtered through a unique mind, tweaked with strings and an emo sensibility - endearing innocence and vulnerability.

And that voice. Equal parts Pavarotti, Dean Martin, and hysterical grandmother, it soars above everything else, twists and turns and crescendos. It holds you in its grip.

There’s a suspense to it all. How does this work? Will it keep working? Every song seems like it’s on the verge falling apart, every note on the verge of breaking.

But it doesn’t. They don’t.

He’s no James Brown, though. Man, can you imagine that episode. Anyway . . .

We also know the look. Two looks really – the early years and the later years.

The early years, starting from the top: Thick, goth black hair, drowning in mousse and wrangled into a helmet tight pompadour perched above a pale, southern, weak chinned, nerd face; Small, close set, wonky eyes barely visible under thick lensed, black framed, prescription sunglasses, over a small-mouthed, dopey, slightly down-turned smile, all coming together and looking better than it had any right to – greater than the sum of its parts and sitting atop a thin, normal style body in a classic black and white suit.

In the later years, the pompadour had fallen, long and still stiff, outlining the contours of an increasingly doughy face, like a black candle melted over a peeled potato. He grew chubby and favored the least flattering outfit possible for this development – a polyester jumpsuit or, alternately, a more flattering suit, bolo tie combo.

Roy Orbison was a dark, homely, beardless wizard. A conjurer of sadness. A fascinating, important, weird figure in the birth of rock and in the decades after, and it’s time he got his due: the white guilt replacement topic of a solitary, three-fourths episode of a little loved, little listened to, brilliant podcast.

An anecdote, to begin, told by Tom Waits to Charlie Rose. For reference, the concert referred to is the Black And White Night, a kind of victory lap show, where Roy Orbison was backed by some of the artists that count him as an influence, including Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, KD Lang, Elvis Costello, Jackson Brown, T-Bone Burnett, and Waits:

“This is an odd story. It was after the concert, The Black and White Thing, it was a few hours after that and some of us were still hanging out back at Roy’s hotel room, drinking and, you know, um, imbibing in some other, uh, potent potables, if you will – only a few men left standing. Me, Roy, and Jackson, but I think Jackson was kind of teetering on the edge of the abyss at that point, so I suppose he probably doesn’t remember. Anyway,