The Big O in Britain Page #3

I think it was such a gift for him to have fallen in love with me before,

so he did have a focus. It gave him a chance to create a life that he really wanted

and that was one of a real stable family and to have more kids.

You know, Roy had just such an incredible gentle strength.

He scaled the heights and the lows.

# Lonely rivers sigh... #

I arrived in December of '68

in Tennessee.

And then we travelled in America and we got married in March.

We had Roy Kelton Junior, who was born in 1970, and Alex in '74,

and we had Wesley from the marriage with Claudette.

If you would have seen Roy with the kids, you'd never have suspected that he'd lost two kids

in a house fire while he was touring in England.

# Time goes by... #

He came through it in a really great way, a very surprising way.

He came back stronger than ever after this terrible loss of his two boys.

He came back with all of the determination and the will

to go ahead and be the great artist he is.

INTRO TO "Pretty Woman"

As the '70s dawned, a new-look Roy returned again and again to tour for his UK fans.

And, of course, the Orbison family went, too.

# Pretty woman walking down the street... #

When it was tour time, we all went. Nannies, everybody just went... out on the road.

Baby formulas, baby cribs, perambulators, whatever it took.

You know?

Mercy!

We would be, tours or no tours, probably four or five months out of the year in London.

We practically lived here in the '70s, and loved it.

# Pretty woman

# You look lovely as can be... #

He loved England. He loved the British people. Something about them Roy liked.

I think it was a love affair. Roy loved England.

He loved everything about it.

He loved the food - and that was tough to love in the '60s!

He came up to my house in the Midlands

and he brought with him,

he showed me in his trunk. "Look what I've brought!"

And he'd got, like, four sets of pie and mash.

You know, for everybody. Brought from London.

# Pretty woman, say you'll stay... #

Roy, I think, just loved the English way of life.

He would love to listen to accents, see places in Scotland, visit castles.

And walk the hills. Nut case!

We were in bed, he was walking the hills! He just loved Britain. And we loved him.

# Pretty woman... #

He was very real. He wasn't slick and he wasn't showbizzy.

He didn't have a patter. He didn't... He wasn't a schmoozy kind of guy.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you coming tonight, very much. We're happy to be here. Hope you are.

He was that same person, onstage and offstage.

It was never about ego.

You know, it was just about being himself.

# Only the lonely

# Know the way I feel tonight... #

It's inherent in the British nature

to admire modesty,

especially when it's accompanied with a great talent.

# There goes my baby... #

He was a shy man,

a family man, a quiet man.

Who he was was just as much a part of everything as what he was singing.

# Know why-y-y

# I cry... #

By the time we got married, all that was important was to have a great relationship

and to live life

and to sort of mend those incredible painful times

and to really enjoy life and do what he felt he was called on this earth for.

# Yeah, a woman.. #

He said, "For that I'll go anywhere. Smallest club, biggest arenas."

THRASHING GUITARS

Though Roy still had a loyal following, the mid-'70s saw a change in the British music scene.

The rejection of the mainstream and the stripped-down instrumentation of punk rock seemed, at first glance,

to leave little room for The Big O.

# Pretty woman Won't you pardon me?

# Pretty woman I couldn't help but see

# Pretty woman, you look lovely... # See, I can't get up there!

When I was in the Sex Pistols, if you were a closet music fan, like myself,

there were loads of bands I'd have got hung for if it had gotten out that I liked them.

Would he come under that umbrella that it's old hat and you shouldn't be liking them?

We were against all that nonsense.

I don't think that is the case.

I don't think he ever fell into that bag of being out of flavour.

When I was growing up in the '70s, Roy was kind of an anachronism.

He was completely out of kilter with the times and, em...

People I was hanging out with didn't have Roy Orbison albums. They just didn't.

He was from a different era.

But then as the '70s begat punk rock,

there became an interest in the '50s.

I think punk rock was a '50s thing, in a way. A rebel without a cause.

The short haircuts, the stance of Elvis, stripping things down to the bone.

So it was through the door that punk rock opens that Roy Orbison walks into my life.

You have to remember, Roy didn't get to be Roy Orbison by being... like anything but outside the norm.

Those guys in Memphis, when they created rockabilly,

they didn't create rockabilly by being the boy next door.

# Just running scared

# Feeling low... #

Although he was right in there at the very beginning with Jerry Lee and Elvis,

I think because he was so unique, his particular type of singing,

he didn't really come in or out of fashion.

And when rock'n'roll came to England, and then English music went back to America,

Roy was sort of outside of that.

# If he came back

# Which one would you choose? #

I think birds liked his music more than blokes. But he wasn't a pansy,

singing songs about being hurt by some bird and his feelings, you know?

# His head in the air

# My heart was breaking Which one... #

It's not a sissy thing for a man to sing about emotions.

It's real. And I think everybody can relate to that.

He does it in such a way that is so open, he opens his heart completely.

Not being a wimp.

I think that was the magnificent part about the singer and the songwriter Roy Orbison.

He turned something that could have been a weakness into a strength.

It was very unusual at the time. Since then, everybody's crying like a tart.

But in them days it was quite bold to say he cried.

He was one of the first Top 40 artists

to take away or veer off from the traditional way of saying things.

Which he did in those classic songs.

I had to write the songs that I wanted to sing because no one else really would at the time.

Then I thought since I wrote them I might sing them better than the next person. It goes like that.

What the style is is basically me and my personal taste.

Roy the singer, people talk about all the time. Everybody curtsies to the voice and so they should.

The thing people don't talk about enough, as far as I'm concerned,

is how innovative this music was, how radical in terms of its songwriting.

I don't think in terms of two verses and a chorus

or the accepted method of songwriting. Wherever I want to go, that's where I go.

# In dreams I walk... #

The classic pop structure is, you know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus,

middle eight, chorus, end. I mean most pop songs in the world are like that.

And then you hear In Dreams.

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