Orbison Quotes

I close my eyes, then I drift away, into the magic night I softly say. A silent prayer, like dreamers do, then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.

I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room. Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.

I don't believe you, you're not the truth. No one could look as good as you.

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away.

sandy-haired, friendly, smiling, small-town attorney of Pennington, had been born in 1950 in a roach-infested Newark slum. His father had been a construction worker fully employed through World War II and Korea creating new factories, dockyards and government offices along the Jersey Shore. But with the ending of the Korean War, work had dried up. Cal was five when his mother walked out of the loveless union and left the boy to be raised by his father. The latter was a hard man, quick with his fists, the only law on many blue-collar jobs. But he was not a bad man and tried to live by the straight and narrow, and to raise his toddler son to love Old Glory, the Constitution and Joe DiMaggio. Within two years, Dexter Senior had acquired a trailer home so that he could move where the work was available. And that was how the boy was raised, moving from construction site to site, attending whichever school would take him, and then moving on. It was the age of Elvis Presley, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison and the Beatles, over from a country Cal had never heard of. It was also the age of Kennedy, the Cold War and Vietnam. His formal education was fractured to the point of near nonexistence, but he became wise in other ways: streetwise, fight-wise. Like his departed mother, he did not grow tall, topping out at five feet eight inches. Nor was he heavy and muscular like his father, but his lean frame packed fearsome stamina and his fists a killer punch. By seventeen, it looked as if his life would follow that of his father, shoveling dirt or driving a dump truck on building sites. Unless . . . In January 1968 he turned eighteen, and the Vietcong launched the Têt Offensive. He was watching TV in a bar in Camden. There was a documentary telling him about recruitment. It mentioned that if you shaped up, the Army would give you an education. The next day, he walked into the U.S. Army office in Camden and signed on. The master sergeant was bored. He spent his life listening to youths doing everything in their power to get out of going to Vietnam. “I want to volunteer,” said the youth in front of him. The master sergeant drew a form toward him, keeping eye contact like a ferret that does not want the rabbit to get away. Trying to be kindly, he suggested

The smoky queen roosts a fish in the Chimney of Island.

Wild Hearts Run Out Of Time" You're gone again this morning How long will you keep running on and on Can't you see the warning I need you more than ever Before you're gone forever Please don't let your heart run out of time Wild hearts run out of time When you're up against the night Don't stand there all alone In the dying of the light Wild hearts run out of time And you'll need a love like mine To show you hope is there In the sunshine of your mind Wild hearts run out of time Don't let this old world turn you Don't let the wild life hurt you anymore Don't let the bright lights burn you Please don't stand there crying Because the time is flying I can't let your heart run out of time Wild hearts run out of time When you're up against the night Don't stand there all alone In the dying of the light Wild hearts run out of time And you'll need a love like mine To show you hope is there In the sunshine of your mind Wild hearts run of time It could be yours or mine It happens all the time Wild hearts run out of time It could be yours or mine It happens all the time Wild hearts run out of time Wild hearts run out of time

Only the lonely know the way I feel tonight.

I may be a living legend, but that sure don't help when I've got to change a flat tire.

Roy Orbison had damaged his eyes and started wearing the dark glasses that became his trademark.

The amazing Roy Orbison. He was one of those Texan guys who could sail through anything, including his whole tragic life. His kids die in a fire, his wife dies in a car crash, nothing in his private life went right for the big O, but I can’t think of a gentler gentleman, or a more stoic personality. That incredible talent for blowing himself up from five foot six to six foot nine, which he seemed to be able to do on stage. It was amazing to witness.

(The unique echo sound of the Sun studio was achieved through the use of a tape-loop delay and a 7½-ips, instead of the more advanced 15-ips, two-track recorder. The added echo effect heard in Scotty Moore’s guitar relied on a custom-built amplifier, made in Cairo, Illinois, by a man named Ray Butts. Moore got the second amp that Butts built; the first went to Chet Atkins, the third to Carl Perkins, and the fourth to Roy Orbison. When he ceased working with Elvis in September 1957, Moore put the amp in a closet. Several closets later he withdrew it at Carl Perkins’s request and plugged it in for one of Carl’s Mercury sessions early in 1975.)