{"id":457121,"date":"2025-09-28T05:24:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T05:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457121\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T05:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T05:24:14","slug":"the-message-that-changed-roy-orbisons-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457121\/","title":{"rendered":"The message that changed Roy Orbison’s life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/p>\n

(Credit: Jack de Nijs for Anefo)<\/p>\n

Sat 27 September 2025 20:30, UK <\/p>\n

As tragic and shocking as Roy Orbison<\/a>\u2019s death was in 1988, a heart attack did him in at age 52, there was at least a sense among his fans that one of pop music\u2019s greatest vocalists had finally earned his long-overdue recognition during the last few years of his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After nearly 20 years without a hit song, the icon of early \u201860s rock n\u2019 roll was suddenly everywhere in the late 1980s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; scored a massie fucking hit with a new version of \u2018In Dreams\u2019 for David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet; joined forces with Bob Dylan and George Harrison in the supergroup Traveling Wilburys; and was the focal point of a live concert film, Black and White Night, in which he shared the stage with Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, and Bonnie Raitt, among others.<\/p>\n

A month before his death, Orbison also completed work on his first all-new album of material in a decade, Mystery Girl, which posthumously reached the Top Five in the US and the UK and served as a goddamn powerful, if unintended, farewell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his surge back into the mainstream, the ever-humble Orbison always kept his success in perspective, calling his voice a \u201cgift\u201d<\/a> and saying the same about life itself: \u201cthe opportunity for the journey is a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview published just two days before his death in December of 1988, Orbison told the Boston Globe that there had been two key turning-point moments for him in recent years; changes in his outlook that prepared him for the good fortune that followed. One was his return to religious faith. \u201cIf you grow spiritually, you do what\u2019s in front of you and let the results speak for themselves,\u201d he said. The other big realisation came from something that would seem considerably more innocuous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While touring in Canada in the early \u201880s, Orbison was walking toward his concert venue for the night and happened to peer up at the marquee. He was in a dark fucking place at the time, struggling with the state of his career and some of the trauma of his past<\/a>, including the death of his first wife, Claudette, in a motorcycle crash in 1966 and the loss of their two sons just a year later in a house fire. Time had not healed all wounds, and insecurity still plagued him. The marquee didn\u2019t say anything profound. It simply read: \u201cRoy Orbison \u2014 Sold Out.\u201d But it stopped Roy in his tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I realised all of a sudden,\u201d he told the Globe, \u201cwas that most people came to hear me. They knew I was gonna sing anyway, and they appreciated me before I even walked on. I think everyone needs to grow a little bit and work on themselves, and that was one of the things.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine that the guy who\u2019d been singing \u2018Oh, Pretty Woman\u2019 and \u2018Only the Lonely\u2019 for all those years didn\u2019t realise the love he had from his audience, but the fact that he eventually embraced it is certainly a comforting thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to be so insecure that it\u2019s going to affect your performance,\u201d Orbison concluded in that final interview. \u201cIt just dawned on me that there was a little bit of love there to start with. So, I just relaxed and everything started turning around.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Jack de Nijs for Anefo) Sat 27 September 2025 20:30, UK As tragic and shocking as Roy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,119012,13532,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-457121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-roy-orbison","11":"tag-the-traveling-wilburys","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115280259820536505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}