Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Roy Orbison: In Dreams

Roy Orbison: In Dreams radio special
Script

Robin Gibb: It was so revolutionary to hear a voice like this, part operatic, and part, and part rock, it was just totally new, and to me actually devastating

Roy: I listened to the radio all the time, that was the big thing when I was growing up. And I learned all the songs, and all of those influences just sort of settled into one thing, and I'm the result of whatever that was (laughs).

LAURA: ROY ORBISON IS ONE OF THE cultural ICONS OF AMERICAN MUSIC. YOU CAN PICTURE HIM IMMEDIATELY, STANDING STILL WITH HIS GUITAR, WEARING THE DARK SUIT, THE SUNGLASSES. BUT THE MOST STRIKING ASPECT OF ROY ORBISON WAS HIS VOICE. WHEN HE SANG, A SINGLE PHRASE COULD FILL A ROOM WITH EMOTION AND FORCE.

IN THE NEXT HOUR, WE'RE GOING TO LISTEN TO A LOT OF THOSE CLASSIC ROY ORBISON SONGS. WE'RE ALSO GOING TO HEAR FROM PRODUCERS FRED FOSTER, JEFF LYNNE AND DON WAS, FRIENDS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE GIBB BROTHERS, AND ROY HIMSELF ABOUT HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT.

I'M LAURA CANTRELL, AND WELCOME TO "IN DREAMS," OUR CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ROY ORBISON.

HERE'S ROY.

Roy: I had a local television show in West Texas, and everybody that came through to play the Odessa Coliseum would come on the show to promote that show, and I of course appeared on the same show as well. And Johnny Cash came through, and I asked John about getting on a record label, and he said call Sam Philips, and tell him I told you to call. And I did that, and Sam said Johnny Cash doesn't run my record company and click, hung up the phone. But I had recorded a song called Ooby Dooby at Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, and I sent that to Sam Philips. And he called me and said can you be here in three days, so I got the label very quickly after that.

Music: Ooby Dooby (excerpt)

A BIT OF "OOBY DOOBY" BY ROY ORBISON FROM 1956, ONE OF ONLY A FEW SONGS HE DID FOR SUN RECORDS.

Roy: The first fella that I recorded for, Sam Philips, he wanted everything up, everything fast, with the most energy possible. one of his assistants said Roy you'll never make a ballad singer, so just go for all this stuff, but I couldn't stay with that for very long.

WHILE HE DID STAY ON WITH SUN RECORDS, HE ENDED UP PART OF ROCK AND ROLL HISTORY.

Roy: In the Sun days, with me and Elvis and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee, we just happened to have been playing for a while ? Elvis played since was a boy and I did too, so did Jerry Lee, and we were looking for a place to put our voices on record. And it turns out that it was one of the founding places of rockabilly or rock and roll.

Music: Rockhouse (excerpt)

THAT'S ROY ORBISON SINGING "ROCKHOUSE," ONE OF HIS EARLY TUNES FOR SAM PHILIPS OF SUN RECORDS.

HIS TIME WITH SUN RECORDS FINISHED IN THE LATE 50'S, AND ROY WAS THEN SIGNED BY CHET ATKINS TO RCA RECORDS.

Chet Atkins: I think Roy Orbison, I first became aware of him when I was doing a lot of recordings, and I guess Sam sold Elvis and sold some of the artists. and we made I think one session or two. And I really didn't know what to do with him. I didn't know whether we wanted to go country. And he's quiet and I'm quiet, and we never had many conversations. But that's the first I ever heard him, we made some pretty good records, but they were typical Nashville at that time and we didn't reach out and try to do something different. I blame myself for that. I should have seen the greatness in him in the quality of his voice and everything.

ROY WAS DROPPED FROM RCA AFTER A SHORT TIME, BUT he soon FOUND A NEW HOME.

ROY ORBISON.

Roy: I was looking for a new label, and my manager at the time said come in and meet Mr. Foster, who owns Monument Records. So I flew into Nashville to meet him, and they said you're late for your session. I said no, I'm not, they said yes you are. They rushed me over to RCA Victor studio where they recorded these things. And I waved to Fred as I went in and cut the record. And of course we didn't release that record, but we did release Uptown. But it was like, I started recording for him before we even met.

MONUMENT RECORDS FOUNDER AND PRODUCER, FRED FOSTER.

Fred Foster: first of all, Roy was, I don't know if his confidence had been shaken by all this, being on RCA and then pulled off or dropped or whatever happened, I don't exactly know, but he was sort of timid and not really projecting really well, see. And I don't think he had found his niche with songs, of course, at that point, not really. And I knew we were going to have to go a different direction.

Roy: There was quite a change from Sun to Monument, and from the style of singing, and I think it was a matter of confidence and trust in myself and the record company owner.

ROY HAD TO TRUST IN FRED FOSTER QUICKLY, SINCE FOSTER STARTED IMMEDIATELY EXPERIMENTING WITH NEW WAYS TO RECORD ROY'S VOICE. FOR THE "UPTOWN" SESSION, ROY GOT HIS WISH TO INCLUDE STRINGS, BUT HE WAS GETTING DROWNED OUT.

FRED FOSTER.

FF: I asked Bill Porter, the engineer, what would happen if we put Roy over in the corner and put that coat rack in front of him so we could get more level on it. He said well, I don't know, we can try, but do you think he'll be able to hear then? I said well he ought to be able to hear, he just won't be able to see us. So not only did we pull the coat rack over and put coats on it, but there were blankets and so on back in the maintenance room, so we got those and we really isolated that corner. And it worked great.

Music: Uptown

"UPTOWN" SUNG BY ROY ORBISON FOR HIS NEW LABEL, MONUMENT RECORDS.

ROY AND FRED FOSTER STARTED WORKING TOGETHER CLOSELY TO FIND THE NEXT HIT SONG.

FRED: all of Roy's songs, I didn't think any of them were really what we needed. Now, Only the Lonely was a song that had a 32-bar out of tempo verse. It took two and half minutes to sing the verse. And Only the Lonely was very short, the body of the song. But he had this beautiful song, it's called Come Back To Me My Love, was about his teenage sweetheart dying on her 16th birthday. He had this beautiful background vocal figure in Come Back To Me My Love, very unique, I thought. and I was humming it to myself, and instead of going in to Come Back To Me My Love in my head, I went and said Only the Lonely. I knocked on the door and woke him up. And I said, we got it.

"ONLY THE LONELY" BECAME ROY'S BIG BREAK, CATCHING THE ATTENTION OF A YOUNG JEFF LYNNE IN ENGLAND.

JEFF: Yeah, the first [ahem] pardon me, the first time I ever heard a Roy Orbison song was on the radio and I was sitting in the living room with me mom and dad's house. And me mom was sat with my auntie and Only the Lonely played and they both said, ooh, that's horrible. Because it was too sexy for them, you know. And I went, I was probably about 13 or 14 at the time. I went, yeah, that's fantastic, yeah that's like it was total wonderful. And it was Only the Lonely and it's still my probably favorite record now, even today. And it was, there was just something about his voice, his soul, he had such a soulful quality. And that was his first song I ever heard.

FOR ROY, THE SONG WAS BORN FROM AN OLD MEMORY.

Roy: If you've ever been in West Texas, and it's 60 miles to the nearest hamburger place or drive-in theater, then you'd know what Only the Lonely is. I used to sit in the car when we eventually had an automobile, the houses were just shacks in this oil field town. And so I'd go out the car and roll the windows up and sing at the top of my lungs, so I wrote a lot of Only the Lonely in a car at night. So that was my writing room, the automobile.

Music: Only the Lonely

"ONLY THE LONELY," THE FIRST BIG HIT FOR ROY ORBISON.

Roy: The whole thing is pleasing everyone, I mean you don't write songs and sing to make money. I think if you do that, you probably won't make it.

IT WAS 1960, AND THE AUDIENCE HAD FINALLY COME TO ROY ORBISON. HE HAD BEEN A SONGWRITER FOR YEARS, BUT TO MIXED SUCCESS. HE EVEN RETIRED FROM IT AT ONE POINT IN THE LATE 50'S, ONLY TO RETURN WITH THE HIT "CLAUDETTE" FOR THE EVERLY BROTHERS.

AT MONUMENT RECORDS, ROY AND PRODUCER FRED FOSTER BECAME A GREAT MATCH.

FRED: What we were trying to do is make as good a record as good as
we could make. That's all. We weren't doing it really for the money.
We were doing it for the love of it. Now the money was nice, and it allowed us to continue to do what we loved. Otherwise, obviously we couldn't have.

ROY BEGAN TO WRITE SOME OF HIS BIGGEST SONGS, AND WITH NEW FREEDOM TO CREATE THE KIND OF MUSIC THAT HE WANTED.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WAS A FAN FROM CHILDHOOD.

BS: he was one of the first guys who came in and said you don't have to have a verse and then a chorus and then a verse and then a chorus, you can just sort of start with a verse, and kind of quietly use another verse, and then there's another verse, and then there's another verse, and, like, in something like [sings a couple of words], there's rarely something you would identify as a chorus. It just builds in emotional intensity as the story goes on.

ROY HAD PLENTY OF SURPRISES.

Roy: Running Scared was a song that Joe Nelson and I wrote, and the thing about Running Scared was that it was very unusual for the time, it was very unusual anyway. I remember some of the other writers saying that was the first time they heard the bridge at the end of the song.

Music: Running Scared

ROY ORBISON SANG "RUNNING SCARED," WRITTEN BY ROY AND JOE NELSON.

IN A MINUTE, MORE ON ROY'S EXPERIMENTATION WITH POP SONGS LIKE "CRYING," AND WHY HE SANG MANY BALLADS.

I'M LAURA CANTRELL, AND YOU'RE LISTENING TO ROY ORBISON: IN DREAMS.

Break #1 (1:00) with music bed

WELCOME BACK TO "IN DREAMS," A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ROY ORBISON.

ONE OF ROY'S PRODUCERS AND LONG-TIME POP SINGER, DON WAS.

DW: he never struck me as someone who had fastidiously copied down
the rules of songwriting and like analyzed Gershwin songs or anything.
I think that he just had a really innate understanding of dramatic structure as it pertains to music, and he was just a natural at it. I think he understood possibly just on a subconscious level what it was that moved people.

SONGWRITING IS A CRAFT, AND FOR ROY IT OFTEN MIXED WITH INSPIRATION.

Roy: It's strange but I can't write a melody and put the lyric to it or vice versa. I just start and all the songs that have been successful were written within 30 or 40 minutes almost straight through, because the words told me with the melody, the melody told me to do with the words, so it all came at once.

BARRY GIBB OF THE BEEGEES LEARNED A LOT FROM ROY'S SONGS.

BG: And a pop song can make you cry, it can make you laugh. But if you look at the mainstream of pop music it's usually about a broken heart, or it's usually about meeting someone for the first time. But how do you build that song, how do you make that into a song that everybody wants to hear? The process of Crying. The build of the song, how he would start with literally nothing and by the end of the record, like Running Scared, you had everything including the kitchen sink but you loved it. He took you on a little journey with every song.

"CRYING" IS A ONE OF THE CLASSICS, BUT IF YOU TAKE IT APART, YOU FIND IT DOESN'T FOLLOW ANY RULES. DON WAS PRODUCED A REMAKE OF THAT SONG IN THE 80'S.

DW: I wrote out a chart for musicians to follow, and there's no form to that song. You know, like the first, I don't remember the numbers, but the first verse is like thirteen bars, the next one is like fifteen and a half bars or something. He defied the rules of, you know, modern composition with those things. The verse lasted as long as it took to get the thought out,

ROY AND FRED FOSTER, THE ORIGINAL PRODUCER OF "CRYING," HAD A LOT OF TROUBLE ARRANGING THE SONG IN 1961.

FF: So I said Roy, we need to back off of this, we're too close. So we'll get three different arrangers, and we'll have them each write an arrangement, and we'll cut all three versions and take the one we like best, if any. So we show up to do a date, three arrangers with three arrangements. So I broke three different pieces of straw at different lengths and held them up in my hand with the tops even, and they all drew one. Of course the one with the longest straw got to go first. And Jim Hull got the longest straw. So they started to run it down. And I heard the mallets on the tom intro with the guitar and I thought, well now, I love that. And as it went on, it was just magical. And Roy looked at me and he said man, I do love this. And I said, so do I. And so he, we recorded it. And I went over and thanked the other two arrangers and said sorry, but this is as good as it's gonna get. And they laughed and said, yeah, it's great.

Music: Crying

"CRYING," SUNG BY ROY ORBISON.

SINGER AND SONGWRITER BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.

BS: I think that sense, that sense of, of, of some irredeemable loss, something that, that, that, it sounded, like, you know, you lost your girl, and you're done! Your life is through! You've died, you know? You have died. And, and that's how you felt at that time. I think that's why his record was so resonant, was the operatic quality. It was interesting. They were both adult. In some fashion, they were sophisticated, and they held adult emotion, but at the same time, the operatic quality was, I think, how you felt as a young person and a teenager, was just that your entire world revolved around when you walked down that hall at high school. If she said hello to you, that was one kind of day, and if she didn't, it was another, you know? it And he caught some of that, you know?

ROY WAS A LOT MORE HUMBLE ABOUT HIS SINGING. JEFF LYNNE JOINED HIM IN THE TRAVELING WILBURYS IN THE LATE 80'S.

JL: He used to say a lovely line when asked what we all did. He said, well, I'm a singer and these are all vocal stylists. Which I loved, because it was kind of true. He was a crooner in the true sense of the singing business.

BS: I always said it was like a spirit sound. It was disembodied. And it went well with his presentation, which was just to be there. Almost not there, almost not there. He stood, and if you closed your eyes or opened your eyes. And there was something about that stillness, his own stillness, and lack of expression, that enhanced the intensity of the performances. He was a guy that got more intense by simply standing still. I had to jump all around, and work really hard. He was able to do all of that by standing in one place, you know.

JEFF: strong in his own knowing that he was a great singer. And I mean, he knew that, and he would say that well, yeah, I'm a good, but it's not me, it's a god-given gift. So he did know that he was one of the greatest singers ever. But he didn't blame himself for that.

THAT STRONG VOICE LENT ITSELF TO BALLADS AND SWOOPING MELODIES, AND ROY SOMETIMES FOUND HIMSELF WITHOUT FASTER SONGS.

PRODUCER FRED FOSTER WENT OUT TO FIND ONE.

FF: Roy said, I said, we need an up tempo thing. He said I know it but I just, I'm in the ballad mode, I can't get out of it, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I called Cindy Walker, a great songwriter in Texas who's written innumerable hits. she said well, I'll look around and see what I have. Because she writes all the time. And she and her mother were a wonderful team. Her mother would play piano for her. They were like a vaudeville act in a way, and they were so great. And mama would tell you exactly what was on her mind. So Cindy called me the next day and she said, I found three things that might do. And I wrote this little old thing last night that I don't think is worth anything, but mama likes it and wants me to send it. And she said, but I'm not just going to, I'm just gonna send you the three things. And in the background I heard mama say, if you don't send that one, don't send anything. Which I thought was funny. So I got the tape in, she over-nighted it to me, and when I heard Dream Baby, I said that's what need. So I called Roy and I said you need to come down and hear this. He said well I love that.

Music: Dream Baby

ROY ORBISON SANG "DREAM BABY."

YOU'RE LISTENING TO "IN DREAMS," A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ROY ORBISON.

LONG-TIME PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR ROY, TERRY WIDLAKE.

TW: he inspired a lot of?he inspired the Beatles, for example. The Beatles actually wrote Love Me Do and Please Please Me specifically to get them to Roy Orbison for him to record. But they didn't know how to get them to him

ROY TOURED WITH THE BEATLES AND THE ROLLING STONES IN 1963 AND 64. AND WHEN THE BRITISH INVASION SATURATED THE US AIRWAVES, IT WAS ROY THAT EDGED THEM OUT.

EVEN THOUGH ROY WAS AN INTERNATIONAL STAR, HE REMAINED VERY DOWN TO EARTH.

DW: . I remember meetin' him at the airport one time and, you know, expecting, you know, at least a couple of roadies who'd been with him for thirty years to show up carryin' the suitcases for him. And I just remember the sight of Roy leaning against the wall outside the terminal, standin' there by himself just holding his guitar, and just getting' on the plane, and being nice to everybody, everybody wanted to talk to him. And I've never forgotten it. And I've never met anyone better than Roy as a musician and I've never met anyone who was kinder or more humble, you know, with people. And so if he didn't have an attitude, who has the right to develop one, if not Roy Orbison? So I've never forgotten that, it was one of the greatest things he taught me.

BARRY GIBB SPENT TIME WITH ROY.

BARRY: he was a man with virtually no ego. Gentle, spiritual person, who seemed to have the weight of the world inside him. And I don't know how to put that into words. It was indefinable, whatever it was, it was indefinable. And it came out when he sang, and it came out in his songs. But you couldn't, there isn't a word invented that you could write down to describe Roy Orbison, there just isn't.

THAT QUALITY ALLOWED ROY TO SING ABOUT UNIVERSAL IDEAS WITH SINCERITY.

Roy: Joe Nelson and I wrote Blue Bayou, and when Joe and I were writing that vision just popped into my head of being out on the road, working. Not necessarily at music, but at any job that was taking you away from your home, and that was like a longing to be back home. And I had fond memories of the bayou country. And it all came together.

Music: Blue Bayou

"BLUE BAYOU" SUNG BY ROY ORBISON AND WRITTEN BY HIM AND JOE NELSON.

WE'LL BE BACK IN A MINUTE WITH MORE HAUNTING SONGS BY ROY ORBISON AND A LOOK AT THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HIS LIFE AND CAREER.

I'M LAURA CANTRELL, AND YOU'RE LISTENING TO ROY ORBISON: IN DREAMS.

Break #2 (1:00) with music bed

WELCOME BACK TO "IN DREAMS," A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ROY ORBISON. I'M LAURA CANTRELL.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FINDS A LOT OF MEANING IN ROY ORBISON'S SONGS AND VOICE.

BS: he caught some, some part of the spiritual aspect of it also, in the sense that the songs were very, and I think it was by the nature of his voice, which was fundamentally other-worldly. He, he didn't sound, he sounded both other-worldly and like the most human thing you'd ever heard, you know? And he had a very dark picture, almost all his music was you know, and the music that people remember from him the most, you know, was this sort of very churning, dark music. It was isolated, and you were left alone at the end to ponder, and it was something to ponder, your own nest and the fate of the universe, simultaneously, it seemed like. The songs were so big they seemed to encompass everything, you know, and he covered a lot of ground.

ROY ORBISON.

Roy: There still seems to be a melancholy quality to my voice. I never try to just sing a song, I live a song, so maybe that's what they're getting at, that it's not just a repeat of a performance of what I did last night, it's for the first time everytime.

ROBIN GIBB OF THE BEEGEES.

RG: He made emotion fashionable, that it was all right to talk about and sing about very emotional things, for men to sing about very emotional things that counted, things in life. And before that, nobody would do it, not because it wasn't cool, but because it wouldn't seem right for a man to open up. And to a great degree even women to open up that much in music. And he started all of that, that it was all right to wear your heart on your sleeve.

PRODUCER FRED FOSTER WAS THERE FOR THE CREATION OF THESE SONGS.

FF: The great writer has the ability to bare his soul unabashedly. Hank Williams did it. Can you imagine saying I can't help it if I'm still in love with you? You know? And Roy, only the lonely know the way I feel tonight. You know, we all feel that way sometimes, but we can't put it into words, or we're embarrassed, or we think we're showin' weakness if we do. But Roy knew what he was talkin' about. And when he played me It's Over, it, it touched me deeper than anything I'd ever heard.

Music: It's Over

"IT'S OVER" SUNG BY ROY ORBISON.

BY 1964, ROY WAS ALREADY A STAR, BUT IT WAS THE NEXT SONG THAT MADE HIM A LEGEND.

Roy: I wrote Pretty Woman with a man named Bill Dees, and I remember Chet Atkins giving me a call and saying that was the best rock and roll song ever made.

BARRY GIBB.

BG: he told me what happened with Pretty Woman, the story about where Mercy came from, and that it really didn't have anything to do that song, it was it was him begging for mercy because he was out of breath. And of course in those days everything went on tape, and they kept it as part of the record and I never knew that. That was a bit of history for me.

FRED FOSTER PRODUCED "PRETTY WOMAN."

FF: most people don't realize it, but I had a tenor saxophone and a baritone saxophone buried in the guitar mix, they give it a lot of weight, see? And so they joined in at the very end, which just hit you in the face. And I thought it was one of the best, well it was one of the best records I ever had anything to do with, you know?

ROY ORBISON.

Roy: It was written very quickly, about 30 minutes, the song was finished. And I don't overanalyze a song, I don't say well this will be great, and this will be good, and let's have the story go this way or that. As it happened, it was just another form of girl watching, you know standing on the corner watching a pretty girl. And one way or another, it came out that this fella was acting real macho, and he was trying to pick up the girl, or get her to go with him, and then he toned down a little bit and got more sensitive to the situation, and then got to pleading at one point, and then gave up, said forget it, I don't need you. Of course, she did turn around and come back to him, so it's a mini epic, all in one.

Music: Oh, Pretty Woman

"PRETTY WOMAN" SUNG BY ROY ORBISON IN 1964.

MONUMENT RECORDS OWNER AND PRODUCER FRED FOSTER.

FRED: All I know is something Archie Blier the great producer and was the owner of Cadence Records, told me one time. He said, when you find the right combination, you should never let it be interrupted for any
reason whatsoever. we just had great fun together doin' these
things. And, you know, you should never interrupt that.

BUT ROY ENDED UP LEAVING MONUMENT RECORDS IN THE MID 60'S, LURED BY MGM. THE LATE 60'S WERE A TOUGH TIME FOR THE SINGER. HE LOST HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN IN A TRAGIC FIRE. IT WAS NOT THE FIRST LOSS FOR ROY.

FRED FOSTER.

FRED: No. No. Roy was the most, well he, first of all, Roy was spiritual. So he's well-grounded, you know, he had deep-seated beliefs. And he told me one time, because he had these tragic things happened, and it happened long before he ever had his success. One of the funny stories is, he fell down the steps in his high school and broke his right arm. And so he was in a cast for like almost three months. So when he got his cast off of course his arm had atrophied, you know. And so the kids were making fun of him as they were walking down the halls and they said man, you look funny. And he said, well, it's gonna be all right, I just have to work it now. They said well how in the world could you have fallen down these steps, anyway? And he said well I was just comin' along here, all of a sudden and he went bam he went down again and broke the other arm, you know? And he had a brother I think get killed falling off of an oil derrick or something. There's a sad things happened in Roy's life, you know? But he never allowed himself to get too low in the bad times. And he told me this, and this was something he worked at. And he never allowed himself to get too high in the good times. It didn't go to his head. So did he change as a person? No. Now, of course had enough money now to do things that he couldn't do before, which was very rewarding and wonderful. But I mean, it never gave him a sort of an ego problem or anything like that. He was just a very gentle, sweet-spirited human bein'.

ROY PICKED HIMSELF BACK UP AND CONTINUED WORKING, SPENDING THE 70'S TOURING AND WRITING. HE ALSO MET HIS WIFE BARBARA. WHILE NOT ALWAYS IN THE SPOTLIGHT, ROY REMAINED AN INFLUENTIAL ARTIST AROUND THE WORLD.

IN THE LATE 80'S, ROY TEAMED UP WITH BOB DYLAN, TOM PETTY, GEORGE HARRISON AND JEFF LYNNE AS THE TRAVELING WILBURYS. ROY TOOK THE NAME "LEFTY WILBURY" IN HOMAGE OF THE COUNTRY SINGER LEFTY FRIZZELL.

WILBURYS CO-FOUNDER JEFF LYNNE WORKED WITH ROY ON A SOLO HIT, "YOU GOT IT."

JL: I got this call and it was Roy and he was in Malibu, and he said hey Jeff, I'm in Malibu, and I'm ready to work. I said wow, that's fantastic. So he came over and we wrote You Got It that afternoon. And that was an experience I'll never forget. To be producing Roy, and got up to the mic, said this is it now, can he do it or will he? As the we roll the tape, and he has one run-through and he's just mumbling, going, oh, ooh, ooh, do, do, to do do do. He says, okay, I'm ready. Anyway, so we think that's the level he's going to sing, and he opens up, and the meters all go broing, and the meters all goes wallop, and it's a million db louder than what we've been practicing at, so start again, and just give us that level that you're going to do that at. And his voice was so big, not just loud, but tons of top end and lots of bottom end that you couldn't really record, otherwise you're getting rid of the bass in the bass guitar, so you'd have to sort of trim his voice down a little bit to fit on the record because his voice was so big.

HERE'S "YOU GOT IT."

Music: You Got It

"YOU GOT IT" SUNG BY ROY ORBISON AND CO-WRITTEN WITH JEFF LYNNE.

MAURICE GIBB OF THE BEEGEES.

MAURICE: Well in my opinion I think Roy wasn't appreciated as much as he should have been. I've always felt that. And his voice and his talent will never come again. It was one of those things that only happens once, and Roy's talent and in his voice, and his songs, I mean his songs. And where he got the inspiration from, the whole. And the man himself, for what he contributed to music, have influenced, god I know so many people in the business who've been influenced by Roy.

ROY'S MUSIC FOUND OTHER OUTLETS IN THE 80'S AWAY FROM THE TRADITIONAL MUSIC BUSINESS. ICONOCLASTIC DIRECTOR DAVID LYNCH TURNED OUT TO BE A HUGE FAN AND USED ROY'S MUSIC IN HIS FILM "BLUE VELVET."

Roy: I haven't talked with David Lynch about it directly, except I know my wife Barbara asked him, I heard you had In Dreams played for the cast 2 or 3 times a day. He said who told you that? Barbara says I don't remember, he says that's all baloney, he said it was four or five times a day, so anyway, without being too self-conscious of where the song came from, and speaking of where it came from, it was in a dream, almost. I had started to fall asleep, and the lines A candy colored clown they call the Sandman/ Tiptoes to my room every night/ Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper/ Go to sleep everything's alright ? came to me, and I had forgotten songs before in dreams and in my sleep, so I said I'd better do the ending to this song before I fall completely asleep, so I said it's too bad all these things can happen in my dreams. Woke up the next morning, it was still there, filled out the mid-section, and it was done in maybe 10 minutes, or 15, it was great. What a gift.

Music: In Dreams

"IN DREAMS," RE-RECORDED BY ROY ORBISON FOR THE FILM "BLUE VELVET" BY
DAVID LYNCH. ROY DIED IN LATE 1988, BUT LIKE ALL AMERICAN CULTURAL
ICONS, HIS LEGACY STILL LIVES ON.

ROBIN GIBB.

ROBIN: Roy's place in rock and roll history is far beyond question. It is, he is part of the great revolutionaries of popular music. He lent to the kind of music, he influenced the Beatles, he influenced everybody that is important in music, yesterday and today, and will be an ongoing influence. Everybody that is revolutionary or innovative will always have ongoing influences on music, and steer the course of so many careers, either consciously or unconsciously. And that is the essence of genius, is when they have this unconscious kind of influence over generations of music to come. And the people will always refer back to them when history is written. And it's very much that with Roy Orbison. There will never be another Roy Orbison because Roy Orbison was the only one, and you can copy him, but you can never be Roy Orbison. And he was unique. And that was the magical mystery of the man. And he was unique in his time. There was no one like him before Orbison, there's been no one like him since.

"ROY ORBISON: IN DREAMS" WAS PRODUCED BY JOYRIDE MEDIA, PAUL CHUFFO AND JOSHUA JACKSON ARE THE PRODUCERS.

OUR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER IS JOHN VERNILE.

ALL SONGS ON THIS PROGRAM CAN BE FOUND ON THE SONY BMG LEGACY SET "THE ESSENTIAL ROY ORBISON."

CHECK YOUR LOCAL PBS LISTINGS FOR THE VIDEO DOCUMENTARY "IN DREAMS" COMING IN APRIL.

SPECIAL THANKS GO TO JEFF JONES, ADAM BLOCK, JOHN JACKSON, ERIC MOLK, TOM CORDING, KRISTA JONES, STEVE BERKOWITZ, BARBARA ORBISON, JED HILLY AND MARY BETH HURST AT ORBISON RECORDS, NADINE NASSAR AND ANDY CAHN.

I'M LAURA CANTRELL, AND THANKS FOR LISTENING.

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