Roy Orbison: The legend Bruce Springsteen hailed as “the coolest, uncool loser” in music
There’s always been a certain degree of swagger that comes with being a rock and roll musician. No one wants to see a famous act nonchalantly get onstage and play on stools. Hence, when looking at the golden age of rock and rollers, everyone from Elvis Presley to Little Richard wanted to make sure the audience remembered what they saw long after walking out of the theatre, even if it meant being a little bit risqué. Bruce Springsteen had always embraced the idea of working himself down to the bone live, but he knew that the coolest artists of all time didn’t need to go that extra mile.
Even though it’s almost expected from bands to be at least a little bit animated whenever they play, it’s not exactly a mandatory part of the job. John Entwistle and John Paul Jones are known as two of the most iconic bass players of all time, but when looking at their stage presence with The Who and Led Zeppelin, respectively, there’s no chance that anyone had their eyes glued to them hanging around in the background.
If any member needs to grab the audience’s attention, it’s the lead singer. Becoming the mouthpiece of the group means typically doing the dirty work whenever performing, whether that means bantering back and forth with the crowd or doing something a bit more over-the-top to get that roar of applause whenever a song reaches its climax. When Springsteen was coming up, it was still the age of people like Pat Boone politely singing a song.
They may have sung it beautifully, but was there really any point in getting someone out there if they didn’t entertain you? One of the foundations of rock and roll was about making something a bit more visceral, but where most bands were like wild animals when they started performing, Roy Orbison could knock out any crowd with the sheer power of his voice alone.
While he certainly didn’t look like the part of a music legend when he approached the stage, hearing him sing ‘Only the Lonely’ or ‘Crying’ was the moment when every rock fan found out the genre could have a heart. This was the kind of music designed to make people bawl their eyes out within the first few lines of the lyrics, and Orbison had the kind of operatic range that could make anyone swoon.
And for ‘The Boss’, the fact that Orbison could do that in those thick-rimmed glasses was a miracle in those days, who said, “Roy Orbison, besides Johnny Cash, he was the other ‘Man in Black’. Roy was the coolest, uncool loser you’d ever seen. With his Coke bottle black glasses, his three–octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities.”
That voice didn’t exactly dull over time, either. Despite every member of the Traveling Wilburys being over the hill by most rock star standards, hearing Orbison sing tracks like ‘Not Alone Any More’ was still enough to make many of those same people from back in the day go weak in the knees when he hit those massive high notes.
Even though the concept of cool has changed more than a few times over the decades, Orbison learned long ago that the key to any great tune is singing from the heart. Every teenage romance melody is going to feel like the end of the world, and whether we’re crying along with him on ‘Only the Lonely’ or cheering him on in ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, Orbison was the first one to make the stories behind his songs come alive and kicking.
