The singer Bob Dylan thought was one of a kind: “He transcended all the genres”
Ever since his start, Bob Dylan has never stopped being a fan of music. Although he may have been able to use his songs as emotional translators or sonic weapons against authority, he was known for mixing elements of everything he heard beyond traditional folk music, eventually culminating in his need to go electric in the mid-1960s. While Dylan may have one of the most unique voices of his time, he believed one of his contemporaries had the most eclectic voice he had ever heard.
When Dylan began, though, he wasn’t even drawn to play music at first. Attracted to the work of various poets, he would be a student of the written word before translating his thoughts to the guitar, resulting in songs that were just the right answer to the growing counterculture on tracks like ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.
For the next few years, Dylan would follow in the footsteps of his idols like Woody Guthrie, writing songs meant to reflect the times he was living rather than trying to preach from a pulpit. Though he was opening people’s eyes to what the genre could do, the other side of rock and roll was concerned with an emotional impact whenever their works came on the radio.
Before the British Invasion had sunk its teeth into America, artists like Elvis Presley were known for making tracks that had both a light and dark side to them, playing rockers like ‘Hound Dog’ while at the same time delivering heartbreaking love songs like ‘Love Me Tender’. Even though Presley may have had the highest profile of any rock singer on the scene, no one sang with as much conviction as Roy Orbison.
Recognised for his signature vibrato, Orbison would become known for turning his songs into miniature dramas, singing about his heartache in ‘Only The Lonely’ and finally getting the girl in ‘(Oh) Pretty Woman’. For all of the great lines that he may have written in his lifetime, though, Dylan always thought that Orbison’s greatest asset was the tone of his voice.
Rather than Dylan singing like a town crier, Orbison inhabited his songs like an actor would inhabit a movie role, making the audience feel his pain as he cried along to every one of his tracks. Even though many songs stuck to a similar formula, Dylan thought that Orbison had the power to go beyond genre altogether.
Remembering his influence in the book Chronicles Vol. 1, Dylan recalled, “[He] transcended all the genres–folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all styles and some that hadn’t been invented yet…There wasn’t anything on the radio like him. I’d listen and wait for another song, but next to Roy, the playlist was strictly dullsville…gutless and flabby.”
Dylan wasn’t the only one charmed by what Orbison brought to the table. When inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Springsteen admitted that he wanted to sound like Roy Orbison on Born to Run, only for him to admit that no singer can hope to come close to what the rock and roll pioneer had done.
For all of his vocal talents, Dylan would even get the chance to work alongside Orbison, writing with him as well as Tom Petty and George Harrison as part of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan may have been able to write songs that beat up the listener, but Orbison was the one who could hold their hand when going through life’s tribulations.
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