Roy Orbison, who died nearly 30 years ago, is still a fan favorite. In the new book, The Authorized Roy Orbison, his sons Wesley, Roy Jr. and Alex, along with rock and roll writer Jeff Slate, have put together a loving homage to his life and career. Here is an excerpt from the book that traces Orbison’s life from his humble beginnings in a tiny Texas town to touring with the Beatles.
“It’s hard to believe that our father has been gone for nearly thirty years. To the world, Roy Orbison was a legend, but to us he was simply Dad. Whether he was hanging out around the house, holed up in the “purple room”—the office where he’d work on new music—hamming it up with friends, legends like Johnny Cash, George Harrison, or Carl Perkins, or simply cracking jokes and playing games with us, he never lost the humility he had from growing up hard in West Texas. But though we thought of him as Dad first, even to us he was something more than just a father. Even in our small world at home, we knew he was special.
Remarkably, the story of our dad’s life has never been told. Not the real story, that is. So this book is the first step in setting the record straight. But it also gives us the ability to provide some insight into what our dad was like, with us, growing up, and with his famous friends.
In putting together this book, the memories really came flooding back for all of us. We laughed and cried and recalled things together that had long been forgotten. But one of our favorite memories is of a visit the producer Jeff Lynne, who along with Dad was a member of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, made to our lake house in Hendersonville, Tennessee. We were just next door to Dad’s pal Johnny Cash, and it was a busy place. Dad did business there, and if the door of his third floor office was closed, we knew he was writing or working on demos and shouldn’t be disturbed. But the house was also a refuge where Dad could just be himself, and more often than not people would just be hanging about, palling around with him, or simply waiting for him to finish what- ever he was doing. Or sometimes just to wake up.
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