'No question he wasn't a good-looking pop star but he could cut just the same. He had a pudgy, pasty face, very white and sickly. Then we was chronically short-sighted and had to wear glasses as thick as lemonade bottles. No Mr Universe. But he had a classic voice, perfectly controlled from mumble through to full-blooded yell, and he approached his songs like operatic arias.
Usually he set off almost conversationally, then broke into tortured tempo, got gradually more fevered, more tragic and finally wound up in frantic howls of anguish. It was a formalised pattern, used on almost all his records, and he had it by heart. He never missed a trick.
If your nerves were bad, the unbroken agony of it all might get a bit oppressive. But if you were suckered by schmaltz, Orbison was the very best brew going.Whatever, he attracted great regiments of fans and, in Europe, they've stayed endlessly loyal to him. Outside of Elvis he has the most unquestionably loyal following going.
Not that he has stuck unquestionably to ballads. In his time he's rocked harder and longer than most but he always sounds as if he wants to slow things down, and even at his toughest, he's always liable to launch himself into sudden spasms of bug- eyed operatics.'
No comments:
Post a Comment