Roy Orbison’s Sons Share Never-Before-Seen Photos and Stories in Their New Book

Roy Orbison, the rock and roller with the dark shades, dark hair and oftentimes dark ballads (although as Bruce Springsteen, notes, many of his songs were also bright and hopeful), died 29 years ago. But Orbison still has legions of loyal fans worldwide (two million Facebook followers, over a million people stream his music on Spotify each month) and young musicians continue to discover the songs with that unmistakable soulful voice.

Roy’s sons, Wesley, Roy Jr. and Alex, each a musician in his own right, have dedicated themselves over the last few years to celebrating their father’s legacy. This month alone brings two projects created for that purpose including A Love So Beautiful: Roy Orbison with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, due out November 3, where “Roy’s Boys” (including his baby grandson Roy III) join the Royal Philharmonic in accompanying Orbison’s original vocals on such classics as Oh Pretty Woman, Love Hurts and Only the Lonely, as well as a new book, The AuthorizedRoy Orbison (Center Street Books), available October 17, which has been a longtime labor of love for the brothers.

The youngest of Roy’s Boys, 42-year-old Alex Orbison, musician, writer, producer and president of Still Working Music publishing company, recently talked to Parade about the book, the Roy Orbison movie in the works and what almost happened to the footage from the famed 1987 Black & White Night concert before it ever aired.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Black & White Night, the all-star tribute to Roy Orbison where Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt and other big stars played a once-in-a-lifetime concert with Roy. Is it true the footage from the concert was almost lost before anyone ever saw it?

There was a huge earthquake in Los Angeles that happened between four or five in the morning [after the concert was filmed and recorded]. The way that I'd heard the story was that the chandelier had fallen on all the masters. I talked to Thomas Adelman, who was on the production team. He slept there that night. He woke up and realized that maybe the building had collapsed on all the film masters. So, they got them all accounted for, stacked and put away. They had them all piled up and he ran to see if the roofing collapsed or anything. The water line broke in the Ambassador Hotel, where the concert was filmed, and water went all over the floor and the wiring had pulled out from where there was a break in the wall. There were live wires going into the water and Thomas went and grabbed the masters and got them out of there. These are people that literally would die for their show business craft!

Incredible. You could never have recreated an evening like that with all those stars.

No kidding. My dad had a great quote that said, "I really woulda been crying had we lost those masters because we would have never been able to get all those guys back in the same room again.” It was literally a miracle to get them in one room.

You were only 13 when your dad died. Did putting this book together help you get to know him better?

The Roy Orbison that I didn't know was the Roy Orbison that existed before I was born. My dad was not nostalgic and you had to pry him a little to get older information so I got very few stories because my dad was living in real time. He was always in the moment and thinking about what was happening now.

He didn’t wax on about Sam Phillips or Elvis or playing with the Beatles?

Never! He would say things like, "Anything you ever do make sure the paperwork reflects it and you're being accounted to." Or something like that. He would never say, "In 1967, this happened and I did that ..." So the stories of him getting from Wink, Texas, and Odessa up to Memphis in the early years of the Teen Kings were all new to me. I had no idea that his band had done Canadian tours so early and it really made me take a step back from what I know as a touring musician and appreciate how difficult and complicated that was.

Related: Read an excerpt from The Authorized Roy Orbison 

Right. If nothing else, traveling in a car with a stand-up base before there were major highways is huge!

Right!

Roy Orbison was and is extremely popular in England. Why is that?

My dad actually had his first No. 1 hit in England. He knew the situation over there was different and that even though the fans were able to connect with the language, the culture was so much different. He was a southern gentleman, so he fit in really well there.

Then he toured with the Beatles. They opened for him?

It was just a stroke of luck. Someone getting sick and him ending up getting the headliner spot. And I love Elvis. I love the records, I love Elvis' being, and everything about him, but Elvis didn’t travel. But Roy Orbison did—the U.K., Australia. He nurtured that.

So, the summer of The Beatles, in '64, my dad could have sold out any venue in the United States, just because of “Oh Pretty Woman. But he was overseas a lot. That’s where his career grew.

Is there a Roy Orbison movie in the works?

Yes. We've been working on it for years now, I mean really working on it. We finally have a script. We're a family owned and operated business, so we're doing the movie and the development phase ourselves. So, we've been really happy.

When will it be out?

I'd say 2019 or 2020.

What has it been like working with your brothers on all your recent projects, especially the book?

Well, Wesley's older, so he remembers a whole bunch of stuff. We all know that hey, these are just our memories, we could have easily remembered something a little differently in our lives.

It's like everybody sort of had a role. Roy Jr. had researched all these things. He’s the family historian. So, not only do I get to see a ton more of my brothers, but I get to know a side of my dad that I never knew.