Saturday, December 1, 2012

Dave Marsh on Roy Orbison

"The first rock and roll dream song may well have been Elvis's "Mystery Train". But rock's most important dreamer was Roy Orbison, whose songs are suffused with fantasies in which his imagination deceives. betrays, and entices him into situations as threatening as they are compelling... Orbison was different than any other rock star of his period. He was relatively middle-class, college-educated and on easier terms with more kinds of music-- opera and Mexican ballad singing, for instance-- than any of his peers. His songs possess a psychological complexity that is commonly believed not to have existed in pop music until Dylan and The Beatles."

-Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock & Soul

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