Roy Orbison..if you ever feel lonely or had a broken heart or just want a good cry, put on some Roy Orbison. This voice like an angel has some sad tales to tell. There are so many songs in his catalog that tell of sadness, of being lonely, of getting hurt, of crying, of women walking away, of running scared from an old boyfriend, of daydreaming of being rich and living in a penthouse, of being left at the top of a Ferris wheel as the girl of your dreams scurries away with the meth-addled carny ride operator. If that last one doesn’t get you, then man, you have a heart of steel and I am glad I am not you. Roy is a very sensitive cat and tends to get a lot of chicks but the chicks always tend to play him and run around. Roy is the everyman. Roy isn’t the star quarterback on the football team with the letterman’s sweater he got for football and track. Roy is the pasty skinned nearsighted dude that the girls never looked twice at. Roy is the guy that uses tympani in a song that makes the song sound incredible (“You Got It”)! Roy is you and I.
Roy has inspired two paintings, this one, and one I am working on called “The Candy Colored Clown/Everything Will Be All Right”. The latter is a wip big size painting that hit me when I was going through some things of my wife’s and I discovered in the CD player, the last thing she listened to here at home was Weezer’s CD, “Everything Will Be All Right in the End”. I took it as a message that she left me. When you lose a person close to you, one tries to search for some type of communication somehow. As I noted before, when I paint, I listen to the subject’s music that I am painting, to try to channel the person and a feel or emotion. During the painting of this piece, I broke down a few times due to the words and songs of Roy. Misty loved Roy, which is strange; she usually didn’t like older artists for some reason. I even texted Iman from rocknyclive and told him how tough it was to listen to Roy at this time. He told me I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t break down. I thank you Iman for keeping me sane sometimes.
This painting started with Roy’s name. In high school, my science teacher taught us to use a mnemonic device to remember the order of the colors of the rainbow, a name, ROY G. BIV. Red/orange/yellow/green etc…plus Roy always seemed to have a weary smile so I thought a fractured rainbow and the sky with a hint of sunshine reflecting in his shades, with a hint of storm clouds, might be a change for him. I did keep him a shade of blue just because Roy always had sadness with him. He lost his first wife in a motorcycle accident and his two eldest children died in a house fire. Roy knew loss. This is why these songs are so damn touching and heartfelt. I understand that his life would never be the same. “In Dreams” and “Only the Lonely” have entirely new meanings to me these days. In dreams, I go to sleep at night and pray that I walk with the one I love again. For this is the only place where we can communicate and be together again, for now. I thank the almighty that we were blessed with Roy Orbison. Sorry if I sound too preachy but Roy brings out the spirituality in me much like Curtis Mayfield does. There will never be another Roy Orbison. There will never be another you or I either.