Everything in the world has roots.
More often than not, they are in darkness.
In a saving darkness beyond our reach.
All fate, all its indestructible bastion, reaching the starry sky, with its roots, its foundation goes into darkness, in times of almost hopeless despair of whites and blacks, the poor and slaves, all those on whom the "greatness of civilization" stands.
There, in the depths, it would be better not to know what, rock draws its strength, replenishes its fighters, becoming more and more a legend, less and less - the vanity of "today".
That is why he was born in the South, where the stars hang too low - pick up by hand.
That is why it is dazzlingly bright, incineratingly hot - and how else can he survive?
Outcast among outcasts.
Destroyer and rebel.
A long time ago he turned into a monster, hidden in the darkness of obscure meanings.
Into an invincible monster that there is no one to defeat.
Into a living fossil that moves and exists in parallel with us, but less and less touching, touching us.
His kings have always emitted light to humanity.
This is the simple secret of rock.
And that is precisely why they want to forget him - he is unbearable in his rage and openness, in a frantic thirst to tell the truth, to shreds "the peace and comfort of a sweet home."
Where can Crosby and Sinatra compete with such in open combat?
They win overall - on sales.
Is rock ruthless?
But then why is he inseparable from love and broken hearts?
From despair of loneliness and a thin ray of hope along which those who have chosen rhythm and beat as their destiny go to happiness?
Because even the brightest glow always has a shadow, a protective gloom of rest.
The quiet valley is a place of tears, regrets and doubts.
Even if you are a man.
A tough guy who knows no equal.
Roy Kelton Orbison.
A tall and incredibly humble man in black.
Wearing impenetrable dark glasses.
With a subtle, almost indistinguishable smile.
With the voice of an angel.
From the very beginning, from the first days on stage, he personified that very insecurity in life and in love, that very expectation that "everything will go, everything can go wrong."
He was our reflection in an empty room.
Where can you throw off the mask and, clasping your head in your hands, say to yourself: “The devil! .. She can leave.
She might just not choose me.
She can ... Everything in this world ... sometimes collapses overnight! .. "
What helped him become a great Second?
For those who reflect the spotlights and sparkling robes of Elvis, absorbing the fury of rock, turning it into a sacred act, into a conversation with the world and with oneself?
Vote.
Absolutely recognizable.
A voice incomparable and unlike anyone else.
Roy Orbison, traveling light in four octaves, striking with inconceivable overtones of the color of bitter honey and melt water, the color of autumn in the middle of a blue sky and Christmas in the middle of July noon.
His studio reverbs, it seems, will never be repeated by anyone.
This is what the Irishman Bono, the leader of U2, said about him: “It was his voice, he sang in the loudest whisper that I have ever heard.
He sang.
But he barely moved his lips.
And his voice sounded louder than the whole orchestra ... "
In all southern rock, he stands alone.
With the same guitar.
In its exquisitely humble manner of simple dignity, which cannot be reached, cannot be reached - no matter how much you jump.
Bono first became really interested in Orbison's music by watching David Lynch's Blue Velvet.
In Dreams.
Just one song from a strange, mystical and stupefying film.
That was enough.
And Bono wrote She's a Mystery to Me with Edge.
For Orbison.
And he sang it in his last album.
What a fantastically beautiful story!
The legend of Lohengrin, sent from other worlds to save the lost and returned to those worlds contrary to common sense and everyday logic.
Having reached the peak of his power, ten years after Elvis left, having revived old rock almost from oblivion, he left on a sunny December day in 1988, launching radio-controlled airplanes with his sons.
He was a good pilot, this Roy Orbison.
How close the heavens are.
A resounding success of Only the Lonely, Crying, Blue Bayou, Oh, Pretty Woman.
The success of all his ballads in general, each of which is a separate act, a life lived in minutes, an outrageous emotional fullness ...
Grief and joy.
They were always by his side.
Orbison knew how to accept generous gifts and cruel blows of fate with royal dignity.
Having lost his wife, his beloved Claudette, who died in a car accident, having lost two sons, ten and six years old, who died in a fire at a ranch in Nashville, he, almost blind and deaf with grief, could not write music.
But he was not abandoned - everything has its own pay, its own expense.
Orbison met a new love.
He never parted with his third, eldest son from his first marriage, and in a new one he again became the father of two glorious boys.
And he continued to sing.
In spite of everything and following your heart.
He toured brilliantly with the Eagles, in general he toured a lot and successfully, and in 1987, when the former leader of the Electric Light Orchestra Jeff Lynn conceived the project The Traveling Wilburys, Orbison joined the group along with Lynn himself, and also with Bob Dylan ( in whose studio it all started), George Harrison and Tom Petty.
Those were golden months and days, a renaissance of good old rock 'n' roll.
And it was a farewell mass, the last great performance of the "mysterious man in black," which stretched out over two years.
At the end of 1988, as if sending us a farewell bow, Orbison recorded ten tracks (Bono's song - from there) for the Mystery Girl album.
Roy did not see the album itself: it was released two months after his departure to his planet.
It is not even a record, not a giant disk, as they would say twenty years earlier, it is an encrypted message, a kind of code for our understanding of ourselves.
It was as if a window had opened, a huge opening into the Present, and there were no charts, no new-fangled trends and waves, but there was music.
And poetry.
And a nerve.
And something else, which we call Happiness, heaping both tears and laughter ...
You Got It, Careless Heart.
What else do we need besides these names?
A heart.
He burned it, drowning out the pain of loss with music that shouldn't have been cut off.
So much grief around ...
He always had a frivolous heart.
It's true.
Like Elvis.
Both of them - one dazzling like the sun, the second calming like night - lived without looking back.
There, behind, they had nothing but rock.
And ahead of them were Time and Pain.
And a line in eternity.
At one of the 1976 summer concerts in Las Vegas, Elvis, introducing Roy to the public, said: “Ladies and gentlemen!
This is the greatest singer I know. "
In 1979, having finally accepted what had happened, Orbison dedicated the song Hound Dog Man to Elvis - a calm narration of the days of the past and the days to come.
You know, for each other, these two never died.
Just to live like this ...
Perhaps the most glorious act of recent years by Orbison was the famous Black & White Night concert, a lavish party in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on September 30, 1987 and filmed in black and white.
What incredible power.
What a dense recording - concert tracks that are in no way inferior to the studio originals.
Agree, this is art at all times.
And now, in the 21st century ...
Who then accompanied Orbison?
Did he accompany you without giving out solo numbers?
Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Wright, Jackson Brown, Catherine Don Lang and the coolest Elvis Presley's TCB Band (Glen Hardin on piano, James Burton on lead guitar, Jerry Sheff on bass, Ronnie Tutt on drums).
What else?
We obviously forgot something.
Something that makes the hair on your head stand on end and you want to run without looking back.
Maybe the fact that once the Beatles, out of obvious thoughtlessness, took him on their tour, did not know what to do with the audience - after all, Roy performed first and the audience called him again and again.
Maybe?..
Do you know where we are?
It seems to be Tennessee.
Perhaps the neighborhood of Memphis.
Or Nashville.
You can never be sure.
See the little church on the hill surrounded by majestic redwoods?
They have been growing faithful here for a thousand years, and they do not care what people think there.
Go inside.
Look around.
Now the eyes will get used to the semi-darkness, having rested from the dazzling southern sun.
He's with a guitar.
Something hums, and you do not need to know the words - do you have a soul?
Sometimes his friends come here, it happens that the one who was once called Elvis sits down at the organ, and then they play something, and you seem to have heard it before, but you never know for sure ...
Someone should come at the right time and be with us, not asking for anything in return, with only one condition: "Never ask me who I am and where I come from."
Poet and musician.
Mr. Roy Orbison.
Having experienced joys and sorrows with us.
Who blessed us In Dreams.
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
“Go to sleep.
Everything is all right. "
I close my eyes ...
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.