Super Deluxe Edition: Alex Orbison on Roy Orbison’s #MGMYears- part two
In the words of Alex Orbison… The thunder
At the famous Overton Park Shell show in Memphis in 1956, Elvis told my dad: “I’ll never follow you on stage.” My dad was a whole other person then – he was running around stage, jumping up and down and playing lead guitar. Then the voice took over and everything else went away.
The jump in the power of his voice from his time at Monument Records to when he moved to MGM Records is astounding. From 1962 or ’63 he was just playing one-off shows or five or ten local dates, not real tours. Then Pretty Woman happened and the superstar Roy Orbison was born, and so the demand to go and play three sets a night.
At Monument, he was an unknown young guy striving to achieve, going for it and sometimes his voice isn’t as powerful. You can really hear in the MGM stuff – when he lets loose – it’s more of a thunder.
Elvis told the audience: “There’s Roy Orbison, the greatest singer in the world.”
