Roy Orbison & Neil Young

I first became a fan of Roy Orbison in 1988. I heard his bridges on the Wilbury track 'Handle With Care', my jaw dropped, and has remained there. I became a fan of Neil Young much more slowly. I liked 'Heart Of Gold', 'Old Man', 'My My, Hey Hey' and 'Harvest Moon', his only four songs that ever got played on local radio, but I didn't seek out one of his albums until 1994. This was after I saw 'Philadelphia' at the cinema and had another epiphany as Neil sang the haunting closing theme.

Roy & Neil have become my twin musical heroes, I have others, I even have favourite musicians who I consider to have more consistently great bodies of work, but Neil and Roy are more special to me. They are like family members that may frustrate me occasionally (they have both released some sub standard stuff), yet they will always be family. The best of their work has brought me incredible joy and is beyond compare. This site is my humble tribute to them. I hope that if you're here because you're a fan of one, you will explore the work of the other and recognise the many brilliant parallels and commonalities. Thanks for reading.

Here are some of the links between them;

Neil covered Don Gibson's song 'Oh Lonesome Me' (this blog's title no less) on his 1970 album 'After The Goldrush', which also had echoes of Orbison in the song 'Birds' with its refrain of 'it's over, it's over' and the song 'I Believe In You'. Roy recorded a whole album of his hero Don Gibson's songs, 'Roy Orbison Sings Don Gibson', in 1967.

Various quotes from Neil Young about Orbison (from the Neil Young biography 'Shakey' by Jimmy McDonough)

'I loved Roy Orbison from the beginning'. 'Great singing, great arrangements, great records'. 'His fuckin' records were brilliant'. 'There's a songwriter who sings about tragedy to such a fuckin' degree, it's almost impossible to comprehend the depth of that soul'. 'He was just so sincere and he stood so tall'. 'His aloofness influenced me profoundly'. 'Roy Orbison's got a weird voice, beautiful - but weird. Opera velvet kind of sound'. 'He's just got it, the drama, there's something sad but proud about Roy's music'. 'I saw Roy Orbison at the top of his game in '61 or '62. Winnipeg. Roy and the Candymen. They kicked ass'. 'There's a little piece of Roy on every album I've ever done'.

Neil included a photo of Roy in the inner sleeve of one of his greatest and most critically acclaimed albums, 'Tonight's The Night', in 1975. He had found the photo on a dodgy bootleg cassette and decided to include it 'just to recognise his presence' and because he felt sad that Roy probably didn't know it was out and that he was being ripped off. The song 'Don't Cry', on his 1989 album 'Freedom', Neil describes as 'Roy Orbison meets trash metal'.

There is a wonderful story recounted in 'Shakey' about a party at Emmy Lou Harris's house in 1977. Barbara Orbison, Roy's second wife, told Pete Doggett that Roy was accosted by Neil Young (who he didn't recognise) and Neil told him how he had been a huge influence on him. He kept handing Roy a guitar and requesting Orbison obscurities. Roy said he didn't remember most of them, but Neil would start him off and then everyone, including Linda Ronstadt who was also there, joined in on harmonies. Roy also recalled this meeting to Nick Kent in 1988 'I later found out...it was Neil Young!'

Ronstadt felt, as do I, and beautifully paraphrased by McDonough, 'that there was more than a little similarity in the voices of two of pop music's loneliest figures'. Ronstadt surmised 'Neil's a thrilling tenor and Roy's a tenor who's almost a counter tenor - the combination vibrato with Emmy's voice...uh! it was just beautiful!' The fact that this 'hero summit' occurred in 1977, the year I was born, is pretty special, even beyond the amazing fact that it occurred at all. If only someone had thought to press record! Fuck!!

A couple more bits of trivia to end with. Roy & Neil are the first and only two musicians to have animals names after them. There is a bug named after Roy and a spider named after Neil.

Just prior to recording his 2004 album 'Prairie Wind', Neil Young bought the building where Roy recorded all his biggest early 60's Monument hits and has recorded there.

Neil Young owns a guitar that belonged to Hank Williams, which he played on the 'Heart Of Gold' concert film. Hank was the only other artist that Roy devoted an entire album to (Don Gibson being the other); 'Hank Williams The Roy Orbison Way', released in 1971.