***Out In The Be-Bop Night- Saturday Night With “Roy The Boy”- Roy Orbison-Take Three

 

 

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

DVD Review

Roy Orbison: Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, various all-star musicians and backup singers including Bruce Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett, 1987

Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis come easily to mind when thinking about classic rock ‘n’ roll (yah, the early 1950s stuff- not the my-1960s- coming- of- age stuff, although that is good too, mostly). And about where you were, and who you were with, and what you were doing when you heard those voices on the radio, on the television, or when you were "spinning platters" (records, for the younger set, okay, nice expression, right?). The artist under review, Roy Orbison, although clearly a rock legend, and rightly so, does not evoke that same kind of memory for me.

Oh sure, I listened to Blue Bayou, Pretty Woman, Running Scared, Sweet Dreams, Baby and many of the other songs that are performed on this great black and white concert footage. And backed up by the likes of T-Bone Burnett, who may be the top rhythm guitarist of the age (and who has also gotten well-deserved kudos for his work on Jeff Bridges’ Crazy Hearts), Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen. With vocal backups by k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt. All who gave energized performances and all who were deeply influenced by Roy’s music. That alone makes this worth viewing.

Still, I had this gnawing feeling about Roy’s voice after viewing this documentary and why it never really “spoke” to me like the others. Then it came to me, the part I mentioned above about where I was, and who I was with, and what I was doing when I heard Roy.

Enter one mad monk teenage friend, Frankie, Frankie Riley from the old neighborhood, North Adamsville. Frankie of a thousand stories, stories, well, what do you think stories, girls won and lost, cars owned or wish owned, grabbing dough in odd-ball ways, and dreams, mainly his, but he spoke for a lot of us, his corner boys, about a big jail-break from the confines of the town, about kicking the dust of the town off our shoes and seeing the great big world and making a name, a name up in lights even. A few stories, in addition, were even true although I personally discounted them if I was no there physically as an eye-witness. Frankie of a thousand treacheries too, leaving others, leaving me if you believe that, in the lurch when some twist (read: girl in Frankie corner boy speak) turned his head, some swell from the right side of the tracks gave him the time of day or just as acts of hubris (although even if we knew the word then we would not have used it, used certainly in relationship to Frankie, wiry Frankie who would have pummeled us for such an affront). Yeah he was that kind of guy. Oh yah, and Frankie, my bosom friend in high school. Frankie who I was essentially a flak (and flak-catcher) for back in those days when he was the king of the high school night around our town. And who pulled me out of more scrapes, hipped me to more girls, and who chased away more home-grown blues than you could shake a stick at. Yeah, that Frankie.

But back to Roy, Roy via Frankie. See when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday, working- class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all, meaning Frankie and his corner boys all, used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway that was also conveniently near our high school. Maybe this place, Salducci’s, was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it sit for a while and not eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven. (People who know such things told me later that kind of cold is the way you are supposed to eat pizza anyway, and as an appetizer not as a meal.)

Moreover, this was the one where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, Tonio Salducci, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the big picture window of the shop and watch his handiwork in utter fascination. Jesus, he could flip that thing.

One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, about Tonio, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie and the Roy question, alright.

There nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please,  which Tonio liked to smother as an additional topping over many of his pizzas, he said it gave that old world taste, and maybe it did but I was a teenage boy and so wanted to remain chaste, breathe chaste, in case I might have a lucky night and that certain she came in, the one that sat across from me in class and who I had been eying until my eyes have become sore), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you called (call), uh, soda), usually a locally- bottled root beer, Robb’s, and, incessantly, dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox. That “incessantly,” by the way, allowed us to stay in those booths since we were “paying” customers with all the rights and dignities that entailed, unless Tonio needed our seats and we had to take the air. Had to move outside and hang, one foot on the ground the other bent up against Tonio’s wall, looking for the heart, looking for the heart of something.     

Here is the part that might really explain things though. Frankie had this girlfriend (he always had a string of them, which what was cool about him, but this was his main squeeze, his main honey, his main twist, his main flame and about sixty-seven other names he had for them in Frankie-speak and which we naturally followed and called them as well, although I favored “chick”). The divine Joanne, Joanne Murphy, Irish of course since we were purists in those days (read: they were the only ones who would talk to us, trying to “reform,” church reform us or something) and only dealt with neighborhood girls, and so Irish of course. Now this “divine” Frankie description was strictly his own except when I had to write something about her then mine as well, see I really was a flak for the king. No question she was a looker, one of those dewy fresh roses that disturbed my younger dreams, but I could take or leave her, questioned her “fit” for Frankie so I questioned the divine part, questioned it thoroughly, on more than one occasion. But divine so you know who won in the end. 

See though Frankie, old double standard, maybe triple standard Frankie, was crazy about her, although in tribal corner boy manner would never express such an emotion in public, not in the North Adamsville corner boy night, and maybe not in yours either. But he was always worried, worried to perdition, that she was “seeing” someone else (she wasn’t, she was stuck on him too and that lasted all through high school, Jesus). You know guys like that, guys that have all the angles figured, have some things, no, a lot of things, going their way but need, desperately need, that one more thing, that constant reassurance to “complete” them.

But sweet old clever “divine” Joanne used that Frankie fear as a wedge. She would always talk (and talk while I was there, just to kind of add to the trauma drama, Frankie’s drama) about all the guys that called up bothering her (personally I didn’t see it, she was a looker like I said, for sure, and with a nice figure but I wouldn’t have jumped off a bridge if she turned me down, others in those days yes, and gladly, but not her). This would get Frankie steaming, steaming so he couldn’t see straight. Once he actually couldn’t eat his pizza slice he was so upset and Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, ALWAYS ate his pizza. Even fatherly Tonio took notice.

Worst, was when old doll, old sweetheart, Joanne would drop coins in the jukebox to play, play … Roy Orbison’s Running Scared over and over. And make Frankie give her the good coin, his good coin to boot. It got so bad that old Frankie, when Joanne wasn’t around, would play it on his own. With his own money, no less. So, I guess, I just got so sick of hearing that song and that trembling rising crescendo voice to increase the lyrical power of the song that I couldn’t see straight. But, really, you can’t blame Roy for that, or shouldn’t.

Watch this DVD. Watch it like I did and  just turn the old volume on the remote down when that song comes on. And think of poor old lovesick Frankie and his divine Ms. Joanne. Yeah , that’s the ticket.

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Running Scared- Roy Orbison, Joe Melson

Just running scared, each place we go

So afraid that he might show

Yeah, running scared, what would I do

If he came back and wanted you

Just running scared, feeling low

Running scared, you love him so

Yeah, running scared, afraid to lose

If he came back which one would you choose

Then all at once he was standing there

So sure of himself, his head in the air

And my heart was breaking, which one would it be

You turned around and walked away with me