This episode is The Authorized Roy Orbison. The Authorized Roy Orbison is the book that my brothers Alex, Wesley and I, and a great author named Jess Slate have written on my dad Roy Orbison. I’ve been calling it the first book on Roy Orbison because it’s the only one that real and true. It’s the best one and we’re proud it. This rock bio and Elvis-By the Presley’s are my two favorites and there are a lot of good bios out there. What I like about this book is that it has pictures. One of my goals for this book was that you could sit and listen to music and read it at the same time. I just wanted to be able to hit Roy Orbison repeat and then start flipping through the pages. That’s the way I read most books, I listen to music or I listen to the book on tape while I’m reading it. While I’m on that topic, there’s also an audiobook that corresponds with the book (I’ll get back to that a little bit later at the end and tell you about how we did that). Don’t forget the audiobook is available on iTunes, or in CD form. I’m holding a copy of it right now, this is the first one. It’s about the size of a CD and it has a beautiful picture of Roy Orbison on the front with the guitar neck. Roy Orbison Unabridged read by Roy Orbison Jr., Wesley Orbison, and Alex Orbison. This includes PDFs of photos. Alex read the introduction and then I read the book on tape. Which is a lot of reason why I am doing these podcasts now, I did so much reading on this book that I started to like it and so I’m just continuing on my own with this. I’ve been telling the press I had to hold my breath for three days to read this book. I would have to keep the lines consistent, so I would take a deep breath and then read all the way to the end of the sentence and they would edit out the breaths in between. It’s beautiful, my brother Alex read the introduction, I read the bulk of the material and Wesley read the quotations. My brother Wesley (who sounds like most my dad and has the Orbison accent), never really moved from Tennessee and Texas. Alex and I went to California, so we got a little bit more California. I grew up in the back of a tour bus and in London, England and I also spent decades in Sweden, so I have a little bit of a European kind of marbled English accent. Wesley was raised by our grandparents Orbi Lee and Nadine who we call Mawmaw and Pawpaw. He has an accent that even people in Texas don’t have today. He has a kind of the Roy Orbison type accent. When he reads those lines, he read all the quotations of my dad. It makes the book more three dimensional and much more interesting. I listen to a lot of books on tape and I kind of don’t like it when it’s just one person and they act all the voices. There’s not so much acting in this, it’s us three brothers reading it. We have the rights to the music so the company that we worked with, Hashet, they did a great job putting the music underneath the text. They played it before the text or after the text, in between the text or underneath while I was talking. Those were really the only options you have but they were creative and clever in the way they did that. With the music there, it gives it breadth and dimension, it’s like a three-dimensional audiobook. We even got the new album Roy Orbison with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the title of the album is The Love So Beautiful. We were fortunate to be able to use that music on this project, so it all lined up well. It’s about seven hours long so if you aren’t getting enough with these podcasts and want to listen to me all the way to Florida, New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. It’s about perfect for a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If you’re out there driving around, you can get this on CD like the box that I’m holding or on iTunes. I have it on my iPhone so I’m taking it around everywhere I go. I also have the book on my iPhone and I have a physical copy as well, so I’ve got four copies of this thing. Let me read the back of the audiobook just to give you the press announcement and the information off the back, it says: “Roy Orbison is a rock and roll icon almost without peer. He came of age as an artist on the venerable son records label, toured with the Beetles had massive hits in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.” A footnote here in these, we also had a hit in 2017 with the song I Drove All Night which has these great girls war Thomas singing on it with Roy as a duet and that’s on the charts in Britain right now. Please check the blog that goes along with this Authorized Roy Orbison episode for a link to watch that video. “He invented the black clad sunglasses wearing image of the rock star and reinvented the art of songwriting many times over. He’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and recipient Hall of Fame’s inaugural iconic riff award, and the winner of multiple Grammy awards. He’s known the world over for hits like Blue Bayou, You Got It, and Oh Pretty Woman and was a member of the band that inspired the term “supergroup” the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. Despite these and countless other accolades, the story of Roy Orbison’s life is virtually unknown to the millions of his fans around the world. Now, for the first time ever, the Orbison Estate headed by Roy’s sons, Roy Orbison Jr., Wesley and Alex Orbison, has set out to set the record straight. The Authorized Roy Orbison tells the epic tale of a West Texas boy drawn to the guitar at the age of six whose monumental global carrier successes were matched at nearly every turn by extraordinary personal tragedies including the loss of the first wife in a motorcycle accident and his two oldest sons in a fire. It’s a story of the intense highs and severe lows that make up the mountain range of Roy Orbison’s career. One that touched four decades and ended abruptly at perhaps its highest peak when he passed at the age of 52 on December 4th, 1988. Guaranteed to bring a smile to listeners faces some of Orbison’s classics are woven throughout this audio book.” It then continues with a little bio material about Wesley, Alex, and I: “Wesley Orbison, Roy Orbison Jr., and Alex Orbison worked tirelessly to protect their father’s legacy. Wesley the eldest is a seasoned song writer and guitar player, his song The Only One co-written with Craig Wiseman appears on Roy Orbison’s multi-platinum album Mystery Girl. Roy Orbison Jr. is a singer and guitar play who works out of his own professional recording studio, Pretty Woman Studio. He enjoys spending time with his beautiful bride and their son Roy Orbison III. Alex, a drummer by trade began his career in music publishing at the age of 17, as co-president of Still Working Music along with his brother Roy, Alex has overseen numerous top ten songs and number one hits. All three brothers reside with their families in Nashville. Jeff Slate is a songwriter and music journalist who regularly contributes to Esquire, Rolling Stone and other publications. A lifelong fan of Roy Orbison, he recently contributed liner notes to Roy Orbison The Ultimate Collection and the 50th anniversary of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely-Hearts Club Band reissue. He and his partner Lynne reside in New York City with their children. Follow Roy Orbison on Instagram official Roy Orbison, Twitter, Facebook, and RoyOrbison.com. This audiobook was published by Hashet and is available now everywhere. As they say, it’s available everywhere, we hope to get this thing into bookstores in Australia by Christmas. I’ve done quite a few book signings for this already. We kicked it off on October 17th, 2017 in Los Angeles at the Grammy Museum. It was a fun event, Alex, Wesley and I did a twenty-minute reading from the book followed by video presentation of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra album and then we ended with a question and answer. The whole things took about two hours, we signed books, autographed the books at the end of the presentation and question and answer period and we sold out at the Grammy Museum. Then we flew to Nashville and we did a little gig at the Parnassus bookstore and we sold out there as well. We may even do a second one there or at least go by to sign them soon. I went through the Nashville airport as I flew out and they have a book store in the airport that had them, so I signed them in the Nashville book store. Then we flew to New York City where we did an event at the Gibson Showcase. It was nice, Jeff Slathe, the co-author of the book who I’ll talk about more as he pops up was at the event. We had a great fun night, we went out to dinner afterwards, but I’ve been so impressed with what he has done. We had a lot of research that went into this book about 15 years plus done by a friend of ours Marcel Riesco, he is a great guitarist, he is in a band called Truly Lover Trio, if you like Rockabilly and haven’t’ heard of the Truly Lover Trio and Marcel Riesco then do yourself a favor, he’s one of the last rock n rollers there is, and he does spot on solos of Roy Orbison’s Son Records period. He’s devoted 15 years plus of his life, I guess 18 years off and on to collecting every receipt and diary and he’s done personal interview and gotten firsthand accounts from people. That’s one of the things that makes this book so different is that it’s factual. We had to have a firsthand account, a picture of Roy, a receipt or ticket stubs to put it in the book. I want to thank Marcel for devoting so much of his time and being one of the biggest Roy Orbison fans I’ve ever met. Alex and Wesley and I continued this project for our parents, my dad Roy Orbison when he was 52 we were living in Malibu doing a lot of work and out of the blue he said, “I think I’ll start writing a book.” He did star
