In 1963, Roy Orbison released a single like none before it. In Dreams helped him upstage The Beatles and, 23 years later, introduced him to a whole new generation of fans… By Douglas McPherson
According to Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis, “Sexual intercourse began in 1963.” He was referring to a confluence of events that included the Profumo affair and launch of a British contraceptive pill.
Using similar logic, we can probably say that ‘the Sixties’ as we know them didn’t begin in 1960, the year that Roy Orbison topped the UK chart with Only The Lonely. That record was anchored in the doo-wop spirit of the 50s. Musically speaking, the 60s began in 1962, when The Beatles released Love Me Do.
So when Orbison arrived in Britain the following year, for a tour with the Liverpool quartet, he may have had an uncomfortable feeling that the world was entering a new epoch in which the Fab Four were the future and he represented the past. Seeing how heavily the tour publicity was geared around the newcomers, riding high on their first UK No.1, From Me To You, the 27-year-old Texan opted to go on before the mop tops.
Orbison, however, was far from yesterday’s man. He was actually about to begin a period of renewed popularity, here in Britain especially.
On the first date, in Slough, he took to the stage in a pair of prescription sunglasses, having left his regular specs on a plane in the US, and inadvertently created a bold new image that would become his trademark. The audience went wild for his set, which included Only The Lonely, Candy Man and What’d I Say, and especially the song with which he closed, his new single, In Dreams. Watching from the wings, The Beatles wondered how they would follow him. It was only when the audience called him back for a 15th encore that John Lennon and Paul McCartney blocked him from re-entering the stage!
In many ways In Dreams was the perfect Roy Orbison record, uniting many of the signature elements from his other hits. The opening lines – “A candy-coloured clown they call the sandman” – half-spoken over sparse guitar strums, echoed the drama of his previous hit, Running Scared. The cha-cha groove that followed prefigured the soothing melodiousness of subsequent smash Blue Bayou.
The lyric repeated the motif of Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream). The heartbroken narrator only fulfilled when he’s asleep: “In dreams, I walk with you/ In dreams, I talk to you… It’s too bad that all these things/ Can only happen in my dreams.” Most of all, the song’s soaring structure showcased an operatic vocal range that most rock stars could only achieve… well, in their dreams.
Fittingly, the song came to Orbison in a dream, or at least while he was in a half-awake state prior to rising. Just 20 minutes later, it was complete.
With echoes of Running Scared’s storytelling style, In Dreams eschews the traditional structure of most rock and pop songs. Instead, it takes us on a narrative journey, through falling asleep, revelling in a dream and waking in anguish to realise it was just a dream. As the lyric progresses through those stages, the music moves through seven distinctly different melodic patterns that are never repeated, although they flow so naturally that the transitions are never noticeable.
The effect is suitably dreamlike in that each movement seems to fade from memory as the next begins – in the way that dreams slip so easily from our minds – making it hard to look back and grasp exactly how we reached the end of a song that is so different from its beginning.
Orbison recorded In Dreams at RCA’s Studio B in Nashville on 4 January 1963. Producer Fred Foster perfectly framed the singer’s performance in a stirring orchestral arrangement, down to the staccato drum riff that precedes the abrupt ending – another echo from Running Scared. Released a month later, the song climbed to US No.7 and UK No.6. It also topped the charts in Ireland and Australia.
It wasn’t Roy’s biggest hit. That honour goes to the following year’s Oh, Pretty Woman. But its adventurous spirit of innovation helped to establish Orbison as a 60s trendsetter instead of a 50s nostalgia act.
With its lush sound and unique structure, In Dreams paved the way for pop symphonies like When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) by The Beach Boys, and Glen Campbell’s By The Time I Get To Phoenix.
It was also far ahead of what The Beatles were producing at that point. During the tour with Roy, Lennon and McCartney composed the catchy but comparatively simplistic She Loves You.
Far from being yesterday’s man, Orbison in ’63 was an artist ahead of his time.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, when Orbison’s star had waned, film director David Lynch used In Dreams for pivotal scenes in his psychological film noir, Blue Velvet.
According to Lynch, Orbison initially “hated” the way that his delicate ode to lost love was portrayed as the favourite song of the film’s unhinged gangster character, played by Dennis Hopper, and used as the soundtrack to him beating up the movie’s hero, played by Kyle MacLachlan. On a second viewing, however, he came to appreciate that Lynch’s use of the song added what Orbison called “a whole new dimension to In Dreams.”
The movie’s notoriety led to a resurgence of interest and stoked strong sales of In Dreams: The Greatest Hits, a double album for which he re-recorded his best-known material. The singer’s revived profile led to his part in the celebrated supergroup The Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty.
Listening to the Blue Velvet soundtrack on a sleepless night, meanwhile, inspired U2’s Bono to write She’s A Mystery To Me, widely regarded as a highlight of Orbison’s final album, Mystery Girl, which was released after his death, aged 52, in 1988.
