Elvis Would Have Been Envious

The greatest live rock video album ever made

I remember the night I found it. I was somewhere near Durham, North Carolina. My flight had been delayed, so it was late on a rainy evening when I finally pulled my rental car into the lot of my low-budget business hotel. It was too late to get any real food.

The TV in my room was already on. I don’t know when hotels got the idea that people can’t go a second without entertainment blaring at them, but in this case it was a lucky break. At first, the sound was down, and as I unpacked I just got glimpses of black and white footage of a concert of some kind. I always travel light, so it didn’t take me long to arrange my stuff, shower and get ready to hit the sack.

Once I was settled in, I realized that I was watching Elvis Costello, sitting on a stage in his trademark black-framed glasses, playing a guitar. The camera pulled back, and I felt suddenly disoriented. Someone who looked like Bruce Springsteen was sitting close to Elvis, also strumming away. The shot zoomed out further, and I was looking at what must be a Roy Orbison impersonator, standing at the mike, singing and playing guitar.

I turned up the sound, and it sure sounded like Roy. Other shots kept showing familiar faces. It took me several seconds to process each one, and the whole thing felt surreal. Bonnie Raitt. k.d. lang. Tom Waits. Jackson Browne. The whole thing must be some kind of spoof.

Weirdest of all was that I couldn’t place this in any coherent time frame. Had old footage of Roy been superimposed onto video of a bunch of modern stars? I’m not sure the technology even would have existed to do that back then.

Internet searches were also not nearly what they are today. Google hadn’t happened yet. It took a day, between meetings, to dig up the information I was looking for. Then it all came together, and I felt like an idiot for having somehow missed this as it happened.

What I had seen was a rebroadcast of “A Black and White Night” starring Roy Orbison. It had been filmed a few years earlier, and was replayed on a regular basis on PBS stations. It was their most popular fundraising broadcast for many years.

Only, it became so much more than that. It stands as a monument to the intersection of two generations. One living legend passing the torch to a whole company of legends in the making.

Orbison’s fame had been in decline since his peak in the 1960’s, though he remained highly sought after by other musicians, and kept up a steady series of collaborations and tours, with the likes of k.d.lang and Emmylou Harris. Artists as diverse as Van Halen and Don McLean charted with covers of his songs. He was more popular in Europe than in the U.S. for a time.

Then, in 1986, things suddenly took off for him. David Lynch used his song “In Dreams” in a crucial spot in the movie “Blue Velvet”, propelling the song onto the airwaves again. This clip of Dean Stockwell lip-synching to “In Dreams”, while Frank (Dennis Hopper) teeters on the edge, has become immortal in movie lore:

Orbison was shocked by the use of his song in a scene depicting such damaged people, but came to appreciate the genius of that choice. He also openly enjoyed the resurgence in his visibility because of “Blue Velvet”.

The next year, Roy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Springsteen). The idea started circulating of doing some sort of Orbison-focused comeback tour.

The Hollywood producer T-Bone Burnett got interested and pushed the project forward. When word got out that a concert was being organized to honor Roy Orbison, with Roy himself headlining, dozens of hall-of-famers practically begged to participate. The final lineup has sometimes been referred to as the “Billion Dollar Band”. For good reason:

• Roy Orbison: lead vocals, guitar, harmonica

• T Bone Burnett: acoustic guitar; musical director and co-producer

TCB Band (Elvis Presley’s former band):

• Glen D. Hardin: piano

• James Burton: lead guitar

• Jerry Scheff: upright bass

• Ronnie Tutt: drums

Guest performers:

• Bruce Springsteen: guitar, vocals

• Elvis Costello: acoustic guitar, organ, harmonica

• Tom Waits: organ, acoustic guitar

• Michael Utley: keyboards

• Alex Acuña: percussion

• JD Souther: backing vocals; acoustic guitar; vocal arrangements

• Steven Soles: backing vocals

• Jackson Browne: backing vocals

• Bonnie Raitt: backing vocals

• k.d. lang: backing vocals

• Jennifer Warnes: backing vocals

• Ezra Klinger, Pavel Farkas, Christopher Reutinger, Carol Shive, Cynthia Morrow, Bobby Debow: violin

• Jimbo Ross, Peter Hatch: viola

That lineup pretty much speaks to the reverence other musicians had for Roy. Elvis had left the building almost exactly ten years earlier, but not before going on record calling Orbison the greatest singer in the world. He never tried to cover Roy’s songs.

Elvis Costello wrote a song for the concert, Springsteen checked his ego at the door, and the whole group turned in a magical performance.

No one could guess at the time, but Roy would be gone just over a year later. The Orbison estate later licensed the concert footage to PBS for use in fundraising, which is how most people, including me, found out about its existence.

Here are four songs from that concert, including my favorites “Blue Angel” and “In Dreams”. If you didn’t know about this concert already, there’s a good chance that you’ll want to binge these four now and then go hunting for the rest. It’s that good.

I have attached the Spotify playlist for the official audio album at the end of this article. However, it comes with two caveats. First, it is missing what I consider one of the best songs from the concert, “Blue Angel”.

Second, the whole experience really requires the visual component. Watching the performers, and seeing their awe and happiness at being on the stage with Orbison and with each other, is hard to match.

I recommend playing these four links first, before listening to the whole album. Better yet, buy the concert video on DVD or Blu-ray, and watch the whole thing. Over and over.

*****

“Only the Lonely”

Roy opens the concert with his most famous hit. I still get the shivers, every time I watch this. In the audience you can easily spot a number of famous musicians and Hollywood types, among them Kris Kristofferson and Billy Idol.

“In Dreams”

Imagine being with the person you love, and waking to find she is not only gone, but perhaps never existed. You may have had that sort of experience — I have. Orbison’s first wife died in a motorcycle accident three years before he wrote this, and reviewers often surmise that the song is about her. As far as I know, Roy never confirmed or denied it.

Singing about heartbreak isn’t new. What makes this song unique is the musical structure, coupled with Orbison’s rich, resonant voice. In composing this, Orbison dismissed popular songwriting conventions. No A-B-A-B-C-A-B or similar structure. It goes A-B-C-D-E-F. In other words, it is more like an opera or symphony than a pop song. J.D. Souther called him “The world’s only operatic rockabilly singer”, and boy, was he was right.

The closest thing that most people have heard, that isn’t hours long, is Ravel’s “Bolero”. It builds and builds, toward a heart-rending climax. “Bolero” is an instrumental. Orbison’s voice on top of something like this is simply mind-blowing.

“Blue Angel”

My second favorite Orbison song, if I had to choose, would be this one. It’s every 50’s doo-wop ballad ever written, rolled up into one. I doubt anyone will ever again be privileged to have a choir of backup singers like this, to do the “dooby-wah’s”.

“Blue Angel” is sweet and innocent compared with a lot of Orbison’s darker songs, but still hits with a heavy dose of nostalgia and a tinge of melancholy. Songs with “Blue” in the title should do that.

“Ooby Dooby”

With its silly lyrics and irresistible swing, this is the party song of the concert. It gives a long leash to the instrumentalists, who go to town. Even Roy takes a turn with a jaunty guitar solo. Of course, he also belts out the vocals as only he can.

There is a hilarious moment when Waits misses his cue, and Orbison and James Burton turn to give each other bemused looks, as though to ask “What just happened?”

The highlight, however, is the incomparable Burton, who gives an awestruck Springsteen a long-overdue guitar lesson. It’s something wondrous to behold.

*****

I have watched a couple of hundred concert videos, as well as band biopics full of music and semi-documentaries of major concerts with lots of performance footage. There are also a ton of live, short-form, youtube clips of various artists doing their thing on stage. Given the sheer volume of material uploaded to youtube every second, I’m sure that I have missed lots of good stuff — there is no helping that.

Still, I’m going to put down a marker that says this is the greatest rock concert video album ever. (I say “album” to distinguish it from a documentary, which may have partial cuts, interruptions and commentary, and is a completely different thing.) I would love to know your thoughts! If you know of a concert video album that belongs in the conversation, please mention it in the comments.

I will be posting pieces on other video albums (I have a list coming together and, again, am soliciting suggestions). But, so far, I consider this the benchmark!

Spotify (official audio album for “A Black and White Night”):