In Dreams–Roy Orbison
This will be the third and last part of the trilogy on Roy Orbison’s brief but lasting influence on American music. First, let’s examine how the words from “Running Scared” helped to create tension and propel us to the final climax of the song, in which Roy held a natural A in his regular (not falsetto) voice. Roy and his writing partner, Joe Melson, started the lyric with mystery. At the outset, we don’t know if the two people are on the run from the police, the mob or Russian spies; but within four lines, we know that the two are running from someone in the woman’s past. The second verse reveals that the woman is running from someone that she loves; and the narrator is running away to keep her with him.
It is interesting that we are immediately turned off by the mysterious man, an arrogant prig: “So sure of himself, his head in the air.” The narrator, on the other hand, is attractive to us because he is unsure of himself and his ability to keep the girl, quite the opposite of Porgy in Porgy and Bess. We are kept in suspense right up to the end, when the narrator and the audience are both pleased by the outcome.
Our last selection (quite honestly, I would love to talk about all of his songs but I also would like to eat ice cream for breakfast) is “In Dreams,” a song that Roy wrote alone in 1963. Roy used a device that is classical in nature, expressing the joy of love that he can only feel and see in his dreams. “In dreams I walk with you/In dreams I talk with you/In dreams you’re mine all of the time.”
Of course, all dreams come to an end as we awaken: “But just before the dawn/I awake to find you gone.” We learn that his love said goodbye to him, leaving him alone, except for the moments that he can share with her in his dreams.
Why did I say earlier that Roy was using a classic device? To illustrate my point, take a look at Milton’s Twenty-Third Sonnet. John Milton (1608-1674) wrote Paradise Lost and other great poems during his life. His first wife, Mary Powell, was the love of his life; she said goodbye most tragically in 1652 when she died from complications giving birth to their fourth child, Deborah. By 1654 Milton went totally blind; and, while he remarried twice, he never fully recovered from Mary’s death. His 23d Sonnet relates a dream that he had, in which Mary came back to him, “pale and faint.” He explained his shock, in that he had the faith of life after death, during which he would be permanently restored to her side “without restraint.”
As his dream progressed, he saw Mary come ever closer even though her face as “veil’d.” But now listen to the words of the final couplet: “But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin’d,/ I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.”
We perceive that, in dreams, the blind Milton could once again see; when day broke and he awoke, the sad truth returned: he was blind. Thus, he could only see his dead wife in his dreams.
Cole Porter said the same thing but in a more accusative manner in his beautiful ballad from the musical Anything Goes:
“All through the night,
I delight in your love,
All through the night you’re so close to me!
All through the night,
From a height far above,
You and your love brings me ecstasy!
When dawn comes to waken me,
You’re never there at all!
I know you’ve forsaken me
Till the shadows fall,
But then once again I can dream, I’ve the right
To be close to you all through the night.”
We see the same concept–of being able to see and love someone only in a dream.
Roy was smart beyond his formal education, wise beyond his years and great beyond his own imagination, right up to the end of his life, when he was amazed that so many wonderful singers and musicians had come to LA to sing with him.
R.I.P., Roy Orbison