Alan embodies legend of Big O

Alan Morris embodies the legend, still firing on the memory of the day he first saw Orbison.

“I went to see him at Blackpool with my parents way back.

“We are going back to 1964. All the big tours and all the big stars. He did a famous tour with The Beatles in 1963, and he just returned to the UK every year.

“And the man in black just stood there and held the audience in the palm of his hand. You could not hear a whisper in the audience when he was singing. He just held you. The music was just astonishing.

“When you get in to the music and hear those ballads, it is just incredible. It was the way that he delivered it from the heart.

“He didn’t sing so much for commercial reasons as just for the fact that it meant so much to him.

“If you go through the biography, you see that he had a lot of tragedy in his life.

“And that’s reflected in the music. The man was just a genius to have been able to write the words that he did. He was just wonderful.”

To make sure he could get those high notes, he would drive out into the middle of rural nowhere near his Texas home, wind down the windows and sing his heart out.

“I never met him in person, but I am in touch with the Orbison people.

“I have just come back from Nashville. I went to the great Sun recording studio.

“The people that were there were so wonderful that they allowed me to play a guitar Roy had used.”