Bill has his own website www.whitewolf.com and performs under the name of Whitewolf
You can chat to Bill at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/crazybillsplace
Email me [email protected] and I will send you
an invite to join the club
A picture of Bill taken in 1957 with the Five Bops is in the photo section at CrazyBills
| When did you first see Roy Orbison? |
| First time I saw him he was a show at at high school auditorium in Clovis, New Mexico. His heels would come back -- today, it would be considered a wild dance step -- and he would lift his feet off the ground and land back with his heels again flat, playing the guitar at the same time. He would drop to one knee and his long hair would fall over his glasses. He was doing hillbilly rock and he had a hit with "Ooby Dooby". "Ooby" sounded like 'Orby' and people sometimes used 'Ooby' as a nickname, which he hated. A few years later we met up with him when we had the No. 1 record in Amarillo, Texas and Wichita Falls with "Jitterbuggin' "and he had "Only The Lonely". We found out what a sincere mild-mannered person he was. |
| Wasn't "Jitterbuggin' " by the Five Bops? |
| Yes, and we became the Whirlwinds. We were all over Texas panhandle playing shipwreck parties -- everybody was dressed like a sailor or a pirate and the girls wore island dresses. "Jitterbuggin' " had a riff on the end of it that went (sings a riff), so the Champs might have gotten "Tequila!" from us. When went to the radio station in Odessa, Texas, to cut our next record, orchid Cadillac with chrome skirts was out front, which belonged to Roy Orbison. We recorded 'til 3 o'clock in the morning and he did our mix. The guy who owned the radio station ran away and, as he took our tapes, we never had a record of the things we did. |
| And then what happened? |
| Roy played a big dome in our hometown, and the voice was so clear and loud and piercing. By that time he was immobile as a statue, just his right knee would move. I'd been working with a sledgehammer and when he saw my hands, he said, "You work that hard?" I was flipped that he still remembered me; and then he asked if I was still writing. I sang "Borne On The Wind". About two weeks later I was out of work and I got a call asking me to join him in Hendersonville, Tennessee. |
| "Borne On The Wind" sounds very personal. |
| The kids of a man I knew got caught in the undertow in the ocean and he dived in to save them. When I heard about it they hadn't found his body. I was backstage at a concert and I went into the bathroom with my little four-string guitar. It was echoing real good, and I was able to write "Borne on The Wind" before I went on stage. It was a very sad song, but it held an element of hope. If you take out the Spanish thing in the middle --"You don't love me, but you love me to be in love with you" -- that is basically what I had. It was speeded up and given a Tex-Mex feel. |
| And then "It's Over". |
| I'd no idea that Roy had cut "Borne on the Wind" but I met up with him when he was about to go to England. He heard a song I'd written called "It's Over At Last" and he wanted to use (sings) #It's Over, it's over, it's over"# We then wrote the whole song from scratch, but he did most of the writing. He was brilliant when he got started as he knew exactly where he wanted to go. |
| Were you at the session? |
| Yes, and it was the biggest there had ever been in Nashville to that time. There were 36 musicians in Bob Moore's Orchestra. This book (Alan Clayson's "Only The Lonely") says I was singing on the flipside, "Indian Wedding", but I was only there to watch "It's Over being recorded. The following year Roy recorded me on "Blackie Dalton", which we had written, and "This Is Your Song", but they were never released. |
| What about "Oh Pretty Woman" ? |
| I had a Spanish melody (sings the melody of "Pretty woman walk on by"), a simple thing, and we hadn't figured out how to use it. Roy's wife, Claudette, said, "Give me some money honey" and it was a very flirtatious scene as he said "What For?" and she replied, "I've got to go to the store." I said "A Pretty Woman don't need no money " and he started singing "Pretty Woman walking down the street". He sang while I was banging my hand on the table and by the time that Claudette came back, we had the song. Fred Foster at Monument said "It'd be nice if we had an ending" and we spent a day on that. From the moment the rhythm started, I could hear the heels clicking on the pavement, click, click, the pretty woman walking down the street, in a yellow skirt and red shoes. Perhaps it's a sailor singing the song. She goes by and flashes him a half-smile, as if to say "I'm above this". He looks back at his watch and when he looks back, she's looking at him. We wrote "Pretty Woman" on a Friday, the next Friday we recorded it, and the next Friday it was out. It was the fastest thing I ever saw. The Beatles were hot and Fred Foster felt that Monument had to release it quickly. Actually, the 'yeah yeah yeah' in "Oh Pretty Woman probably came from the Beatles. |
| The growl and the 'Mercy' are as well-known as the lyric. |
| People think I'm copying the record if I go 'Mercy' but I have been doing that for over 30 years and it's hard to stop. When I see a pretty woman or eat good food, I say "Mercy". There are two spots on the record where the guitars were doing their thing and Roy said "Should we do something here?" I said "Why don't you say 'Mercy' or growl?" (growls) I got Roy growling but mine is in the throat. I couldn't do it like he did it. |
| And were you on the session? |
| Yes I sang with him which was really exciting. I was singing on the No. 1 record and it was like a duet. Of course he could have tracked it. but it said 'Roy Orbison and the Candymen' on the label and I was the one that named the group, the Candymen. It would have been nice if he had given me 1% or something, but I got $80. When I asked for a gold record, Monument said I would have to pay for it! The biggest arguments that Roy and I had were over money. Roy paid me $50 a night when we toured and as we were usually working six nights a week, that's $300 a week. I felt it should be $350 as I'd be in a strange town on the 7th night but he wouldn't accept that. He said, "Nobody works seven days a week." Paul Garrison got his revenge by setting up his drums before Roy went on stage and telling Roy's jokes to the audience. Roy came out and said, "I just flew in and, boy, my arms are tired," and wondered why nobody would laugh. When he found out it was Paul, he almost fired him. |
| I've seen in print that there was a version of "Oh Pretty Woman" before Roy Orbison's. |
| No, there's been some confusion here. Some years earlier, Roy Orbison, Joe Melson and Ray Rush had written a song called "Pretty Woman". The same day as the session someone from Acuff-Rose said "You can't call this song "Pretty Woman", there's already a pretty woman here. You'll have to change it." I realise now that I didn't have to change it at all ---there is another song called "It's Over" and Gene Pitney put them both together. Anyway, I said, "Why not call it 'Oh Pretty Woman' 'cause that's how it ends?" When my nephew Vince went to the store to get "Oh Pretty Woman" by Van Halen, the label said it was by Roy Orbison, Joe Melson and Ray Rush and he walked out of the store. It was like I had lied to him. 100,000 records went out with the wrong credit and Acuff-Rose had to get Joe Melson and Ray Rush to sign a form relinquishing their rights. |
| Do you get on well with Joe Melson? |
| Sure, I recently met him in Malibu. He stopped writing with Roy 'cause he wanted to be a film star. We only ever wrote one song together, "Woman Power", but it would be perfect for the Everley Brothers. We never found a way to get it to them. |
| How did you like the way "Oh Pretty Woman" was used in the Richard Gere film? |
| I loved it. I held my breath at first 'cause I knew it was about prostitutes and the lyric is "Pretty Woman, walking down the street". I could see that they could glorify prostitution with the song, but it's used great in the film. It's also great to hear my voice with Roy's up on the screen. |
| There's also some Spanish in the B side of "Oh Pretty Woman" and also on "The Fastest Guitar Alive" soundtrack. |
| I loved Mexican radio stations and "Yo Te Amo Maria" came from me in the sense that I took Spanish and Roy didn't. It meant "I love you, Mary" and the rest of the song is English! I wasn't doing the harmony the way Roy heard it, So he showed me how. I told him to do it himself. In the end, I sang the lead in the chorus, and he sang the harmony, so I can say I sang the lead on a Roy Orbison record. |
| "Goodnight" was not a huge hit but it's a record I've always enjoyed. |
| It went to #6 in England. I
did the harmony on it and Roy got standing ovations when I toured England
with him and did the ending several times at each performance
(sings) #My lovely woman child" #: Roy thought of Claudette like that. Sometimes I can't tell you who wrote what, and Roy was the same. I knew Roy wrote most of "It's Over", but about two weeks ago I found a very old song I'd written which contained the line "Golden days before they end". I was certain he wrote that line but now I know I did it. Sometimes I wrote while he was touring. I would sing maybe five or six things to him, and he would take a piece of the lyric or the melody and write something new. There's a lot of chord changes in "Goodnight" because three or four songs have been joined together. |
| I'm not sure why but "(Say) You're My Girl" never quite works for me. Perhaps it's too dis-jointed. |
| It was very popular at concerts and the audiences loved it live. It went top 20 in Billboard Magazine. We took a melody from where I had it and moved it on up a little higher. It had a lot of words and it seemed very visual to me. The guy is talking to the girl he's dancing with. "You tell me he ran around, that's terrible " It wasn't a big song but it was a good one. If there had been videos, it might have done better than the Top 20. You could have shown the looks and the jealousy. |
| Was "Sleepy Hollow" a place?. |
| I wrote this song imagining a place like that back in Texas on the dry almost desert place I grew up in. I lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee at the time and I had a creek coming in the back and I would pull my boat in there. It was beautiful, 24-foot pontoon called "Pretty Woman" you could fish in the shallow water and I'd be there at two or three in the morning. One morning I sang "There's a place I call Sleepy Hollow that I go when You're not around, there's a brook running clear in the meadow". It fell together pretty quick. I was surprised that Roy did it without making any changes, so he doubled my money -and my pleasure. |
| In retrospect, Should Roy have moved from Monument to MGM?. |
| No, but Roy wanted a chance to make movies The Fastest Guitar Alive was with a guarenteed income of 20 yrs. I think that swayed him. It hurt us,changing labels. By joining MGM he could make movies, but he lost contact with people who cared and who could give him good advice. Fred Foster knew when he had it right. When he recorded "Heartache", I said "Roy didn't hit some of those low notes , you'll get him to do it again, won't you?" but they said it was okay. When someone buys a record, they play it over and over so you have to get it right. The way he sings "do me HAY " bugs me every time I hear that record. |
| But you and Roy were unlucky. "Ride Away" deserved to be one of your biggest hits. |
| I think so too. It should have been a hit. A lot of women have hooks out to get you and "Ride Away" is about escaping the net. I like the idea as it was the spirit of all men wanting to be free. It's a very beautiful and intricate song and a wonderful one to play. Buddy Harmon, the drummer, kicks a different rhythm right at the end; he had only just realised that it was a motorcycle song and he kicked that drum to make it sound like a motor. I did most of Roy's harmony work in those days including songs I didn't write like "You Fool You". If there's a harmony on any of the things we wrote together, it's me. On "Ride Away", I stayed up all night and smoked two packs of cigarettes hoping my voice would drop but it didn't. I did all my harmony work with Roy very close to the mike, I didn't sing out, I sang like a girl!. It was a motorcycle song and was never redone. I hope to record it myself sometime. |
| "Ride Away" was followed by a superb ballad, "Crawling Back". |
| Men are too macho to think to think that they would ever crawl back to a woman. It is only the ones that have done it that appreciate it.... and they wouldn't admit it! Roy put himself at risk in "Crawling Back" for what he thought was the truth. that is definitely our song, but it's in his heart because he was taking Claudette back at the time. Her heart and personality came out through the split and he realised her worth more and wanted her back. "Breakin' Up Is Breakin' My Heart" is also very real, true to life stuff. Actually when he and Claudette split up, "It's Over" was like a slap in the face. I could hardly see how he could go on stage and sing it. |
| "Twinkle Toes" was more light-hearted. |
| I loved the melody and enjoyed writing that. It was Roy's title and I didn't think it was right. I wouldn't want to see a go-go dancer called Twinkle Toes, but I didn't have a better alternative. Roy could picture her so vividly and he saw it as a hit song. It's an inside look, how she felt looking at all the people who were looking at her. |
| The film he made, "The Fastest Guitar Alive", was produced by Sam Katzman, the King of the Quickies. |
| I wanted to be in the movie but Roy said they didn't have a place for a fat, curly-headed, blue-eyed Indian! Roy found it uncomfortable to be wearing contacts instead of glasses. He could have done the songs himself but he had a sense of loyalty and we did them together. He'd tell me the plot and we'd work them out. I'm not a musician's musician and I only played twice on his records. I played a four-string banjo on "Headin' South" and the jawbone of an ass on "Best Friend"! The jawbone had bells on it and you hit the back of the skull with your hand. Unfortunately it doesn't come out very heavy in the mix. Did you know that Johnny Cash did "Best Friend" ? At the opening of the House of Cash studios, He took me on one side as it was the first song he recorded there. He changed the lyrics so that it was 'Gods the best friend you'll ever have' --and he changed the melody so that it sounded like "Chim-Chim-Cheree"! I don't know why he did that! I was disappointed with the weak backing behind his voice. There's no point in spending all that money on a studio if you then go easy on the musicians. |
| I always think that "There Won't Be Many Coming Home" is the most poignant song you and Roy wrote and, in a sense, can be regarded as the best song to come out of the Vietnam war. |
| We wrote it for the movie, but, yes, the statement is about war in general. We knew "If they all came back but one he was still some mother's son" was a heavy thought. In other words we are all of the Family of Love and we don't have to kill each other if we don't want to. I originally had " Look closely at that soldier coming at you dressed on grey" but we changed it to "through the haze" to move it away from the Civil War. The reference to 'brothers' is because brothers sometimes fought on both sides of the war, one joined the Union and one the South, but the word had a wider application. Roy and I also wrote a song specifically about Vietnam with Angie Morrow in Atlanta, Georgia ---(sings) #It's the 'Bonnie and Clyde' days, where the girls wear curls and lace, and the boys can't stand the pace of war: it's not the war but the cause the country's fighting for: the seeds of discontent are sown, they're burning cards back home, back home." We called it "The Defector" and, although Roy recorded it I don't think it was released. |
| And all this would be around the time of the tragedies in his life. He had divorced Claudette, then got back together, only to have her die in a motorcycle accident, and then two sons were killed in a house fire. |
| Roy and I rode motorcycles together a lot. I was supposed to be with him on that trip when Claudette was killed, but mine was in the shop so I didn't get to go. After all those things, Roy couldn't settle. He was in and out of things, and it was like being with a high pressure cooker. He had a hard time getting over these hurdles, and I like to think I helped him. He felt he should keep on working, but he was vulnerable and delicate. He didn't like to let anyone down. One time, he rang me from a hospital and asked me if I could play the Crazy Horse Saloon in Birmingham, Alabama that night. He said, "The promoter will lose money, so can you go on for me?" I'd never done that before but I did a whole performance with "It's Over" and "Oh Pretty Woman " and the promoter gave half the money back. I couldn't play with the band as I didn't use the same rhythm or make the same changes, so I went on without my guitar and because I was nervous, I was holding a cigarette. When I got off stage, the bartender said, "You're an arrogant bastard, walking on stage like Frank Sinatra." |
| Another poignant song is "Memories" |
| I love that. We wrote an equal amount on it and, as usual, we started with a little piece of melody of mine. We zoomed in on the thought and the feeling of what memories can do to you. Larry Butler's piano work was extremely nice, I love the way he runs down those keys. I was hoping that it would be a classic (sings) # More than the greatest love #. "Memories" is a universal theme but I don't know anyone else who has recorded the song. I guess Roy was almost death to a song. No-one liked to follow him, but look how successful Van Halen were when they decided to have fun with "Oh Pretty Woman". Do you know "She" ? Barbara Streisand or Bette Midler could have a hit with it if they recorded it as "He". That is a great song. Roy didn't say that it was about Claudette but he didn't have to. "She is, she was, she'll always be a woman". I wonder why he didn't say "My woman"? |
| You wrote about your love of Texas in "This Is My Land"? |
| I was on my way from Texas to Tennessee and I asked my wife Mona to take it down in shorthand. I spoke it out and she wrote it down. When I got to my room, I then did the chords to it. Bobby Goldsboro was at Roy's house and he told Bobby that he had to hear it. Roy recorded it and a lot of people have told me that it was their favourite song by him - patriotic people, mostly. |
| Was there a split? |
| Bob Montgomery liked a song I had written called "Little Girl, Walk On". He and Bobby Goldsboro wanted to produce me on the song and it was a wonderful opportunity. They had "Honey" at number 1 and chances are I could have had a hit. I said that I'd have to ask Roy, and they said "Is this your mother? do you have to check in and out? " I said that Roy was responsible for my income: if he takes it lightly, well, great. I called Roy and he sounded hurt. In fact, he hung up on me. I called back and apologised. He was still hurt but he said, " If you want to do it, we'll do a big session when my next cheque comes in." I said. "Okay", but we never did the record. To this day Bob Montgomery makes a point of being hard with me. He's a good publisher, I play him my best stuff and he turns them down. He says, I Don't hear nothing." |
| So you stopped writing together? |
| Well, we got real petty with one another and terribly vicious, and it just happened. We didn't say that we weren't writing together anymore but we weren't. I started writing with Mark Mathis of The Newbeats. We met every friday night for five months and we wrote 60 songs together. The only money we made was with a song called "Nashville" which won a Chamber of Commerce award for the best song about Nashville, Tennessee. I only wrote one song with Larry Henley of The Newbeats, "If Only For A While", but Roy recorded it just before we split up. |
| How did you get back with Roy in the 80's? |
| We were both believers and I wrote him a letter telling him a little more about where I was. His wife Barbara wrote to say that they were excited about my new attitude and they flew me to Malibu. We wrote ten songs and he recorded "Windsurfer" on the "Mystery Girl " album. We didn't finish many of the others but I've wound them up now. |
| How did Windsurfer come about? |
| I'd returned to my home in the sweat box part of the country. There was no ocean and I turned on my recorder and sang "Windsurfing" which Roy changed to "Windsurfer". The girl was saying " No No No" and that's pretty solid. She didn't want to bother with a kid on a sail. I had the windsurfer face down in the sand. They'd found his body, but that was too much for Roy. He said " He can write her a message and write it in the sand." Roy had to fight hard to get that song on the album: they said " What do you want to sound like The Beach Boys for? " I thought it was a great summer song, and you don't have to be near the beach to enjoy it. |
| Bill Dees, thank you for sharing your memories of Roy Orbison with ' Record Collector' |
| I' m glad to do it . Roy has been responsible for my livelihood for almost thirty years, and I can't thank him enough. I have four children and seven grandchildren. The music business has supported us very well and it's all because of Roy Orbison. |