(Credit: Jack de Nijs for Anefo)
Sun 11 January 2026 17:30, UK
Only living for a total of 52 years, Roy Orbison packed a lot in. But it’s also fair to say he weathered the storm of rather a lot of tragedy.
Throughout the life-altering power of multiple bereavements in quick succession, starting with his wife Claudette in 1966, and then his two eldest sons in a house fire two years later, it was pretty understandable why Orbison lost his songwriting spark. It also didn’t help that his whole brand as an artist was based on a sorrowful and mournful view of life. Basically, it made everything an uphill struggle.
The fact that Orbison fell into many commercial pitfalls and struggled to recapture his original stardom over the years that followed was hardly surprising, given that the business of rock and roll simply wouldn’t have rung true anymore with the personal battles he was constantly climbing.
Without question, however, it was his resurgence among younger audiences and being accepted into the fold of The Traveling Wilburys that offered the singer the first glimmers of hope for the first time in approaching two decades. The late ‘80s seemed like a time of new horizons – until that was cruelly snatched away again, when Orbison lost his life to a heart attack on December 6th, 1988.
What made the ending of his life so undeniably devastating was the fact that he had only just rediscovered the genesis of his songwriting magic again and was managing to put it to good use. He wrote the album Mystery Girl, which ended up being released posthumously, but within this, there was one particular song which captured his feeling of divine intervention.
“When I started, I said, ‘What kind of song can I write that will equal ‘Crying’?’ And almost the minute I thought that, I said: ‘That’s idiotic. Just write a different song’,” Orbison told Rolling Stone in 1988. “I remember getting in the trap of trying to write for myself as a singer – trying to write for Roy Orbison, the rock and roll balladeer, the guy who sings high and low and lonely. And then I realised it didn’t matter. What mattered was jumping in with both feet and being committed and working hard.”
As soon as he let go of those inhibitions, ‘The Way is Love’ rose from the ashes – a simple song, but one he knew had been a gift from God. It stopped him in his tracks so much that after writing it, he retreated to his room, prayed, and cried tears of joy that the tides had managed to turn once again.
Within months, Orbison was tragically gone, and the tape for the song, only recorded in demo form, was lost for decades. When it was finally unearthed, the musician’s three sons – Wesley, Alex, and Roy Jr – made it their mission that their father’s final words of song should be heard, and that his legacy lives on.
As a result, ‘The Way is Love’ was featured as a bonus track on the 25th anniversary reissue of Mystery Girl in 2014, bringing an end to Orbison’s illustrious, if sometimes turbulent, tenure with one last touch of simple magic. The mark of him was that nothing needed flair or excessiveness – honest words suited the needs of an honest man.
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