T Bone Burnett
T Bone Burnett on Roy Orbison
"Roy had a big voice but he didn’t do it with volume at all. When he sang, he rarely opened his mouth a half an inch and he sang very, very quietly but it was all tone – he did it all with tone and the intensity of his tone. One of the odd quirks about Orbison, because he worked back in the old days live before there were monitors, he had to learn how the notes felt in his bones – his cheek bones and his jaw bones. So, in the studio when he was using headphones he would have the band in his headphones but he wouldn’t have his own voice in the headphones. He is the only person I’ve run into who would do that. And when he sang all of those songs, even when they would be belted out and sounded completely operatic, he was still singing very, very quietly." |