Wait, what? "Ride Away"? As someone who has thought very highly of Orbison for a number of years — albeit without ever having been heavily into the man at any point — I can honestly say I had never heard of it until I began planning this review. I daresay I'm not alone in this regard. Click on the link to this single on the Wikipedia page List of number-one singles of 1965 (Canada) and you'll be sent to the page for parent album There Is Only One Roy Orbison.
Audiences in other parts of the world reacted to just another Orbison single in a much more measured manner: its chart positions in Australia, the US and the UK were fifteen, twenty-five and thirty-four respectively. Yet, Canadians went against the grain to take "Ride Away" all the way to the top. Had this occurred in the midst of an imperial period of half-a-dozen or so other number ones, then having a good if surprisingly forgettable single like this hit the summit would have made more sense. In this instance, however, it just seems random.
I'm of two minds when it comes to this one. On the one hand, it's great, if a little understated. I found it a little underwhelming at first and I felt the adrift country and western sound to be something of an anachronism by the standards of 1965. The Canadian charts of the late fifties and early sixties had been awash in these tunes — including CHUM chart number ones "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton, "Running Bear" by Johnny Preston and "Please Help Me, I'm Falling" by Hank Locklin — but they had become one of the victims of the British Invasion by this time. (Contributing to this was the fact that RPM magazine had introduced the country music singles charts in 1964 which meant that C&W artists were going to have a much more difficult time trying to crack the mainstream pop charts) After a few listens, "Ride Away" begins to reveal itself as a tender lament from the road. It won't be anyone's favourite of his but how could anyone object to it either?
My issue with it is that it's too understated (yes, I know that I just said that it's 'a little understated', I just didn't want to overstate its understatedness); it scarcely sounds like a single at all. Orbison was a figure who demanded to be listened to but he wasn't the sort to go out of his way to get audiences to pay attention: the onus was on one person and it wasn't about to be him. "Ride Away" lacks hooks and fails to stand out, just a typically top notch Orbison number in a world already awash in them. From the evidence of his current work, he didn't seem especially concerned about The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones or the many notable groups on the Motown label: some or all of them may have been influenced by him but they didn't seem to be making a similar. Thrilling or not, he was doing what Roy Orbison did best: lovingly made downhome pop from the perspective of a country balladeer.
Orbison's commercial peak had ended but he was still releasing high quality music. Things would begin to unravel for him when his wife Claudette was killed when her motorbike was struck by a pickup truck. Two years later, he would experience more tragedy when his two eldest sons died in a fire. Yet, he soldiered on until his own passing at the end of 1988. It was only in the aftermath of his death that many began to realize just how much he meant to them — and, indeed, to the music world in general. I wish I could be writing about him more in this space but this will have to do.
Score: 7
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