Alex Orbison remembers his father, Roy

THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN IN MALIBU in the spring of 1988, just a few months before my dad’s death. We’d moved to California from Nashville in 1985, shortly after Jeff Lynne had searched my dad out to pitch the idea of making new songs. They were going into the studio to work on a new record, so the picture would have been taken days before the Traveling Wilburys sessions started, with Dad, Jeff, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.

After his early success in the ’60s, Dad wasn’t really making new records, but he was still touring constantly. Dad being on the road seemed a very normal thing in our house. Every so often we’d go and join him for a couple of days. Touring is a lot of hurry up and wait; you rush from one side of the world to the other and then you hang around. But we’d always manage to sneak out and do some kind of activity, while my dad was limited to staying in the hotel a lot for security purposes. Even when his records had stopped selling he could never just walk around like a normal person, because he was so distinctive-looking.

Eventually we talked him into leaving the house incognito, with clear glasses on; he’d put on

a straw sun hat and a Hawaiian shirt and go out like a tourist. He could slip under the radar like that because he looked so different from normal. In a way, moving to Malibu helped; there are so many famous people around that no one cared.

I knew from an early age that Dad was famous. When we were in Nashville, Johnny Cash moved in next door; my grandparents lived across the street, and next door to them was Old Man Cash, Johnny’s dad. The tourist buses would come every day and there’d be hundreds of people taking pictures of our house. It was hard to ignore.

Dad was a very humble man. He had a way of speaking to people that made them feel important. Whatever someone’s trade, it seemed he always knew something about it and could talk to them about their lives. He was really good at finding common ground, and he was just so devoted to not letting people down. The only thing that would stop him performing was if he was in a hospital. There are stories of Dad having a 103-degree fever and having to fly home because he was so sick, but he would stop and sign autographs and talk to his fans. Stuff you just don’t hear about anyone doing these days.

The gentleness, the soft side my dad had, was not typical of where he came from: in West Texas, when he was growing up, everyone worked in the oil industry, and they were rough kids with a lot of fisticuffs. That sense of emotional vulnerability was key to his performance. Watching him on stage, even being his son, I was always anxious whether he was going to pull off the high notes. I never saw him miss, but it was still like a highwire act every night. He had a way of performing that would just draw you into his world, so you couldn’t think of anything else. He was a master.

Dad was only 52 when he died. Everything seemed to be coming together in his career, and health-wise he’d seemed better than ever – the heart attack was completely out of the blue. He was on top of the world. — Interview by Mick Brown Roy Orbison In Dreams: The Hologram UK Tour begins on 8 April. For tickets, visit ticketline.co.uk

I knew from an early age that Dad was famous… There’d be hundreds of people taking pictures of our house

Roy Orbison with his sons Alex (left) and Roy Jr