Roy Orbison - Go Go Go (Down The Line)

First performance: 30/09/1987


Coverinfo

Bruce performed the song only once:   
 
1987-09-30 Cocoanut Grove, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, CA  
 
Bruce (and others) join Roy Orbison for the filming of Roy Orbison & Friends: A Black & White Night, shot in beautiful black and white and broadcast on Cinemax in January 1988. The film is shot in the Cocoanut Grove, a nightclub in the now-torn-down Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Bruce plays guitar and shares vocals with Roy on "Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)", and he also plays guitar on the rest of the songs (sitting on a chair behind Roy on the stage). Backing group is the TCB Band (who accompanied Elvis Presley between 1969-77) including James Burton, who exchanges guitar solos with Springsteen during the show-stopping "Oh, Pretty Woman". This particular performance won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.  The resulting film is later released on Roy Orbison & Friends, A Black & White Night (abbreviated to Black & White Night for the HD-DVD and Blu-ray releases) on multiple formats, including VHS, LaserDisc, DVD and in high definition on Blu-ray. Subsequently, an audio CD titled A Black & White Night Live is released in 1989. "Blue Angel" is cut from the television broadcast for time, along with "Claudette" and "Blue Bayou". However, the song is included as a bonus track on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray releases. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the concert Black & White Night 30 will be released on February 24, 2017 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray. The film has been completely re-edited and the concert restored to the correct order, which is represented in the setlist under. The set also includes a five-song "secret concert" performed by the full band after the show had ended, with no audience. Shooting only stopped after film ran out during "Claudette". Rehearsal footage and pre- and post-show interviews are also included. The crowd was mostly made up of music industry insiders. Billy Idol, Steve Jones, Patrick Swayze, Sandra Bernhard, Kris Kristofferson, Harry Dean Stanton, and Syd Straw were among the celebrities spotted in the audience. As the Los Angeles Daily News reported, hundreds of people, ranging from nightclub bookers and industry heavyweights to upcoming musicians, stood at the nightclub entrance an hour before the show waiting to get in.
 
Bruce on Roy Orbison : click here
 
Rehearsal: 
 
 
Post show: 
After the show ended that night, Roy brought the band back to the stage to film a five-song mini "secret concert"   
 
 
Starring:
Roy Orbison – guitar, lead vocals
 
The band:
Alex Acuna – percussion
T Bone Burnett – guitar
James Burton – guitar
Elvis Costello – guitar, organ, harmonica, vocals
Glen D. Hardin – piano
Jerry Scheff – bass
Bruce Springsteen – guitar, vocals
Ron Tutt – drums
Mike Utley – Keyboards
Tom Waits – guitar, organ
 
Backing singers:
Jackson Browne – male backup singer
k.d. lang – female backup singer
Bonnie Raitt – female backup singer
Steven Soles – male backup singer
J.D. Souther – male backup singer, guitar
Jennifer Warnes – female backup singer
 
String section:
Pavel Farkas – violin
Peter Hatch – viola
Ezra Kliger – violin
Sid Page – concert master
Jimbo Ross – viola 
 
 
 

Songinfo

"Go Go Go (Down the Line)" (often credited as "Down the Line") is a song by Roy Orbison, released in 1956. According to the official Roy Orbison discography by Marcel Riesco, this was the B-side to Orbison's first Sun Records release "Ooby Dooby". This was the first song written by Orbison. The song was released as a Sun Records single in May, 1956 with the backup group The Teen Kings. Sam Phillips, the owner and founder of Sun Records, bought out Orbison's songs on Sun Records and placed his name on the songwriting credits although Orbison was the actual songwriter. The song was re-recorded by Orbison with the Art Movement in 1969, for the album The Big O released in 1970, and was called "Down the Line". 
 
 
Roy Orbison and The Teen Kings 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

 
 
" Then into my thirteen–year–old ears came 60's pop. Roy Orbison, besides Johnny Cash, he was the other Man in Black. He was the true master of the romantic apocalypse you dreaded, and knew was coming after the first night you whispered, I love you, to your new girlfriend. You were going down. Roy was the coolest, uncool loser you'd ever seen. With his Coke bottle black glasses, his three–octave range, he seemed to take joy sticking his knife deep into the hot belly of your teenage insecurities. Simply the titles, "Crying," "It's Over," "Running Scared." That's right, the paranoia, oh, the paranoia. He sang about the tragic unknowability of women. He was tortured by soft skin, angora sweaters, beauty, and death – just like you. But he also sang that he'd been risen to the heights of near unexpressable bliss by these same very things that tortured him. Oh, cruel irony. And for those few moments, he told you that the wreckage, and the ruin, and the heartbreak was all worth it. I got it, my young songwriters, wisdom said to me: Life is tragedy, broken by moments of unworldly bliss that make that tragedy bearable. I was half right. That wasn't life, that was pop music. "
 
Over the end credits of 'Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night' several of the featured musicians are shown saying some words about Orbison.
 
Bruce Springsteen says:
 
"I remember when I was a kid, his music took me out of my little town, you know. And... you don't always get a chance to sing harmony with Roy Orbison and play guitar next to James Burton, that's a dream."
 
 
 
more info : Springsteenlyrics 
 
 
"In 1970, I rode for fifteen hours in the back of a U-haul truck to open for Roy Orbison at the Nashville Music Fair. It was a summer night and I was 20 years old, and Orbison came out in dark glasses, a dark suit and he played some dark music. In 1974, just prior to going into the studio to record my album Born To Run, I was looking at Duane Eddy for his guitar sound and I was listening to a collection of Phil Spector's records and Orbison's All-Time Greatest Hits. I'd lay in bed at night with just the lights of my stereo on and I'd hear 'Crying', 'Love Hurts', 'Running Scared', 'Only The Lonely', and and 'It's Over' filling my room. Orbison's voice was unearthly. He had the ability, like all great Rock and Rollers, to sound like he dropped in from another planet and yet get the stuff that was right to the heart of what you were livin' in today, and it was how he opened up your vision. I carry his records with me when I go on tour today, and I'll always remember what he means to me and what he meant to me when I was young and afraid to love. In 1975, when I went into the studio to record, Born To Run, I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan, that sounded like Phil Spector's productions, but most of all I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everybody knows that nobody sings like Roy Orbison." 
 

Lyrics

Down the line
(Orbison)
Well you can't be my lovin' baby
You ain't gotta style
I'm gonna get some real good love
Gonna drive those cool cats wild
I'm gonna move, move on down the line
Wanna get some love, a love that's truly fine
Oh I'm gonna show you a-way so hot
I'm gonna get what you ain't got
She'll be cool, she'll be wrong
She'll be cool and twice as strong
Gonna roll roll on down the line
Wanna get some love, a love that's truly fine
Why! come on now
Yeah, Move on down the line
Wanna get some love that's truly fine
She'll be cool, she'll be long
She'll be cool and twice as strong
Gonna roll, roll on down the line
Gonna get some love, a love that's truly fine
Oh let's sing it again one time now
Yeah, move on down the line
Wanna get some love that's truly fine
She'll be cool, she'll be long
She'll be cool and twice as strong
Gonna roll, roll on down the line
Wanna get some love, a love that's truly fine
Yeah, move (Yeah gonna move)
I'm gonna move (Yeah gonna move)
I'm gonna move (Yeah gonna move)