The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh 39 OH PRETTY WOMAN, Roy Orbison with the Candymen Produced by Fred Foster; written by Roy Orbison and William Dees Monument 851 1964 Billboard: #1 (3 weeks) For those fully familiar with Roy's physical and spiritual persona, the image of the guy as a trolling stud - "Guess I'll go on home, it's late / There'll be tomorrow night . ." - is more than faintly ludicrous, far better suited to David Lee Roth's latter-day macho routine (when Van Halen had a hit with the song in 1982). But that doesn't mean that "Pretty Woman" isn't fully congruent with the rest of Orbison's work. For one thing, he imagines that the pretty woman may be in exactly the same condition he's in in almost every one of his great songs: "lonely, just like me." For another, there's a recurring motif in his lyrics in which Roy looks (and usually, sounds) like he's losing the girl but in fact, he's winning her ("Running Scared") or, as in "Falling," realizing that he's actually gotten his hands on the goods by accident. And that's exactly what happens at the end of "Pretty Woman. " It's just that it happens without the Big O's usual completely abject presentation of his own humiliation; he's practically laughing at himself by the end, when she turns and comes back to him. A greater mystery is why. I mean, he hasn't even met the girl, only seen her this once, his first outward reaction on seeing her is a lewd "Mercy!" and his second a tigerish growl, and she's supposed to buy "I need you / I'11 treat you right"? Nah. She came back for the same reason you did. That bass line's irresistible. Created: September 27, 2021 at 3.46 pm at http://www.lexjansen.com with FPDF 1.81 Page 1.