Only The Lonely (Know The Way I Feel) was Roy Orbison’s first major hit and described by the New York Times as expressing “a clenched, driven urgency.”
Released in May 1960, the track rose to No2 on the US Billboard charts and No1 in the UK later that year.
In 1999, Only The Lonely was honoured by a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
Orbison, who was born on 23 April 1936, grew up in Texas. Between 1960 and 1964 he had 22 songs in the Billboard Top 40.
He enjoyed something of a resurgence in the 1980s and, in 1988, joined a ‘supergroup’ named The Travelling Wilburys which also featured George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne.
Sadly, Orbison died of a heart attack in December of that year aged just 52.
