Roy Orbison end to be represented as A-B-C-D-E-F-A-B'-C'-D'-E'-F'. Although Orbison recorded and wrote standard structure songs before "Only the Lonely", he claimed never to have learned how to write them: Elton John's songwriting partner and main lyricist Bernie Taupin wrote that Orbison's songs always made "radical left turns", and k.d. lang declared that good songwriting comes from being constantly surprised, such as how the entirety of "Running Scared" eventually depends on the final note, one word. Some of the musicians who worked with Orbison were confounded by what he asked them to do. The Nashville session guitarist Jerry Kennedy stated, "Roy went
Roy Orbison commercial failure of Orbison's work at MGM. Engineer Bill Porter agreed that Orbison's best work could only be achieved with RCA Nashville's A-Team. Orbison's first collection at MGM, an album titled "There Is Only One Roy Orbison", sold fewer than 200,000 copies. With the onset of the British Invasion in 1964–65, the direction of popular music shifted dramatically, and most performers of Orbison's generation were driven from the charts. While on tour again in the UK in 1966, Orbison broke his foot falling off a motorcycle in front of thousands of screaming fans at a race track; he performed his