Roy Orbison’s Last Big Hit in 1964 Was Inspired by The Beatles

In 1964, Roy Orbison released “Oh, Pretty Woman”. The song, written by Orbison and Bill Dees, is Orbison’s final big hit in the United States.  A Grammy-winning single, “Oh, Pretty Woman”, remains one of Orbison’s most successful songs.

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“Oh, Pretty Woman” says, “Pretty woman, stop awhile / Pretty woman, talk awhile / Pretty woman, give your smile to me / Pretty woman, yeah, yeah, yeah.” The two songwriters had the idea for “Oh, Pretty Woman” after Dees said that a pretty woman never needs money, when Orbison’s wife, Claudette, was going into town to do a little shopping. But the “yeah, yeah, yeah” part is inspired by one of The Beatles’ hits, “She Loves You”, out in 1963.

“He sang it while I was banging my hand down on the table,” Dees remembers. “And by the time she returned, we had the song. I love the song. From the moment that the rhythm started, I could hear the heels clicking on the pavement, click, click, the pretty woman walking down the street, in a yellow skirt and red shoes.”

“We wrote ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ on a Friday,” he continues. “The next Friday we recorded it, and the next Friday it was out. It was the fastest thing I ever saw. Actually, the ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ in ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ probably came from The Beatles.”

What Roy Orbison Says About “Oh, Pretty Woman”

Although “Oh, Pretty Woman” seems like an uptempo, feel-good song, Orbison maintains that it is actually much more complex.

“There’s a ballad in the mid-section of it there,” Orbison later says. “He’s very sure of getting the girl when he first sees her. And then, he’s not so sure. And then he gets desperate, and then he says forget it, and then she comes back. It’s quite complicated. But it’s probably in the presentation, or if I’m really singing like I know I can, and I’m doing the job that I should be doing, then it could be that the voice quality in parts has a melancholy something.”

Several other artists later recorded “Oh, Pretty Woman”, including Van Halen. In 1982, Van Halen had a No. 1 hit with the song. A version of the song also appears on John Mellencamp’s debut record, Chestnut Street Incident.

Orbison did have a posthumous No. 1 single. In 1989, one year after he passed away, Orbison hit the top of the charts with “You Got It”. 

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