News November 2, 2017

Roy Orbison is set to be Australia’s first ever hologram tour

The future is here, and it’s looking a lot like the early ’60s.

The hologram of Roy Orbison — inventor of emo, owner of one of the finest voices ever recorded, and no stranger to the immense tragedy portrayed in his songs — will be touring Australian arenas next May, in what is being touted as our country’s first ever hologram tour. To be honest, I can’t remember another, so I believe them.

RCM Touring and Base Hologram are behind the ambitious show; a press release is quite willing to suspend its belief, with phrases like “Australia will host Roy Orbison for the first time since his 1972 tour” and “Orbison and his trademark three-octave range voice comes back to the stage he commanded for decades.”

It’s a little creepy how easily you can slip into this wording. My second paragraph opens with, “the hologram of Roy Orbison” as if it’s the definitive, official, only one. As if it’s an extension of him.

It will be interesting to see how ticket sales are for this tour. Sony are releasing a live album A Love So Beautiful: Roy Orbison with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra tomorrow, which will no doubt ramp up general interest in Roy – always a good thing.

But Roy Orbison fans are a weird market to be targeting for the maiden voyage of such a technologically progressive tour. He isn’t as universal or symbolic as Elvis, or as revered as someone like Hendrix or Bob Marley, musicians that transmuted into cartoon products decades ago. 2Pac or ABBA (not dead, but certainly never touring again) holograms also make some sort of sense as a spectacular, a circus.

But a hologram of Roy stoically standing on stage, crooning his lovelorn, lonely ballads in that rich voice? In a stadium?

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Tickets for Roy Orbison In Dreams: The Hologram AUS Tour are on sale from Tuesday 14th November, via Ticketek.