Roy Orbison-Coming Home

Rolling Stone - Roy Orbison's Triumphs and Tragedies - By Steve Pond January 26, 1989

Even later in his life, pop music never forgot Roy Orbison: Linda Ronstadt, Van Halen and Don McLean had hits with his songs in the late Seventies and early Eighties, and in 1980 Orbison released "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again," a Grammy-winning duet with Emmylou Harris.

In 1985 there was Class of '55, a reunion LP with Sun Records veterans Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis that contains a standout Orbison performance in the elegiac "Coming Home." That song, like most of the songs he recorded in subsequent years, is suffused with a spiritual glow and full of intimations of mortality.

"Coming Home"
 

It's a long and lonely highway.
When you're traveling all alone.
I was on my way to nowhere.
But now I'm coming home.
I'm coming home.

I've been running through the fire.
I've been running for so long.
If I took it any higher.
Baby I would be still be gone.

And now I'm coming home,
Coming home.
I'm coming home.
I'm coming home, coming home
Coming home.

Well my home was really never.
On a far and distant shore.
If I stayed away forever.
I could never miss you more.

And so I'm coming home, coming home.
I'm coming home.
I'm coming home,coming home,
Coming home.

I think of all these years gone by.
Never even wondered why.
I never touched the ground.
All the time that's come and gone.
All the nights I've been alone.
And now I'm homeward bound.

I heard the thunder over Canaan.
And I heard the angels cry.
And their voices came revealing
As you live, so will you die.

I'm coming home, coming home,
I'm coming home.
I'm coming home, coming home,
Coming home.