Review: Roy Orbison - Black & White Night 30

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Roy Orbison's 1987 classic comeback concert at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles, Sony Music's Legacy Recordings has released Black & White Night 30.

Described as a “re-imagined, re-edited, remastered and expanded version of the original television special” it is available both on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray.

Orbison, then 51, staged the remarkable comeback with the help from the likes of Jackson Browne, T Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, J.D. Souther, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Jennifer Warnes.

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The all-star concert film has become a classic but is now re-released with a twist.

The entire concert has been re-edited from the seven separate cameras, using hundreds of hours of footage that went unused and unseen.

Also, the programme has been restored to reflect the correct set order.

What hasn’t changed is the brilliance of the music and performances including Only the Lonely, In Dreams and Crying.

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The bonus features include previously-unseen alternate versions of Orbison’s biggest hits, a ‘secret concert’ of five songs which followed after the main show, and a new 33-minute mini-documentary consisting of rehearsal footage and pre and post-show interviews with the all-star cast.

None of this content has ever been released commercially, and until recently, was only rumoured to exist.

All this has been done remarkable well, which makes a legendary concert film even better