With songs like "Blue Bayou", "You Got It", and "Oh, Pretty Woman", Roy Orbison is a rock and roll icon almost without peer. However, despite his countless accolades (including his inauguration into the Rock & Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame and multiple GRAMMY® awards), the story of his life is virtually unknown to his millions of fans around the world. Now, for the first time ever, the Orbison Estate, headed by Roy's sons, Wesley, Roy Jr., and Alex Orbison, has set out to set the record straight for the black-clad, sunglasses-wearing rock star. The Authorized Roy Orbison tells the epic tale of a West Texas boy, drawn to the guitar at age six, whose monumental global career successes were matched at nearly every turn by extraordinary personal tragedies, including the loss of his first wife in a motorcycle accident and his two oldest sons in a fire. It's a story of the intense highs and severe lows that make up the mountain range of Roy Orbison's career; one that touched four decades and ended abruptly at perhaps its highest peak, when he passed away at the age of fifty-two on December 6, 1988. Follow Roy Orbison throughout his life with hundreds of photographs, many never before seen,  from the farthest edges of the globe and the deepest depths of the Orbison Vault. Roy's Boys have left no stone unturned in order to illustrate the people, places, things, and events that forged their father, the man behind those famous sunglasses. "The Authorized Roy Orbison"...peels away the layers of the singer's mystique to present a complete picture of the man, a loving husband and father as well as a musical kingpin."—Rolling Stone Country "I met Roy in 1980. He opened for us [Eagles] in San Francisco. We should have opened for him. This is a great book by his sons — a MUST read."—Joe Walsh, guitarist and vocalist, the EAGLES