John Lennon‘s “(Just Like) Starting Over” was supposed to sound like one Elvis Presley song and one Roy Orbison song. During an interview, John said drawing inspiration from Elvis and Orbison was returning to his “roots.” Interestingly, Orbison said the song that inspired John had nothing to do with his personal emotional state.
The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations With John Lennon contains excerpts from a Rolling Stone interview from 1980. Around the time John gave that interview, he released his song “(Just Like) Starting Over,” which is obviously indebted to the rock ‘n’ roll music of the 1950s and early 1960s. During the interview, John discussed the thought process behind the song. “All through the taping of ‘Starting Over,’ I was calling what I was doing ‘Elvis Orbison:’ ‘I want you I need only the lonely,’” he said. John was referencing the tiles of Elvis Presley’s “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” and Orbison’s “Only the Lonely,” two old-school rock ballads.
“I’m a born-again rocker, I feel that refreshed, and I’m going right back to my roots,” John continued. “It’s like Dylan doing Nashville Skyline, except I don’t have any Nashville, you know, being from Liverpool. So I go back to the records I know — Elvis and Roy Orbison and Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis. I occasionally get ripped off into walruses or ‘Revolution 9,’ but my far-out side has been completely encompassed by Yoko.”
Orbison co-wrote “Only the Lonely” with Joe Melson. During a 1988 interview with Rolling Stone, Orbison was asked if his sad early songs reflected his life. “When I wrote, let’s say, a sad song, a melancholy song, I was feeling good at the time,” he revealed. “Because I have to feel good and at peace with myself before I can think creatively.” Orbison said that other songwriters could write tunes while they were brokenhearted but he couldn’t, as he would be crying and unable to eat.
However, “Only the Lonely” still came from an honest place. “Of course, I knew what ‘Only the Lonely’ was about when I wrote that,” he said. I had been alone and lonely. I wasn’t at the time, though.”
During the same interview, Orbison said he was never seen as a threat to public morals the way Elvis and other early rockers were. He felt this was the case because he was milder. In his opinion, “Only the Lonely” made listeners think he was a loner. However, he felt that if his first song was the uptempo and macho “Oh, Pretty Woman,” the perception of him would have been different.
“Only the Lonely” might not have reflected Orbison’s mood when he wrote it but it still went on to inspire “(Just Like) Starting Over.”