(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Thu 4 September 2025 18:45, UK
It’s difficult enough trying to replace any member of a band. There’s a certain chemistry that comes with getting the right people together to play music, but for a band that was already made up of the biggest names in music history, how the hell were The Traveling Wilburys expected to replace someone like Roy Orbison?
After all, the band has been conceived as the dream band of George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, and a lot of that came down to Orbison’s fantastic voice. As much as Tom Petty and Harrison could sound pristine on their respective songs, there was no one else who could have sung ‘Not Alone Any More’ other than Orbison, but right after his death from a heart attack shortly after the album came out, it felt like the air had been knocked out of them before they could get going.
But it’s not like the band couldn’t function without Orbison. They still made a half-decent record together for Vol. III, and even if there was one important person missing, they certainly had ideas for working with other people. Gary Moore had already been asked to sit in on guitar, and there had been talks of getting Lindsey Buckingham in the group on second guitar, but if they wanted to do this right, they wanted to get another legend who could have stood in Orbison’s shoes.
And for a while, Del Shannon looked like the perfect replacement for the group. He had a connection with them through Tom Petty, and since the band had eventually covered his tune ‘Runaway’ as a one-off single, it’s not like they all weren’t fans. Everything was lined up before Shannon eventually passed away, but how close were they to actually picking a new member of the group?
It’s easy to see them going for a different sound on Vol III, and a handful of the tunes would have certainly been suited to Shannon’s voice, but there was also an elephant in the room whenever Shannon was brought up. Drafting in another legend looked right on paper, but none of them could look at each other and confidently say that they were confident in having someone else step in.
The band was special because of that first incarnation, and Petty even remarked that the thought of bringing anyone in on a permanent basis was far from the first thing they wanted to do, saying, “It wasn’t about getting another famous guy in the band. That was not the point. I don’t think anybody would have fit in because they hadn’t spent the time with us. That was never a truth that we were looking for somebody else.”
Aside from not having that shared history, Shannon might have had to deal with a handful of tense moments with Petty in the studio. The fact that the heartland rocker had stolen bassist Howie Epstein away from him left him furious for a while, but even if that was water under the bridge, it could have caused a little bit of friction had they decided to bring him on. And if there’s one thing to know about the Wilburys, it’s that they thrived on having no tension at all.
Harrison always thought of the band being centred around people that he could hang out with more than anything, and even if Shannon was great, the band decided to continue on as four legends out of respect for their friend. Because no matter how star-studded the tracklist would have become, there’s no sense in replacing one of the most operatic singers in all of rock and roll.
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