(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Fri 5 December 2025 18:45, UK
The story of the Traveling Wilburys is so impossible to imagine that you’d swear it was ripped out of a musical fairytale.
The idea of any of the band members coming together to make a bunch of tunes together would have felt impossible, but as long as you have someone like George Harrison as the ringleader, I suppose anything is possible. No one’s there to question a Beatle when they have a great idea, but the key to every single one of those sessions was knowing each other’s strengths in the studio.
Throughout every one of their songs, there was no sense in arguing over who had the better line for a certain tune or whether or not the vocals were being sung right. Each songwriter had an understanding of what suited someone’s voice, and if it meant the gravel of Bob Dylan on one tune and Harrison’s unwavering conviction on another, that was what they were going to do to see the song through.
But there are also some tunes that are so natural that they may as well have written themselves. ‘Handle With Care’ was already made by getting a cardboard box out of Harrison’s storage and writing a tune around the label, so it wasn’t all that hard for the rest of the members to pile on the odd lyric that they thought would work and shoehorn it into the song. If there was a beating heart of the band, it was Roy Orbison.
Sure, Harrison was the brains of the whole thing, and Jeff Lynne was the one turning the knobs to make it into a reality, but Orbison was the one who left everyone starstruck. They had already been through the ringer in their respective solo careers, but after years at the top of the charts, everyone from Harrison to Dylan knew to bow down to the majesty of Orbison every single time they walked into the studio.
They were never ones for egos, but even Orbison could talk himself up as the best singer they had, with Jim Keltner remembering, “I said, ‘You know Roy, that the only reason this thing is really happening is because of you. Those guys all came together because George wanted you to do this.’ And that was the truth. He said, ‘Yeah, we’re really having fun here. Well, I’m the only real singer in the band. The other boys are all stylists.’”
To call Harrison anything less than a real singer is borderline heresy, but in a strange way, that actually makes a lot more sense than it should. Orbison was known for that booming voice whenever he had a chance on the microphone, and for all of the beautiful songs that Harrison, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan sang in their solo careers, it simply didn’t get any better than listening to Orbison work his way through songs like ‘Crying’ or put everyone else to shame on ‘Not Alone Any More’.
The whole album was a labour of love for everyone involved, but if there was ever a reason for them to come together other than as friends, it was to give Orbison one last success before he passed away. No one could have possibly realised how little time he had left, but when looking at those final years of his life, even Petty admitted that the only thing Orbison could talk about days before his death was how great the band was.
Because that’s the one thing that the Wilburys did better than anything else. Although most people remember the great songs and the iconic shots of all of them working together, what they created with a couple of guitars and a few half-decent lyrics was enough to bring real joy into the world.
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