(Credit: Wikimedia)
Fri 23 January 2026 16:54, UK
The thing that held The Traveling Wilburys together like glue was not purely necessity or contractual obligations. It was because they truly liked each other.
For anyone with so much as any shred of knowledge about the band, that might seem like an overly obvious statement to make. But in this sense, it’s only obvious because it’s also true, and despite the blinding lights of superstardom having the potential to derail each one of them at any given time, it was to their credit that this never even seemed to once cross their minds.
Of course, the reason for this largely boiled down to their sheer commitment to the music and nothing else. Despite all the gifts of life that fame had afforded them, when it came to writing songs and getting into the studio, the blinkers were on in terms of getting to the final destination of their shared goal. They just had to be careful that this didn’t come at the expense of each other.
For many bands, making the conscious decision to always write together clearly proves to be too straining and tiresome for it to ever work properly, but for The Traveling Wilburys, it was the essential genesis which kept them blazing. Except on just one single occasion, an individual member saw his chance of greatness and snatched it before it fizzled away.
This breaking of convention could have threatened to strike irreparable tensions through the heart of the band – but then again, when you have Bob Dylan writing for you, it’s hard to keep holding grudges. So, when he came to the table, possibly with his tail between his legs, admitting that he had actually penned something himself, the only real option was to say yes regardless.
As Jeff Lynne recalled it, “Bob was the only one who had sort of a clear-cut tune one day. He came in and said, ‘What do you think of this one?’ And it was almost complete. We need to do sort of like the bridge and the… and a chorus or something, but… that was ‘Congratulations’.” Admittedly, reading those words written down on the stark page, he doesn’t necessarily sound all that effusive about it.
But there was something unmistakable about ‘Congratulations’, forlorn but with a blistering ironic humour shooting right through its centre: a bit of a Dylan trademark if ever you were to hear one. Yet just in the same way Dylan had written the song as a lone ranger, he also had to sing it himself, too.
George Harrison explained in 1990: “We worked out the tune straight off, but Bob basically had the idea. The difference was, the rest of us had more time but Bob had to go on the road, and we knew he couldn’t come over and do more vocals again, so we had to get his immediately.”
It was more or less a case of taking a shot and landing it perfectly on the first take: a hard ask, but not when you’ve got such a master of the craft within your ranks. As such, Dylan mastered the vocal immediately, and the song went on to feature in the band’s 1988 debut album, as well as being the B-side to their iconic ‘End of the Line’.
To all intents and purposes, given that Dylan steered off course seemingly so soon into the trajectory of The Traveling Wilburys, that he could have potentially wrecked their entire vibe by branching off and going it alone. And as much as ‘Congratulations’ was their only ever song written by just one person, it was also the mark of these men that they knew not to miss a good thing when they saw it.
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