(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Sat 31 January 2026 20:00, UK
No one in the Traveling Wilburys got into the band trying to show off.
Whereas most supergroups have tried their best to create the best music that anyone has ever heard, every single Wilburys song was centred around a bunch of guys having fun playing a couple of rock and roll tunes, and if everyone happened to like it, that was an extra bonus. But if George Harrison put the whole thing together, he knew that he could also take a few elements out of the mix if he felt that something wasn’t working right.
Then again, it’s not like the rest of the band weren’t on the same page whenever they played. Harrison wanted to have the perfect little group of guys to hang out with, and even if not everything that they played was complicated, it’s hard to think of a song that features him, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan that wasn’t going to have a few good lyrics sprinkled into the mix. And if they were working with legends, they were going to record like they used to back in the old days.
Because if you listen to Harrison’s attempts to sound hip and in-the-moment, it’s not like he nailed the 1980s aesthetic every time. Jeff Lynne certainly helped him get his foot in the door towards the end of the decade with Cloud Nine, but no one was exactly listening to ‘Teardrops’ thinking that Harrison was suddenly hip with the kids these days. He was willing to experiment, but he knew not to reach too far out of the box when working with people like Roy Orbison standing next to him.
That didn’t mean that there wasn’t room for a few new toys for Lynne to incorporate into their songs when he wanted to. He wasn’t going to ruin the integrity of the song by any stretch, but hearing a tune like ‘Margarita’ kick off with a synthesiser makes for a pretty interesting deep cut in their catalogue, even if the skiffle-style guitar breaks almost sound like they’re wrestling with the electronic side of things.
It was forgivable to have a few tunes with an electronic touch, but Harrison said that he drew the line at adding drum machines to everything, saying, “Anybody who can use those pathetic drum machines to the extent they do and not notice how crap they sound… You listen to New Blue Moon, which was played live with four acoustic guitars and a drummer who played everything that’s on there.”
And, really, why would anyone want to settle for a drum machine when they had someone like Jim Keltner working with them? He was a veteran of the studio scene and one of the best rhythmic pulses since Ringo Starr, so having him provide a little heartbeat to every single one of their tunes was a way for everyone to not worry about what the drums were going to sound like.
That didn’t mean that drum machines were a bad word to everyone in the group. Tom Petty was famous for using drum machines on some of his 1980s material, and even for a song that seems as barebones as ‘Free Fallin’, you can hear that subtle electronic pad running throughout the entire tune. But when it came to Harrison, it’s no surprise that he would eventually go back to basics when putting together the basis for Brainwashed.
He may have received a bit of flak for being an old soul at the time, but he wasn’t about to start changing his sound to make the Wilburys sound current. They were all about having fun, and it made no sense for them to make a standard by-the-numbers pop track because the label told them to.
Related Topics