(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Tue 17 March 2026 17:30, UK
The Traveling Wilburys were the last group of musicians that ended up talking about serious subjects.
They were all in the studio to have a good time, and even if they never played a massive show or anything like that, they still would have been more proud to work alongside their friends than worry about what the greatest issues with the world were. But if you have musicians like George Harrison and Bob Dylan in your band, it’s not like they were going to shy away from the more egregious aspects of society whenever they broke out the notepads and the acoustic guitars.
After all, Dylan is still considered one of the greatest protest singers of all time, years after his prime in the 1960s, and he was never going to apologise for the kind of music he was making. ‘Masters of War’ was as relevant during the Wilburys’ tenure as it was when he first made it in the early 1960s, and since Harrison was always the Dylan superfan of the group, it didn’t take him long to start noticing some more pieces of culture that he wasn’t that big a fan of when he went on the comeback trail.
He had already been desensitised to the music business throughout most of the 1980s, and when he came back with Cloud Nine, he still had a bit of that vicious wit trapped inside him. ‘Devil’s Radio’ is one of the sillier critiques he’s had about the gossip mongers throughout history, and there’s no shortage of people who will go through the countless subtle jabs that he took at society throughout All Things Must Pass, like claiming how the Pope owns 51% of General Motors.
But even if he didn’t get too specific about his political affiliation throughout his career, Harrison could see the hypocrisy behind a lot of those on the campaign trail. Anyone can try their best to align themselves with the right beliefs to secure their votes, but even back in the 1980s, you could tell that Harrison was seeing some of the more plastic politicians who felt that a half-hearted smile could be able to win their constituency over.
And when you listen to ‘The Devil’s Been Busy’, you get a much better picture of the kind of politicians that Harrison was talking about. While the music and lyrics were a group effort this time around, you can tell that he’s gunning for certain public figures that are so omnipresent in people’s lives, but aren’t really brought to justice because the public is more focused on the bigger problems facing the world.
Everyone else might turn a blind eye to it, but Harrison wanted this tune to hit those in power right in their soul, saying, “The governments are still too busy putting money into the military and polluting the planet with the big industrialists and politicians who’ve all got their hands in each other’s pockets. It’s the same thing that’s been going on for a long time and the small people are trying but the big powers are just a bunch of bastards.”
You would expect nothing less from the same person who wrote ‘Taxman’ back in his Beatles days, but even Harrison’s estate seemed to be preaching his ways years after his passing. Because just like when Donald Trump tried to use ‘Here Comes the Sun’ as part of his campaign trail, Harrison’s social media representative said that they would have approved Trump using one of his songs if it were something like ‘Beware of Darkness’.
Then again, the fact that this song is on the exact same album as tunes like ‘Wilbury Twist’ and ‘She’s My Baby’ is almost a joke in and of itself. No one would have ever seen a song like this coming from the band that talked about being handled with care only one album before, but Harrison wasn’t about to let the real problems of the world pass him by without saying anything, especially when he had a microphone in front of his face.