(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Mon 6 April 2026 20:03, UK
In the world of the Traveling Wilburys, it’s strange to think that Bob Dylan even found a place among his bandmates.
While he’s one of the greatest figures in rock and roll history, Dylan never seemed to be the kind who plays well with others, and even when he did, he was always the leader of the band rather than a team player when working with The Band or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers behind him. But even if the Wilburys were a democracy, he had a better idea of who should be taking charge every single time that they kicked off one of their sing-along tunes.
If you want to be objective about it, though, the Wilburys’ idea really belongs to George Harrison. He was the one who came up with the idea, and even when the whole thing came together by happenstance on ‘Handle With Care’, he wasn’t about to let a good thing slip away when he got Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty together all in one room. But all of the members seemed to contribute equal weight to everything when you look at the vocal and songwriting credits.
Harrison could never have written a song like ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, but Dylan could probably not have come up with as great a hook as ‘Heading for the Light’ or ‘End of the Line’, either. But even if all of them were different puzzle pieces that made a better picture together, Dylan felt that nothing that any of them did was going to compare to what Orbison could sing whenever he got in front of the microphone.
Because, really, everyone in the band was already in awe of what Orbison could do. He had one of the gentlest voices of all time whenever he sang a ballad, but when you listen to some of the leaps that he makes on tunes like ‘Crying’ or even the song ‘Not Alone Any More’ from this album, you can feel every single ounce of emotion in his voice as he’s singing his heart out. And when looking back on the record, Lynne remembered that Dylan would have gladly played backup for Orbison alone if he had the chance.
Despite not doing any press for the record, Lynne remembered that Dylan had always wanted the band to be a supergroup backing up Orbison, saying, “I was mainly the producer of it, trying to get it all as good as it could be. They all knew that everything was covered. Nobody thought that they were better than anybody else, really. I actually made up the name Traveling Wilburys. I don’t think Bob was that keen — he wanted to call it Roy and the Boys.”
Even though they were all equals, no one was ever going to claim that they were a better singer than Orbison. His voice shook with emotion on any tune he made, and while Harrison is responsible for being a part of some of the best harmonies to come out of rock and roll, Orbison’s voice had all of the drama that a teenage rock and roll song was supposed to have whenever he sang.
That’s half the reason why the band wanted him in the group in the first place. At first, they didn’t even think a legend of his status would be remotely interested in joining their little band, but when you look at the kind of pedigree each of them, they were all in awe of what Orbison could do, to the point where half of them ended up working on some of Orbison’s solo work in between the sessions for the album.
So while anyone would have been stunned at the idea of being in a group with Bob Dylan, Dylan was more than happy to not put his name in the same conversation as one of the greatest singers of all time. Orbison could carry the entire band on his own, and while he didn’t have the same amount of time singing lead as the rest of them, chances are they would have been just as happy singing backup for him on every song.
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