(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Fri 15 August 2025 17:00, UK
Getting any supergroup together will always be a bit of a gamble.
As much as people have to focus on scheduling conflicts, it’s also important to make sure everyone is working at the same pace, and there was always a fear with the Traveling Wilburys that the plug could be pulled at any moment if things started going sideways.
But no one really needed to think too hard when working among the greatest musicians of all time. George Harrison had the idea on a whim when working with Jeff Lynne, and since they never had any major plans to tour around the world, a lot of what turned up on the band’s first album was made up entirely of Harrison and his friends throwing a bunch of tunes together and having a good time.
Then again, every member of the band was in a much different place in their career. Harrison was already starting to enter the equation again after working with Lynne on Cloud Nine, and Tom Petty had been a mainstay of classic rock radio, but Roy Orbison was still making his way back into the mainstream when the band began working on his album Mystery Girl around the same time. And as for Bob Dylan, there was always something new to enjoy on his albums.
Dylan was always known to sing what he was feeling at the time, but it was clear that his reputation had taken a few dents over the years. Self Portrait was already supposed to be a bit of musical trolling on his part, but when he began to make born-again Christian music at the start of the 1980s, there were a lot of people discouraged, knowing that the voice of their generation was now legitimately preaching to them.
But after leaving his more overt religious stuff behind him, Dylan at least had a good rapport with everyone in the group. He had played with Petty for a few years as his backup band, but even with some of the greatest voices of all time singing his lyrics, Petty remembered that everyone was on their toes whenever Dylan entered the room.
He wasn’t the most intimidating figure by any means, but everyone was aware that Dylan could call it quits and never be seen again the minute that he thought things were going wrong, with Petty saying, “We were all particularly reverent of Bob. We didn’t want to spook Bob into not wanting to do it. I saw a lot of people running circles around Bob, being afraid of him, or afraid to say what was on their minds. Trying to anticipate what he was trying to say or do. I always found that if I asked Bob a direct question, I would get a direct answer.”
Even if Petty took the direct approach, it’s not like Dylan was the easiest person to read, either. Anyone in a position of working alongside their best friends in a band would have been absolutely ecstatic, but judging by the video for ‘Handle With Care’, Dylan came off like he couldn’t be asked to care, usually scowling the entire time and occasionally throwing in a backing vocal as everyone else sang.
That may have been because Dylan thought of himself as much of a vocalist compared to everyone else, but seeing how Traveling Wilburys Vol. III had a lot of Dylan features after Orbison’s passing, it was clear that they were all reverent towards their resident wordsmith. Dylan was a brilliant collaborator with his musical buddies, but that unpredictability he had made it seem like he could easily leave the band if he didn’t think they had the right idea.
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