Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
Sat 19 September 2026 20:00, UK
It’s not that hard to pick any member of the Traveling Wilburys out of a lineup.
As much as they wanted to be anonymous and hide behind pseudonyms throughout their time together, all of them were legends in their own right, and they remain to this day one of the best bands in the world to have five different rhythm guitar players. But even if this bunch of rock and roll dads could make beautiful music together, there were always a few members who seemed to be orbiting the band whenever they got together.
After all, the band would have easily added Dave Stewart to the lineup had he been able to show up for work, but since he was on tour, using his home as the studio was the next best thing. And for a band that could write some classic material all on their own, none of them claimed to be half the band that they were if not for Jim Keltner holding down the pulse of every one of their songs.
Tom Petty even admitted that Keltner deserved to be a full-fledged member of the group, but he maintained the fact that he wanted to remain anonymous. He wasn’t on the same level as any of them, and he was quite happy sitting behind the kit and being the silent member of the group every time they played. But none of their guests were known for being all that quiet when they picked up a guitar.
Gary Moore delivered one of the most underrated solos of his career on the song ‘She’s My Baby’, and the idea of them getting tapes of Elvis Presley to add to their songs would have been one of the greatest collaborations they could have done, but it’s not just about the voices all the time. Every member wanted the chance to serve the song before anything else, and even if they had golden voices like Roy Orbison, there was no way to replace the kinds of horns that they put on their records.
Horns had always been a big part of their era of rock and roll, but this wasn’t the same kind of playing that you heard out of James Brown’s band or anything. This was more in the vein of the tunes that came out in the days when Chuck Berry and Little Richard were tearing up the charts, and Jim Horn was the perfect man for the job whenever the band needed a blast of saxophone on any of their records.
It’s not like Horn’s resume didn’t speak for itself. Even though his job was quite literally his last name, working as a member of The Wrecking Crew put him one notch above virtually every other session player in the US at the time. He knew the ins and outs of pop music better than most, but he didn’t need to make some overly dramatic rock and roll solo or anything whenever he guested with the Wilburys.
Further reading: From The Vault
Take a song like ‘Heading for the Light’, for instance. The entire tune was made up of George Harrison going back to making traditional pop tunes, and while he could have easily thrown in some slide guitar to tie the sections together, hearing Horn’s brilliant saxophone breaks brings a smooth layer of cool to the song that they didn’t have. The same thing goes for ‘Wilbury Twist’, although that time there was a bit more of a comedic edge to the tune than anything they had done before.
Horn would have been one of the last people on Earth to consider himself a member of the band or anything, but he wasn’t going to skimp out on making something classic when he had legends next to him. He knew he needed to deliver the goods, and even if his solos weren’t the most technical things in the world, you can sing along to every single note that he played on those albums.
