(Credits: Far Out / Bert Verhoeff / Anefo / National Archives / The Traveling Wilburys)
Tue 18 November 2025 19:00, UK
There isn’t one person in the Traveling Wilburys who could have been replaced.
As much as they may have been a bunch of friends getting together to play a couple of tunes with their mates, it was always in the spirit of getting the right chemistry together rather than getting the most complicated thing on tape every time. But before George Harrison brought everything to the forefront, there was a good chance that they could have added another member to their star-studded list.
Then again, part of the beauty behind the band was how spur-of-the-moment they seemed like when they first started. There was no set plan for them to carry on for more than a couple of albums, and since the whole thing came about through happenstance almost, it was almost for the best that they managed to get the best takes over a few days rather than focus on getting every part perfect.
And it’s not like every song was meant to be a masterpiece, either. ‘Handle With Care’ is one of the finest songs that any of the members wrote around that time, but there was always a certain sense of fun coming through the album half the time. Harrison wasn’t looking to make a grand statement on ‘Heading for the Light’, but that carefree spirit is why it stands among the greatest pop songs he ever wrote.
But this kind of band was what Harrison had always been after since before he was even a solo artist. He didn’t necessarily like the idea of being a frontman of a group, and when listening to all of the various shows that he played from his touring days, you can tell that a lot of his joy came from playing off the other musicians rather than worrying about hogging the spotlight too much when he played.
He was a team player in every sense of the word, but before he had the idea for the Wilburys, there was already an idea of a group floating around in his head. Jeff Lynne may have been the first person to actually take the idea seriously, but Harrison had been talking about the idea with Elton John years before Cloud Nine even came out.
When talking about his friendship with John, he said that the pianist was already itching to perform with Harrison in a band, saying in 1987, “They’re all really nice. I think the older that they become, the nicer they become. Their egos have all been satisfied to such an extent that they form a friendship. Elton is apparently forming a band for over-40-year-olds and telling me that I’m going to be in it.”
While there’s no way that John would have taken credit for the band forming, it’s entirely possible that it was lodged in the back of Harrison’s brain when he started putting the finishing touches on Cloud Nine. It was going to take a lot for him to want to get back into the star machine all over again, but with the help of Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, some of the pressure could be off him just a little bit whenever they had to talk about working on the tunes or playing together for a laugh.
It’s a shame that John couldn’t have been there in any professional capacity, but that alone would have been enough to give him the title of honourary Wilbury. There were many people that would have killed to be in that band, but even though it stung not getting the call, it’s safe to say that John felt fine watching from the sidelines as he watched five living legends paint their own personalised masterpiece.
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