(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Mon 8 December 2025 15:04, UK
It’s a joyous truth in life that every now and again, fate will thrust a happy little accident upon us. The beloved Traveling Wilburys are among the most glimmering proof of this.
For all intents and purposes, it would seem from the outside that Tom Petty was the integral fresh face of the star-studded supergroup, offering up a youthful vitality to the ridiculous talent on display, but in reality, things played out rather differently.
Consisting of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and the ever-boyish Petty, if you didn’t already know of their existence and someone told you about the Traveling Wilburys, you’d tell them to pull the other one. The musical collective seems to exist as a fantasy in the mind of an overly imaginative alternative music fan.
Nevertheless, despite the outrageous wealth of artistry on display, Petty often takes centre stage amongst them. He’s the buoyant young rocker who stands as a natural frontman to the older icons. However, things could have been very different. As it happens, Petty’s involvement is akin to someone getting injured in the warm-up and their replacement going on to score a hat-trick.
As Petty once opined, “None of this would’ve happened without [George Harrison]. It was George’s band – it was always George’s band and it was a dream he had for a long time.” So, while the group might seem like they were woven into place by the fickle fingers of fate, Harrison had already sketched out an idea many moons before. Fate merely brought it to fruition. And to begin with, Petty was out of the picture.
The late, great Tom Petty. (Credits: Far Out / Ирина Лепнёва)
However, when the four initial members that Harrison had brought together went to Dylan’s home studio to record the B-side to their planned debut single ‘This is Love’, the former Beatle suddenly realised he had left a beloved guitar at Petty’s house nearby. By chance, the two had incidentally become friends while Petty and The Heartbreakers were on tour in Europe with Dylan himself in 1987.
The tour had been a disaster for Dylan. ”It wasn’t my moment of history anymore,” he would later write. ”I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. Whatever had been there to begin with had all vanished and shrunk. Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine.”
This low ebb meant two things for the would-be Wilburys, Dylan was open to anything new after the tour (including retirement), and while he was out on the weary road, plenty of friends came along to give the ailing maestro some much needed support. So, Harrison would fatefully meet Petty backstage and got pally with the Heartbreaker.
So pally, in fact, that he was happy to jam at his house shortly before the Wilburys venture got underway, accidentally leaving a guitar behind.
When Harrison arrived at Petty’s house to pick it up a little while later, he asked him if he’d like to attend the session, after all, it would be rude not to. It would be even ruder for Petty to say no given the talent in attendance. Thus, with that, Petty was on his way to the studio. Thereafter, he almost immediately slipped right into place.
The group were still working on the bare bones of the B-side to ‘This is Love’. Harrison had hurriedly offered up the framework of ‘Handle with Care’, and the heroes were thrashing it into shape.
As legend has it, Dylan was tending to the barbecue at the group’s auspicious inaugural jamming session when Harrison asked, “Give us some lyrics, you famous lyricist.” When Dylan subsequently asked for the title to at least give him something to go off, Harrison looked left towards the folk troubadour’s garage, and as though the man mystically conjures poetry from the firmament, the first thing Harrison spied was a sign saying, ‘Handle with Care’.
So, the track had its title in an instant. Petty then got busy helping out further, and the group had such a great time crafting the song together that they decided to crack on with a whole album of material. Petty could never really leave after that, could he? ‘Handle with Care’ went on to be the group’s most successful single.
And the whole thing might never have happened had the Heartbreaker not inadvertently dismayed Dylan with his halcyon moment in history just a few months earlier.
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