(Credits: Far Out / The Travelling Wilburys)
Thu 18 December 2025 18:00, UK
It’s impossible to think of someone like George Harrison as the kind to be starstruck.
Anyone with the insane pedigree as one of The Beatles would have surely been numb to any form of adulation, but sometimes those early influences never seem to go away. He still loved Carl Perkins as much as anyone when he started playing his tunes, but when working with his buddies, there were always a few times when Harrison could get spellbound by his fellow Traveling Wilburys.
Then again, the fact that the band existed was practically a pipe dream that Harrison came up with on a whim. He wanted the chance to work among friends for the longest time, and when working with Jeff Lynne on Cloud Nine, the party atmosphere came out when he asked Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan to work on the B-side ‘Handle With Care’ before making a whole album of tunes.
But how the hell does one wrangle that many legends in one room? None of them were the kind to show off their egos too much, but it takes a special kind of skill to be able to sing anywhere near Orbison and manage to stay coherent. As the new kids, Lynne and Petty would have had to have been shaking in their boots a little bit, but it turns out Harrison was always looking to make sure that Dylan was there to have a good time.
Despite looking like the one least interested in being there on the video shoot for ‘Handle With Care’, Dylan seemed at least cordial when working with the band. He had offered to use one of his studios when they were working on the one song, but when he first dove headfirst into everything, Harrison started to see the old version of the folkie that he had only heard about come out to play when working on ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’.
It was already a trip to work among musical icons, but Lynne remembered that even Harrison remembered getting a little bit starstruck, saying, “George was in such awe of Bob, if somebody came over to a session, he’d open a door and say, ‘Look, it’s Bob Dylan.’ Whereas everybody else is opening another door, going, ‘That’s fucking George Harrison.’ I loved him so much.” But as it turned out, that kind of respect was a two-way street half the time that Dylan was working with the former Beatle.
While Dylan had the utmost respect for McCartney for his way with melody, he felt that Harrison was one of the most thoughtful songwriters that he had ever worked with. ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ was already the start of a beautiful creative friendship for them, but Dylan was also interested in hearing Harrison’s beautiful slide guitar on his records, even if it meant having to deal with Harrison doing his own bootlegs of Dylan singing in between Wilburys recording sessions.
And throughout the tenure of the Wilburys, Dylan at least warmed up to the idea of working together a bit more. He had a blast working on their second album, and even managed to get Harrison to put in some guitar work on some of his solo records afterwards, but it was clear that he also didn’t want to live his life as a Wilbury and give up his status as a poet, either.
Both could exist at the same time, but Harrison never took a second of his time with Dylan for granted. He wanted to have someone that he could hang out with, but he didn’t expect to have someone whose words were as important as biblical Scripture to find their way to his doorstep every now and then.
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