Why The Traveling Wilburys never travelled

Credit: Wikimedia

Sat 14 February 2026 15:44, UK

The Traveling Wilburys might have been one of the most successful supergroups of all time. But in terms of their chart success? They barely had a pot to piss in. 

OK, sorry – that sounded far more derogatory than it should have been. There was no denying that this was a band who, despite each of their individual star statuses, moved as more of a solid unit than many other groups could dream of. Their united front was an absolute show of strength to the power that rock music really should be.

They definitely needed it in their attempts to climb the charts. In the landscape of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, the tectonic plates had well and truly shifted in a new direction, leaving the slightly more vintage allure of a band like The Traveling Wilburys as a shining gem sticking out against the noise. 

But then again, they weren’t intentionally making hits necessarily to please wide scores of punters. It was all about the craftsmanship and togetherness that these songs cultivated within themselves, before being imparted to their collective fan groups. In this sense, topping the charts was never really the aim of the game.

Essentially, this is all to say that you should really take it with a pinch of salt when you realise that The Traveling Wilburys only ever had one single that broke through to the heights of the top 40. What might be chalked up as a failure of epic proportions by many other artists was worn as a badge of honour to them, because it exemplified what they were about all along. The exception, in this case, was ‘Handle With Care’.

What did chart success mean for The Traveling Wilburys?

Peaking at number 21 and rumbling around the charts for another 16 weeks after that, it was pretty much clear from the get-go that ‘Handle With Care’ was always going to be the equivalent of a frontrunner for The Traveling Wilburys, even though their albums played host to so much more than just that one sound.

It was symbolic, however, that the track was the first thing ever recorded under the moniker of The Traveling Wilburys, almost like a litmus test for the true capabilities of what they could do alongside each other. Additionally, as the first track on their 1988 debut album, the message was more than clear about what this band set out to be. 

Of course, there was an element of beginner’s luck and novelty that rubbed off in terms of the immediate chart success, but in many ways, once people realised that the quintet were the same solid, reliable rockers they had always been, they knew that they didn’t need too much in the way of lavish praise.

As such, ‘Handle With Care’ became marked as the only top 40 hit that The Traveling Wilburys ever achieved in the UK, but it was an honour they wore with absolute pride as they stood by their principles and never once waned into the notions of what commercial popularity could really do for them. Those really were the days, weren’t they?