(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Wed 25 March 2026 20:45, UK
There isn’t a soul on this Earth who was going to be complaining that the Traveling Wilburys didn’t have the right people for the job in their band.
Any member of the group was a living legend in their own right, and while George Harrison may have been the one who got every member together, there’s a good chance that they could have made any song work once they began harmonising together. But even with all the chops that Harrison had acquired over the years, he felt that some people were better suited to playing the guitar when working on a few of their best tunes.
Then again, who is going to be that person who claims that they can play something better than Harrison? His lead breaks in The Beatles and his solo career are some of the most fantastic songs ever created, and you’d be a fool to think that the solo in ‘Something’ or ‘My Sweet Lord’ needed to be improved in any fashion. But there were options where other people could get a word in once Harrison was in his new group.
Because even though he had a fantastic solo career, Harrison always seemed to be more comfortable playing music with his friends. He didn’t like the idea of being in the spotlight every single time he performed, and even if they weren’t trying to hide the fact that they were all friends getting together for a jam session, he could at least share the spotlight when he had everyone from Tom Petty to Bob Dylan standing by his side whenever they played songs like ‘Handle With Care’.
But after Roy Orbison passed away, there was always going to be a question of who was going to replace him. There were plenty of other living legends that could have slid into that spot, but when you hear Harrison talking about the evolution of the band, replacing Orbison was never on the table. He was a once-in-a-generation talent, and there was no reason to think that anyone from Del Shannon to Bruce Springsteen could have done things better if they came in for a jam session.
That didn’t mean that they couldn’t bring in some honorary Wilburys every now and again. Jim Keltner always swore up and down that he never wanted to be a true member of the band whenever he played drums with them, but when working on ‘She’s My Baby’, Harrison admitted that what Gary Moore laid down on the track was much better than anything else he could have thought of for the lead break.
He was far more suited to approaching guitar solos like a song within the song, so having someone that could play rapid fire licks made more sense for Moore’s style of playing, saying, “When we did that song, we felt it had to have a guitar solo on it, and I can just imagine me or Jeff Lynne trying to figure out a guitar solo, but it wouldn’t really be in that style. So why not just get Gary to play it? He came down and it took him five minutes.”
Harrison might have claimed that he wasn’t good at that style of playing, but he might have been a bit more acrobatic with his lead playing than he let on. Petty remembered moments where he could easily throw down the greatest blues licks that anyone had ever thought of, but he seemed far better suited to make solos with a melody behind them rather than delve into the territory that Eric Clapton was used to.
He could still do tremendous things with a guitar in his lap and a slide on his finger, but getting Moore in on the session made him one of the few honourary Wilburys that could outplay almost any other blues guitarist. The band wasn’t going for flash when they met up, but sometimes the greatest guitarists don’t have to play the most lightning-fast leads to get people’s attention when they play.
