Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
Fri 9 October 2026 21:45, UK
The Traveling Wilburys is the kind of exclusive band that no one could simply ask to join.
Some of the biggest rock and roll stars on the planet were in this band partly because they all got along so well, so if you were ever going to be able to jam with them, it would have been by invitation only half the time. And while not everyone knew what they were getting their hopes up for when the band first started, there were some people who got a partial view of what it was like to be a member of the greatest supergroup of all time.
Then again, the door was always open for members to join if they had the right tone for what they were working for. Even though George Harrison tried his best to keep everything airtight in the band, the idea of using Elvis Presley’s voice on one of their songs was at least a little bit intriguing when they started putting together the initial ideas for what would become the band’s sophomore album.
But even if they brought in a visitor, it all came down to someone that you could hang out with half the time. The biggest names in the world weren’t always the easiest to come by, and while people like Brian Johnson of AC/DC and Phil Collins loved what the band was doing, they weren’t the kind of musicians that they were really looking for whenever they broke out the acoustic guitars.
After all, none of the members needed to be a screamer, and Jim Keltner was always going to be the steady pulse of the band every single time they played. Keltner knew everything that the band needed whenever they performed, and while he never felt worthy of being welcomed into the band whenever he performed, he was at least ready to show the world how to interact with the rest of the members in any capacity.
There were a few ‘what-ifs’ that people toyed around with, like Del Shannon joining or Roger McGuinn missing the chance to join, but Harrison thought enough of Gary Moore to sneak him through the door on ‘She’s My Baby’. But even if Moore created some of the fastest picks to ever turn up on one of the band’s records, it was always going to be on a temporary basis whenever he worked on any of their songs.
He did stick around long enough to get a name, but Jeff Lynne remembered the whole thing being a lot more informal than working with an actual member of the band, saying, “Gary was friends with George at the time, that’s how he got invited in. Of course, I know him as well, a little bit, and he was a really nice guy. And we just got him in because we were working at George’s house, and he lived not far away at the time. He just came in one day and overdubbed his guitar.”
Further reading: From The Vault
But when you’re someone working at that calibre, one day is all you need to make your mark on some of the biggest names in music. Everyone else was stunned that they had a lead like that on their record, and while the band carried on as if nothing had happened, that one guitar solo was the closest thing that we would hear to what another guitar hero in the band could have sounded like.
Sure, Harrison was the one with those gorgeous slide parts that could make anyone cry, but what Moore played put the band closer to a Derek and the Dominos situation with how pristine he sounded. Anyone else could have clocked in and made a decent solo, but whenever anyone was working with the Wilburys, they were going to make the most of the moment with the greatest licks they could think of.
