(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Sun 18 January 2026 17:30, UK
When George Harrison first floated the idea of the Traveling Wilburys, it almost seemed too good to be true.
There were plenty of musical legends that had worked together before, but the idea of getting a band together that was made up of some of the greatest rock and roll artists the world had ever seen felt more like a pipe dream than anything else. And yet, despite all of the bandmates hitting it off right from the get-go, Harrison felt there was more than enough room for some more people to be thrown into the mix as well.
Because in Harrison’s mind, the Wilburys were nothing but a fun band that he could play with in his spare time. He never liked the idea of being a solo artist in the first place, so when he got someone like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan in the group, he could take the spotlight off of himself a little bit more when playing off his bandmates on ‘Handle With Care’ or ‘End of the Line’. But Harrison didn’t want to ever put a limit on the kind of people that he could have in the band.
He had told Tom Petty that he wished that John Lennon had lived long enough to become a member of the band, but before they had even started working on their next album, the death of Orbison already cast a dark shadow over everything. He was among the best voices the world had ever seen, and while they were certainly in the market for some new people, there was never a thought of anyone replacing Orbison in any capacity.
That said, their sophomore effort did at least have a few special guests behind the scenes, like Gary Moore. That might have been done out of convenience since Harrison had been so close with the guitar legend, but when listening to the way that they constructed songs, anyone who was going to join the band needed to have done their homework on what the real rock and rollers were all about.
After all, some of their greatest songs relied on the same bluesy progressions that Harrison had in his pre-Beatles days, and since Petty and Jeff Lynne both knew the ins and outs of what made that music sound so great, they felt the only people who could have joined were the ones who taught them the ropes back in the day.
When talking about anyone else joining the band at the time, Harrison said that it made a lot more sense to get his favourite musicians in the group rather than work with whatever modern legend was popular at the time, saying, “Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis could be Wilburys, but Hall and Oates couldn’t. Keith Richards could certainly be a Wilbury but George Michael couldn’t.” Then again, that has more to do with the music they make than their actual musical talent most of the time.
Both Michael and Hall and Oates have written some fantastic tunes over the years, but their music didn’t seem to have the same starting point that the Wilburys did. They were more indebted to the sounds of soul music, and while Harrison did have a soft spot for people like Smokey Robinson over the years, it wasn’t what the Wilburys needed. They were telling tales the same way that musical troubadours did, and it wasn’t like Daryll Hall would have been the most comfortable in that train car as they went down the highway in the ‘End of the Line’ video.
But hearing Harrison entertain the idea was like looking back on the days of him being in The Beatles, trying to perform with other people. He had been trying to get Bob Dylan in a band with him ever since working on the Get Back project, so if he finally managed to achieve his dream, then why not take a chance and see if Little Richard wanted to bring some excitement into the band?
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