Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
Sun 16 August 2026 14:56, UK
Being a member of the Traveling Wilburys would have probably felt like a surreal dream for everyone involved.
No one could have envisioned the classic rock equivalent of the Avengers coming together to make a few tunes, but there were more than a few moments where George Harrison seemed to work his magic and get everyone together in one place to create some classic tunes. But even if they had everyone together, not every one of their songs was going to go off without a hitch when they started working together.
It was already a run-and-gun operation to get ‘Handle With Care’ off the ground, and even though the band figured they’d make an entire album of tunes, it wasn’t all that strange for them to work on the fly. That first album was put together while Bob Dylan was about to go on the road, so they only had a limited time frame to get the rest of the tunes together, and it really sounds that way, but in the best way possible.
Anyone else would have felt rushed trying to put together the biggest tunes with their friends, but the whole record has this relentless energy that makes it sound like it was recorded together on a weekend over a few beers. Nothing about the record was supposed to be too complicated, but the idea of finding the right voice for every one of those songs was going to be the true test for every single track.
None of them sounded like each other, and it would have been weird to have given a song like ‘Dirty World’ to Jeff Lynne to sing or make Dylan sing the hook in Harrison’s ‘End of the Line’. It was all about using different voices in the right way, and while everyone was level-headed enough to leave their egos at the door, the real elephant in the room was finding out what the hell they were doing whenever Roy Orbison walked into the room.
All of them were legends in their own right, but Orbison’s technique was a little different. He just happened to be one of the greatest vocalists that the rock and roll world had ever heard, and getting a song that fit his voice was going to be tricky. And even when they managed to find the right idea on ‘Not Alone Any More’, Harrison remembered that it was a true labour of love trying to get the song off the ground.
Making a song to fit his voice was a lot easier said than done, but Harrison credited Lynne for helping bring the tune to life, saying, “It was hard, really, to get a song for Roy. I think, when we were writing all these tunes, I dare say we could have turned out another thirty tunes in the mood we got into. But Roy was like a special case to try and – in fact, that song, originally, when we wrote that, it wasn’t very good when we first wrote it. Jeff went home and did a bit of homework on it.”
Further reading: From The Vault
Lynne only needed to move the chords around a little bit, but what really makes the song work are the background harmonies behind Orbison. He always sounded perfect when he had another voice to work off of, and when he finally hits those massive high notes near the end of the song, it starts to make a lot more sense why The Beatles and Dylan both idolised him years before they started jamming with him.
The song wasn’t going to come easy, but sometimes even the greatest legends of all time need to throw in a little bit of elbow grease to bring their songs to life. They weren’t willing to give up on a tune just because someone didn’t have the right idea, because all you need is to give a song time to breathe before you start piecing together what would be perfect for any given section.
