Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
For any band that lasts for decades, the greatest lesson that everyone needs to learn is restraint.
Even though it would be easy to grandstand every time you’re onstage and making music that everyone can gawk at in amazement, that doesn’t always lead to the best song or something that will stand the test of time. The Traveling Wilburys knew to leave their egos at the door whenever working off each other, but the decision of who to sing what went back to the cutthroat nature of their beginnings.
Because, really, did anyone in the band need to prove something to their contemporaries anymore? Each of them had become a living legend in their own right, and even if they had issues with each other on certain songs, it was hard to argue with someone like Bob Dylan about how one of his lines should sound or say that George Harrison needed to play the guitar line a bit more in tune.
If there was one leader in the group, though, it would have to have been Harrison. The whole reason they had formed was that Harrison needed one extra B-side for one of his singles, and since that tune was way too good to put out as an odd artefact, the only logical thing was to get the group in a studio for a few days to hash out some tunes.
And when looking at the way that ‘Handle With Care’ and ‘End of the Line’ sounded, none of them were concerned with stepping on each other’s toes. The whole appeal of the band was based around some grand singalong between mates, and even if it wasn’t the most meaningful song in the world, it at least gave fans the joy of seeing their favourite artists together.
Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
That democratic spirit was one of the reasons the Traveling Wilburys avoided becoming an exercise in nostalgia or excess. Supergroups often collapse under the weight of competing egos, with each member trying to assert their own identity, but the Wilburys approached the project with an unusual looseness and humility. Rather than treating the sessions like the meeting of five rock titans, they leaned into spontaneity, humour and the simple enjoyment of playing together without pressure.
It also helped that each member brought a completely distinct musical personality to the table. Petty added an accessible American heartland warmth, Dylan delivered cryptic storytelling and ragged charisma, while Harrison anchored everything with melodic structure and understated charm. Orbison’s towering voice gave the group emotional gravity, and Jeff Lynne’s polished production tied the whole thing together. Separately, they represented very different corners of rock history, but together they managed to sound surprisingly effortless.
Further reading: From The Vault
That being said, some performances stick out more than others. As much as the entire group chorus effect works on most of the record, Harrison became the interim talent judge behind everything, usually conducting who would sing what line on every tune.
As Tom Petty recalled later, the whole process felt like an informal audition every time they were deciding who took the vocal, saying, “When we’d finish the lyric, we’d go up and sing. Sometimes we’d kind of audition to see who sang it the best. ‘Take a bit–you sing it, no you sing it…well, okay, this one sounds the best with Roy singing’ or whatever.”
Then again, it’s hard to argue with any of the lines being sung by anyone else. Orbison was clearly the vocal angel on the record on tracks like ‘Not Alone Any More’, but Harrison had the vocal timbre for tunes like ‘Heading for the Light’, and the highway folk tale on ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’ could have only come from Bob Dylan’s mouth, with most of the band being the world’s greatest background singers on the chorus.
Even if the band were still showing up with their best material, it wasn’t a matter of everyone trying to outdo each other when working in the studio. It was still about having fun, and the reason why those early Wilburys albums work so well is that they harnessed that sense of fun on every single tune.
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