(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 14 September 2025 18:00, UK
The Traveling Wilburys were never ones to overthink much of their material.
Every part of their career was based around having fun, and the last thing they needed was someone there cracking the whip and forcing them to have the right sound for whatever tune that happened to be working on. If that had happened, we would have never seen that debut record, but even when things got tense, Jeff Lynne knew that some songs needed a bit more elbow grease to sound completely finished.
Then again, Lynne didn’t usually have that much of a problem getting the right sound for any of their songs. He was the one used to getting the best out of nearly every Wilbury on their own, and while it took a little convincing to get someone like Bob Dylan onboard, all of them felt like a bunch of old friends getting together for a jam session whenever they sat around figuring out the words to one of their tunes.
If anything, Lynne was probably the most important member in many respects. George Harrison should get credit for having the idea of bringing them together, but Lynne was the one willing to work with everyone on their own until they had the right sound. Granted, was there any reason to critique anything that came out of Roy Orbison’s mouth whenever he took a vocal.
Of all of them, Orbison always had the most soulful voice, and listening to him soar over ‘Handle With Care’ is where the song really comes alive. But when things hit a snag when working on ‘Not Alone Any More’, Lynne wasn’t willing to have another crack at it over a few days. He only had Orbison for a little while, and he needed to make sure that everything sounded exactly like it was supposed to.
So instead of waiting for the rest of the band to show up, Lynne rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up, saying, “One night I broke into the studio to try this alternative chord pattern because that was the one I couldn’t come to terms with. I just put this Telecaster on playing the other chords. Everyone else arrived and heard this thing; the same tune but with different chords and they loved it.”
Despite that collaborative spirit of the WIlburys, you’d have thought that the tune was tailormade for Orbison’s voice half the time. Lynne already had put in time working on what would be his final album, Mystery Girl, but even with a former Beatle and Tom Petty’s heartland drawl, Orbison’s glorious high notes in the chorus is enough to remind everyone that there was a reason why The Beatles idolised him back in the day.
And the excitement wasn’t lost on Orbison, either. As much as he liked to play it cool in the midst of his bandmates, Petty remembered that the crooner couldn’t contain himself when he heard that the band had hit the top of the charts, even calling him up in the middle of the day to tell him how excited he was.
Those good times may have been a lot better than most of the Wilburys realised after Orbison passed away, but being able to get this last vocal done was the least they could have done. They had known Orbison to be a legend among the rock and roll pioneers, and even if they only had a short while with him in the band, it’s nice knowing that he got to go out on top towards the end.
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