![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Traveling-Wilburys-George-Harrison-Tom-Petty-Jeff-Lynne-Bob-Dylan-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Credit: Far Out \/ The Traveling Wilburys<\/p>\n
The Traveling Wilburys<\/a> had no interest in turning their little band into a second career. <\/p>\n They wanted to simply have some fun playing together every time they made a record, and the second that it started feeling like work was usually the moment where they realised that they needed to cut their losses and go back to their solo careers. But if \u2018Handle With Care\u2019 came together by magic, Tom Petty figured that he could do the same thing when working on some of his songs for the group.<\/p>\n Then again, \u2018Handle With Care\u2019 is a strange miracle of a song in lots of ways. The entire point of the track getting put together as a B-side was already one of the greatest happy accidents in music history, and even if George Harrison had everyone else helping him out, the fact that he got the title from a box in the corner of the room when spitballing ideas is the kind of luck that no one could have landed on if they tried.<\/p>\n The same could be said of a lot of the songs on that first record. A lot of the members are playing to their strengths on their respective tunes, and even Petty found ways to shine when he began working with Bob Dylan on \u2018Tweeter and the Monkey Man\u2019<\/a>. Harrison couldn\u2019t have come up with those kinds of Americanisms on his own, but if the former Beatle could take his inspiration from random shit that they had lying around the studio, who said that Petty couldn\u2019t do the exact same thing?<\/p>\n He had his fair share of inspired moments in the group, and \u2018Cool Dry Place\u2019 on their second record was his version of writing \u2018Handle With Care\u2019 in many ways, saying<\/a>, \u201cActually, there was a box. There was a box, you see, \u2018Store it in a cool dry place.\u2019\u201d But whereas Harrison\u2019s song went in a more lovestruck direction, there\u2019s no inkling of any subtext going on in whatever Petty\u2019s going on about.<\/p>\n You\u2019d think that a song like this would have some kind of innuendo about it whenever it comes on, but a lot of Petty\u2019s lyrics on this tune are just naming every single thing that you come across in a recording studio. Harrison could turn the tune into a half-decent metaphor, but all Petty could hope to do was make a laundry list of the kind of stuff that he saw whenever they were jamming with acoustic guitars.<\/p>\n This would typically be one of the most boring songs in history, but Petty actually finds a way to somehow make everything work. The heart of the song doesn\u2019t give everyone that much to work with, but if he could turn a song like \u2018Girl on LSD\u2019<\/a> into a massive hit, who said that he couldn\u2019t do the same thing with a tune that was all about the studio?<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n In fact, there\u2019s almost a little piece of this song that feels like it could have been a B-side on Full Moon Fever. Half of the record had pieces of the Wilburys<\/a> on it anyway, and given that there were more than a few times where he could get a little bit goofy on a song like \u2018A Mind With a Heart of Its Own\u2019, this is the kind of lighthearted version of \u2018Handle With Care\u2019 that fits well with the dad-rock aesthetic that they were going for.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the most in-depth song that the Wilburys ever made, and you have to really stretch to try and pull some sort of hidden meaning out of it, but that wasn\u2019t how the Wilburys operated. They were only looking to have some fun, and even if they had a legend like Bob Dylan in their ranks, sometimes a song can benefit from being a little bit dumb. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ The Traveling Wilburys The Traveling Wilburys had no interest in turning their little band…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[271202,77,269,13532,21477,16,15],"class_list":["post-972517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-271202","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-the-traveling-wilburys","tag-tom-petty","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116605028181649710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=972517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=972517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=972517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=972517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}