FEATURE:
Congratulations
Traveling Wilburys’ Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 at Thirty-Five
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AS I have remarked before…
this particular album is one very special to me. The debut album from Traveling Wilburys turns thirty-five on 18th October. The ultimate supergroup, they comprised Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lyyne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The band followed Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 with – and not that funnily – Vol. 3 in 1990. Sadly, by this point, Roy Orbison had died. In fact, he died in December 1988. To mark a huge anniversary for a wonderful album from the greatest ever supergroup, I am going to bring in some articles and reviews. You might think that uniting five very different and successful artists all experiencing different fortunes in their careers by 1988 would be a disaster. Arguably, none would experience the same creative brilliance they displayed in the 1970s. Dylan’s solo career was not at its best and most memorable. George Harrison was not producing the sort of genius he did in the 1970s. Same could be said of Jeff Lynne and ELO. I guess Tom Petty and Roy Orbison were also not at their peak. That said, when they got together on Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 they harmonised perfectly and created an album that could rank alongside each of their respective various solo works. No egos or songs excluding other band members, there is this perfect unity, brotherhood and respect that runs right throughout the album. If George Harrison and Jeff Lynne were producers and sort of heading things up, that did not mean they dictated what needed to happen and were rigid. It seemed like the writing process was pretty collaborative. As such, various songs might be identifiable in terms of one being Dylan-esque or very George Harrison-sounding…thought that is not to say they wrote the song on their own. I think that the best songs are when you get all five singing together. Maybe it is a harmony in the chorus or a song like Dirty World – where the members all get various lines. It is magical to hear this album thirty-five years after its release and still be fascinated and touched. I don’t think it is a very '80s-sounding album. Reaching sixteen in the U.K., Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 got to number three in the U.S.
Even though he did not have much to do with the writing of the debut album, the secret weapon in the group was Roy Orbison. One reason why the 1990 follow-up was not as carefree and commanding was because of the lack of that incredible voice! It is a tragedy that Orbison died so soon after the album came out. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 is one of my favourite albums ever. It holds so many important memories. I want to start by looking at a feature from Billboard. In 2018, for the thirtieth anniversary, Mo Austin discusses the album. This sort of ‘happy accident’ that was a massive commercial and critical success story. I want to also note that each member of the band gave themselves a ‘Wilbury’ nickname. Nelson (George Harrison), Otis (Jeff Lynne), Charlie T. Wilbury Jr. (Tom Petty), Lefty (Roy Orbison) and Lucky (Bob Dylan) were in career-best form through this 1988 masterpiece:
“A happy accident” was how Mo Ostin described the formation of the Traveling Wilburys, the beloved supergroup comprised of Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan whose debut LP The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was released 30 years ago (and comes out in a special edition on Nov. 2).
“Warner Bros. Records’ International Department had asked that George Harrison come up with a B-side for ‘This Is Love,’ a single from his Cloud Nine album. At the time it was customary to couple an A-side with a never-before-heard track, giving it extra sales value,” the Warner Bros. chairman emeritus wrote in the liner notes of 2007’s The Traveling Wilburys Collection box set. “Cloud Nine was just out. George, along with cowriter Jeff Lynne and their friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, had been hanging out in Dylan’s studio. I suppose George figured that as long as his pals were on hand, why not use them to knock off this flipside?”
Two days later, Harrison presented Ostin with “Handle With Care,” a song that combined the personalities of all five men in the room into a jangly slice of classic rock heaven that immediately won over both himself and A&R head Lenny Waronker.
“Our reaction was immediate,” Ostin wrote. “This was a song we knew could not be wasted on some B-side…The guys had really nailed it. Lenny and I stumbled over each other’s words asking, ‘Can’t we somehow turn this into an album?'”
And that’s precisely what they did when the five friends reconvened at Eurythmic Dave Stewart’s home studio in Los Angeles to begin putting together songs for a proper LP, where they hunkered down for a little under two weeks. Each musician took up a moniker in the grand tradition of the Quiet Beatle’s usage of such quirky pseudonyms as L’Angelo Misterioso, Hari Georgeson and Jai Raj Harisein when moonlighting on friends’ albums in the Fab days. For this endeavor, they chose to christen themselves the Wilburys, named after the pet name Harrison and Lynne gave their studio equipment, and gave themselves all fake first names. Dylan was Lucky Wilbury, Orbison was Lefty Wilbury, Petty was Charlie T. Wilbury Jr., Lynne was Otis Wilbury and Harrison was Nelson Wilbury. They even came up with a whole folklore behind the brotherly bond, originally inscribed on the inside sleeve of the original LP, written by a one Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket from the “University of Krakatoa (East of Java).”
“A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became,” the legend stated. “And the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.”
There was a sixth Wilbury as well, Harrison’s longtime drummer Jim Keltner, who was just as visible in the group’s promotional material and music videos as the main quintet. He was given the handle “Buster Sidebury,” and arrived at Stewart’s compound to begin recording Vol. 1, quickly realizing just how loose the sessions were going to be.
“I had already quit drinking and smoking and all that stuff by then,” he recalls. “But George and Jeff would be drinking beers and getting a little silly. And they were laughing a lot. I’ve made a lot of my friends laugh over the years by listening to them being sober. My dad always used to say, when he was in the army, how the limeys would always have a screwy sense of humor. But once you got to know George especially, he was so into Monty Python and all those British comedies. And he had all those records and would play them for me, and I finally started getting the hang of it. But that night they were so silly talking about traveling Willoughbys, and just knocking themselves out with laughter. I’m listening to them and telling them, ‘Jesus, how could you think this is funny?’ I was just enjoying the fact they were having a good time.”
In fact, Keltner found himself succumbing to the revelry while the Wilburys were coming up with the music for the Lynne-led rockabilly cut “Rattled,” as dutifully showcased in the 24-minute documentary The True History of The Traveling Wilburys, when he began playing out a rhythm on the house refrigerator.
“I was in the fridge at a time when Jeff and George were hanging out in the kitchen,” he explains. “I went in to get something to drink, and I was doing an overdub at the time and had my split sticks on me, which are like these wooden brushes. So I had them in my hand while I was looking for something to drink and probably screwing around with them — I like tapping on stuff when I have sticks in my hand. And I think I was scraping the wooden brushes against the fridge, and somebody made a comment about how I should play that on the track. So I got real serious about it, and started moving eggs around and tamales and whatever they had in there to tune it a little bit and Jeff loved it and said, ‘Put a mic on it.’ Jeff knows how to get a feel out of anything.
The sessions for the first Wilburys album also gave Keltner the rare opportunity to hang out with Dylan — whom he had toured with throughout his Born Again period — in a more relaxed atmosphere. It was a vibe that would provide the levity of such Dylan-led numbers as “Dirty World,” “Congratulations” and “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” in ways you didn’t experience on his proper albums.
“You don’t get to have that personal time with Bob very often,” he asserts. “Because it was the Wilburys, I had a ball with him. He’s so fucking funny when he’s on his own and relaxed. I had so much fun listening to him talk about various things. He’s a very funny guy, and people don’t know that side of him. The thing I enjoyed the most about working on Vol. 1 was getting Bob to talk. I was very close with George and Tom I had known since he was literally a kid. So it was normal for me being around those guys. And Jeff was a very shy guy who didn’t talk much anyway. But Bob was the one; some people were intimidated by Bob and being around him. They didn’t want to talk much because they didn’t want to sound stupid around him. But I knew Bob a lot better than that, and just getting him to open up and talk was so much fun. I had a camera on me and I remember he grabbed my camera a few times and started shooting things. I actually have footage of that somewhere; I wish I had marked it all.”
The sessions proved to be bittersweet, however, as it would be the last time they enjoyed the company of Orbison, who died at 52 after going into cardiac arrest on Dec. 6, 1988, a little over a month-and-a-half following the release of Vol. 1. For Keltner, who also played drums on Orbison’s posthumous twenty-second LP Mystery Girl, one of his final chats with the rockabilly legend proved to unfortunately be all too telltale that his days were numbered”.
I want to round off with a couple of reviews. This is what Rolling Stone wrote for their 1988 review of a stunning album. I don’t think any supergroup has released an album as consistent and strong as Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1:
“This is the best record of its kind ever made. Then again, it’s also the only record of its kind ever made. A low-key masterpiece, Volume One marks the auspicious debut of the Traveling Wilburys – Lucky Wilbury (a.k.a. Bob Dylan), Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison), Lefty Wilbury (Roy Orbison), Otis Wilbury (Jeff Lynne) and Charlie T. Jr. (Tom Petty) – one of the few rock supergroups actually deserving to be called either super or a group.
With tongue placed firmly in cheek, the author of the album’s liner notes (which are credited to Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, Faculty of Sleeve Notes, University of Krakatoa, East of Java, but sound suspiciously like Michael Palin, who is thanked elsewhere in the notes) explains the band’s origins thusly: “The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still for ever, began to go for short walks – not the ‘traveling’ as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back.”
In reality, this record came out of a dinner conversation in Los Angeles this spring between Petty, Orbison, Lynne and Harrison. (Former ELO leader Lynne, who was behind the boards for Harrison’s comeback album, Cloud Nine, was producing tracks for upcoming albums by both Orbison and Petty.) Harrison mentioned that he needed to record a new song for the B side of a European single and suggested they all pitch in and cut a number together. Harrison also suggested having Bob Dylan join in, and the next day they all wrote and recorded “Handle with Care” (now the album’s first single). When Harrison played the track for Warner Bros., both the company and the group realized it was too good for a throwaway track and decided the Wilburys should keep recording.
And it’s a good thing they did, because for all its off-the-cuff sense of fun, Volume One is an unexpected treat that leaves one hungry for Volume Two. Produced by Harrison and Lynne, the album has a wonderfully warm sound that is both high-tech and rootsy. Recorded at the home studios of Harrison, Dylan and Wilbury family friend Dave Stewart, Volume One has little in common with most recorded “supersessions,” which tend to be less than the sum of their parts; rather, it recalls the inspired mix-and-match musical fellowship found in the best moments of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame jam sessions.
Coming on the heels of Cloud Nine, Volume One is further proof of Harrison’s complete return to form. Throughout, Harrison not only sounds great, he also sounds happy, thrilled to be playing once again with a witty, wonderful band – albeit one with a rather unorthodox lineup: five lead-singing rhythm guitarists. (The Wilburys’ fellow travelers on Volume One include Jim Keltner on drums, Jim Horn on saxophone, Ray Cooper on percussion and Ian Wallace on tom-toms.)
But Harrison isn’t the only rock great who seems revived on Volume One. Never one for overdoing things in the studio, Bob Dylan is well matched to the Wilburys’ informal, fast-paced schedule – they wrote and recorded a song a day. And as on his recent stripped-down tour, Dylan sounds extraordinary, singing with the expert phrasing and wit of his best work. (Unsurprisingly, his tracks sound less collaborative than the others.) On “Dirty World” and “Congratulations,” his voice is loose and relaxed, free of the mannered whining that has marred some of his recent recorded work. Best of all is “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” a convincing little rocker that playfully parodies Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics. Littered with references to stolen cars, mansions on the hill, Jersey lines and a certain Thunder Road, the song comes off as Dylan’s wonderfully bitchy way of asserting who’s really the Boss.
Totally boss is the best way to describe two other Wilbury gems, “Not Alone Any More” and the closing “End of the Line.” The former is a gorgeous pop ballad on which Roy Orbison – assisted by some wonderful backing vocals from Harrison and Lynne – hurts as good as he ever has. It proves that Orbison has lost none of his tremendous vocal prowess, and makes one eager to hear Orbison’s upcoming solo album. “End of the Line” – which features vocal turns by all the Wilburys save Dylan – is a movingly upbeat ride-off-into-the-sunset song for these middle-aged rock & roll cowboys: “Maybe somewhere down the road a ways/You’ll think of me and wonder where I am these days/Maybe down the road when somebody plays/’Purple Haze.'”
Petty acquits himself well on “End of the Line” and “Last Night”; he and Orbison share lead on the latter song, a shuffling tale of good love gone bad. Jeff Lynne shines a little of his own electric light on “Rattled,” a romantic, retro-sounding rockabilly number reminiscent of some of the tracks he produced for Dave Edmunds a few years back.
According to Wilbury legend, all the Traveling Wilburys have different mothers but the same father. Yet none of the Wilburys knows the current whereabouts of Charlie T. Wilbury Sr. Chances are, though, that wherever the big guy is, he’s proud”.
I shall around things off now. Classic Rock Review penned their thoughts about Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 in 2013. Looking back twenty-five after the album was released, they give us a good insight into the creation of the album and why it still hits people all of these years later:
“Super Groups” were comonplace during the seventies and eighties, often causing much hype which was rarely surpassed by the music itself. But in the case of the Traveling Wilburys, by far the most “super” of any super group, the resulting music was downright brilliant. Their debut Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 displays an incredible array of three decades of pop and rock elements wrapped in concise tunes penned and performed by some of the biggest legends in the business. The group and album were not initially planned and came together through a serendipitous series of coincidences and the fantastic music they produced together easily makes Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 Classic Rock Review’s Album of the Year for 1988.
It all started in Los Angeles in Spring 1988 when George Harrison was looking to record B-side material for a vinyl 12-inch European single. Jeff Lynne, who co-produced Harrison’s most recent album Cloud Nine was also in Los Angeles at the time. Lynne was producing some music for Roy Orbison as well as the debut solo album, Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. Lynne was able to enlist both artists to help out Harrison, who was in a huge hurry to record his material. The final piece of the Traveling Wilbury puzzle was Bob Dylan, who had built a home studio in nearby Malibu and agreed to let the makeshift group record the very next day. On that day, the legendary musicians wrote and recorded the song “Handle with Care” in about five hours. The experience was so positive that all five agreed to form a group and reconvened a month later to record the other nine tracks on what would become Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Here the magic continued as the group wrote and recorded on acoustic guitars. With a limited amount of time before Dylan headed out on a scheduled tour, the five singers in the group often took turns at songs until Harrison (as group arbiter) selected the best “lead” voice for each part. The final phase was Harrison and Lynne returning to England for final overdubs and production. Here Harrison added some electric and lead guitars, Lynne added keyboards and bass, Jim Keltner was brought in on drums.
Although it is generally agreed that Harrison was the group’s leader, they did work hard to maintain a collective image and even set up fictional names for each member masquerading as the “Wilbury” brothers – Nelson (Harrison), Otis (Lynne), Lucky (Dylan), Lefty (Orbison), and Charlie T. Jr. (Petty) with Keltner given the humorous “outsider” name “Buster Sidebury”. All group members also got songwriting credits on the album, although the publishing credits were disbursed according to the actual songwriter. The Wilbury name originated from Harrison and Lynne previously working together as a pseudonym for slight recording errors (“we’ll bury ’em in the mix”).
The ringing guitars of “Handle with Care”, the original Wilbury song, starts things off. Harrison, the primary composer, delivers deliberate vocalizing during the verses which gives way to Orbison’s smooth crooning during the choruses. Dylan and Petty deliver a chanting post-chorus and two instances of Harrison’s classic guitar along with a short Dylan harmonica lead make the song a true classic in just about every way. Within its brief three and a half minutes the song is dotted with decades of rock history, making this the perfect track to introduce the album. While not every song on the album wraps itself so well as “Handle with Care”, there is not a truly weak moment on the album.
On “Dirty World” Dylan’s rough lead vocals are complimented by smooth backing vocals and a bright acoustic arrangement. The song also contains some horns and an interesting arrangement all around. This song was a particularly enjoyable one for the band to record as each member took a turn singing in the “round” during the extended outro. Jeff Lynne’s “Rattled” is pure rockabilly led by Orbinson on vocals, almost like a lost early Elvis song. Lynne’s bass and Harrison’s lead guitar shine musically and the actual “rattle” in the song is drummer Keltner tapping the refrigerator grill with his drum sticks.
“Last Night” contains Caribbean elements with some percussion and horns and Petty singing during verse and Orbinson during the bridges. The whimsical, storytelling song has a great aura and feel throughout. Petty did the core composing with each group member contributing to the songwriting approach. The verses has an upbeat folk/Latin feel with the bridge being a bit more dramatic. The first side completes with “Not Alone Any More”, a vocal centerpiece for Orbison. His vocals smoothly lead a modern version of early sixties rock and Lynne’s keyboards add more decoration than any other song on the first side. If “Not Alone Anymore” is in the clouds, the second side opener “Congratulations” is right down at ground level. This tavern style ballad with Dylan on lead vocals sounds much like his late 70s / early 80s era material, with blues-like reverences to broken relationships, and includes a very short but great lead guitar by Harrison right at the end.
The up-tempo “Heading for the Light” is a quintessential Harrison/Lynne production, with the former Beatle composing and singing and the former ELO front man providing the lush production and orchestration. The song contains great picked guitar fills as well as a saxophone solo by Jim Horn. “Margarita” may be the oddest song on the album but is still a great sonic pleasure. It begins with a programmed eighties synth line then the long intro slowly works its way into a Latin acoustic section topped by horns, lead guitar, and rich vocal harmonies. It is not until a minute and a half in that Petty’s lead vocals come in for a single verse then the song works its ways through various short sections towards an encapsulated synth ending. This spontaneous composition with free-association lyrics showed with a group of this talent could do on the spot.
“Tweeter and the Monkey Man” is Bob Dylan channeling Bruce Springsteen and coming out with what may have been one of the best Springsteen songs ever (even though he had nothing to do with it). This extended song with the traditional Dylan style of oodles of verses and a theatrical chorus includes several references to Springsteen songs throughout and is in Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey. It may have been Dylan’s delayed response to the press repeatedly coining Bruce “the next Dylan”. No matter what the case, the result is an excellent tune with lyrics rich enough to base a book or movie.
The most perfect album closer to any album – ever, “End of the Line” contains a Johnny Cash-like train rhythm beneathe deeply philosophical lyrics, delivered in a light and upbeat fashion. Harrison, Lynne, Orbinson, and Harrison again provide the lead vocals during the chorus hooks while Petty does the intervening verses. The song revisits the classic music themes of survival and return with the universal message that, in the big picture, it all ends someday. The feeling of band unity is also strongest here with the folksy pop/rock chords and great harmonies. The music video for “End of the Line” was filmed after Roy Orbison’s death in December 1988, mere weeks after the album’s release, and paid tasteful respect with a shot of a guitar sitting in a rocking chair during the verse which Orbison sang.
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 sold over two million copies within its first six months, a figure which made this album a higher seller than any of Bob Dylan’s albums to that date. The album was critically favored and won a Grammy award in 1990. The surviving members of the group reconvened for a second album, which fell far short of capturing the magic of this debut and a long-planned tour by the group never materialized, although members continued to collaborate on each other’s albums for years to come. The incredible magic that came together in 1988 is yet to repeated anywhere in the rock universe”.
On 18th October, the sensational debut album from Traveling Wilburys turns thirty-five. I remember this from childhood and being hooked on songs like End of the Line, Tweeter and the Monkey Man, and Handle with Care. If you have not heard the album, then I would thoroughly recommend that you check it out! I don’t know if there is a celebration planned for its thirty-fifth anniversary. Its two surviving member, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne, will no doubt recall a very special time in their lives. If you think supergroups are overrated, pointless or driven by ego, then listen to Traveling Wilburys Vol 1. It is an album that is carefree, full of gold and made by a group of friends really enjoying each other’s company! For that reason alone, this is an album that will be picked up and enjoyed…
BY many generations to come.