Every Traveling Wilburys album

Okay, so this one might need a few caveats. The whole concept behind the Traveling Wilburys was already a bit of a fluke considering how well every member of the supergroup worked together, and even George Harrison said there must have been a full moon the night they decided to put their plan into action. When looking at where they went throughout their two albums together, though, there was never a chance that they were going to repeat when people asked for a tour.

The whole point behind both records was a bunch of guys having fun playing music together, and even if it could be a little bit middle-aged, it was bound to lose all of its charm if big businesses got in the way of everything. So when they scraped together another record for Traveling Wilburys Vol 3 without Roy Orbison, they never bothered to play any of the songs together again.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why each of them found it hard to replicate them on their own. Tom Petty may have taken a stab at tunes like ‘Handle With Care’ or ‘Tweeter and The Monkey Man’ during his solo tours, but as much as Mike Campbell is still a genius with slide guitar, there was no way that anyone was going to give the same vocal and six-string performance as George Harrison.

‘Scentless Apprentice’ – Nirvana

Most of the message behind Nirvana’s In Utero was unadulterated frustration. The band never intended to get as big as they were once the grunge movement kicked in, and even when people were fawning over every show they played, Kurt Cobain started to get increasingly agitated being considered the next towering god of rock. So when ‘Scentless Apprentice’ made it onto the record, hearing him cry out in pain was enough to scare anyone to death, even if they don’t know his tragic story.

Ignoring his death in 1994, the entire song is actually a caustic retelling of the book Perfume that Cobain had become infatuated with, but once he hits those screams in the chorus, he goes for notes that sound genuinely distressing. While he never hurt himself trying to make the record, hearing him rip out his vocal cords like this would have been enough for anyone to be genuinely concerned about his well-being as he continued to scream at everyone to leave him alone.

Although the song would be a fixture of the band’s final tour, Cobain never managed to capture the intensity onstage as he did in the studio. Because when you’ve hit notes that sound this piercing on record, you only really need to do it once for people to start either asking questions or feeling genuinely disturbed.

‘Riders on the Storm’ – The Doors

The Doors were never that equipped to go into the 1970s. Even if they had one of the most charismatic frontmen of all time at their side, the band were always going to be considered too dark for the mainstream and too wild for any parent to give a thumbs-up to. That never seemed to bother them for that long, but as they settled into the final sessions for LA Woman, Jim Morrison would never get the chance to sing ‘Riders on the Storm’ as it was intended.

Out of all the band’s longer tunes, this has to be the darkest they have ever made, being centred around Ray Manzarak’s beautiful Fender Rhodes keyboard. As the track sprawls out, though, Morrison gets to the final verses about a killer on the road and then repeats the chorus before he is joined by an overdub of himself whispering the song title as he starts fading out of the mix.

Even though the band tried to play the tune a handful of times, that whisper track is worth so much more than an added overdub for dramatic effect. Knowing that Morrison would never get the chance to extensively tour this material, this may as well have been him singing from the great beyond as he bade his bandmates farewell and moved on to join the other rock and roll poets across the cosmos.

‘Iowa’ – Slipknot

Every part of Slipknot’s live show feels like something that wasn’t intended for human eyes. Even if they are going for it every time they step onstage, there’s a good chance that they know any show could be their last based on how intense they get when working off each other or dealing with the massive fixtures they play on. Delivering dark material is usually a part of their vocabulary, but it was bound to be a cold day in hell the minute they tried to perform ‘Iowa’ in all its glory.

The whole track list for the album of the same name was never fun for any of the group to revisit, but for the sake of Corey Taylor’s health, this tune will never be performed again. Taylor had already been told to give the most guttural performance he could, but stripping naked and cutting himself up while the tape rolled was probably not what the producer had in mind when he gave him that advice.

And listening to the playback, Taylor’s screams are all too real, especially towards the end, where you can hear him harming himself. There are already acts like Rammstein today that have tried to provoke the audience by having something grotesque or wild during their live shows, but if Slipknot ever wanted to try to equal their success on this recording, the show would have had to end with one of them cutting one of their arms off.

‘Don’t Stop’ – The Stone Roses

Most of the Britpop legends didn’t skimp out on their favourite production tricks. Even if they loved paying tribute to acts like The Beatles when they could, what better way to emulate them than by using all of their effects rather than playing their tunes? Although The Stone Roses are still known as the unofficial grandfathers of the Britpop movement, ‘Don’t Stop’ was never the kind of song designed to be played outside the studio.

Oh, they played ‘Waterfall’ plenty of times, but this tune is clearly more of an experiment than a proper tune. The band had been toying around with different effects in the studio, and rather than write one more song, this entire track is ‘Waterfall’ played backwards, with Ian Brown adding different lyrics to the whole thing in reverse to make sense of the gibberish it would have been if played completely in reverse.

But even if they now have pedals that play guitar licks in reverse, it would be an absolute nightmare for any artist to try to arrange a version of this song to be performed on the spot. The whole thing is still a technical marvel and a great look at the band’s psychedelic side, but most fans wouldn’t be all that disappointed if they played something like ‘She Bangs the Drums’ or ‘This Is The One’ in its place.

‘Good Vibrations’ – The Beach Boys

By the time The Summer of Love was starting, Brian Wilson was already a genius. The Beach Boys had become a glorified hit factory by the time the British Invasion began, and even if Wilson’s visions were getting bigger than rock and roll, he still had the potential to make phenomenal music like on Pet Sounds. That may have been laboured over for months on end, but once ‘Good Vibrations’ was finished, everyone had come to terms with the fact that they couldn’t play it live.

Because, really, how the hell would that even work? This is a song that has everything and the kitchen sink in its production, and while the vocal harmonies sound as beautiful as ever, bringing everything on the road seemed completely impractical, especially if that meant packing up a theremin to take on the road and booking multiple band members to serve as classical musicians for when the cellos start coming in.

And despite them trying to do the song justice later in their career, it definitely pales in comparison to the more episodic version that most people have on their stereos. Since Wilson also became confined to the studio and refused to tour for any of their subsequent projects, how the hell was the band supposed to put up a front as the same group they were in the vocal booth?

‘Mr Blue Sky’ – Electric Light Orchestra

Jeff Lynne didn’t name the band Electric Light Orchestra by accident. Even if the name was meant to evoke a cosmic sonic ride in a spaceship, the word orchestra may as well have been in big block letters, considering how many of their songs relied on a string section doing their own version of Jimi Hendrix licks. It had briefly worked, but ‘Mr Blue Sky’ was the kind of song that made Lynne want to give up on the idea of touring altogether.

First of all, Lynne was never comfortable with the idea of touring to begin with, and hearing him behind the desk in the studio was usually where he felt right at home. And since Out of the Blue was when he turned the studio into a playground, ‘Mr Blue Sky’ was the most extravagant piece he had ever taken on, complete with an entire orchestra and the kind of vocal harmonies that could have come from a late-period Beatles record.

Even if Lynne created a technical marvel, he knew that he wasn’t doing right by his fans by trying to pass off any of his live performances as an accurate version of the tune. He had simply outgrown the practicality of touring, and while the fans might have liked the play it loud every time it came on the radio, it’s a bit too much for someone to ask their favourite band to make one of the greatest technical productions of all time happen twice.

‘Master of Puppets’ – Metallica

Throughout the dawn of thrash, Metallica were never ones to mess around either onstage or in the studio. They had their signature ballads to help cool things down on their records, but the lion’s share of their material was trying to kick the sonic snot out of every listener and leave them begging for more. That doesn’t mean everything has to be perfect, and while ‘Master of Puppets’ is as close to gold as they ever got, Kirk Hammett has made the first official unplayable solo.

Even though some people can get creative when working on solos by playing them backwards or speeding the tape up, no such trickery here on the band’s magnum opus. Hammett is playing every piece of the song exactly how he arranged it, but during one of the key phrases during one of the solo sections, you can hear a moment where his hand goes off the fretboard for a second and makes a strange squealing noise.

While it’s easier to recreate that whammy-based divebomb, Hammett never bothers trying to match his screwup in the studio, thinking it works better as a piece of history. If you look at it in conjunction with the rest of the song, this isn’t simply another screwup. James Hetfield had written a dark look at what drugs can do to a person, and that little squeal may as well have been the sound of a demon coming to claim its next victim.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – Queen

There isn’t much that hasn’t been said about how ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ shaped the musical landscape. Outside of it becoming Queen’s anthem, having a song that has multiple operatic parts and a rock and roll breakdown calling out to Bismillah was unheard of when it managed to sneak its way onto the charts. But without looking at it from a songwriting perspective, Queen made a technical one-off that no self-respecting rock and roller could have ever made again.

From day one, the band’s music was always about layering pieces on top of each other, and the number of vocal harmonies on the final version is still astounding. Outside of the a cappella opening, the operatic section was never going to happen in a live setting, culminating in multiple shows where the band would play pieces of the song and then step offstage while the section played out before picking it back up for the roaring finale.

Still, it’s a testament to their musicianship that they could make the live sections feel seamless, especially with Freddie Mercury singing with as much gusto as he did on the original recording during the verses. While they could have easily played the full version of the tune when they were performing at Live Aid, it’s better to keep one of the greatest concert performances of all time limited to live performance rather than use any sort of backing track.

‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ – The Beatles

Nothing The Beatles did was ordinary when it came to the studio. While they started their career as a fairly standard garage band, every one of their albums after Help! became another twisted adventure to see what the Fab Four and George Martin could do with the confines of the popular three-minute single. And while ‘Paperback Writer’ signalled that things were about to get trippy, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is the kind of tune that most bands only get to record once, let alone play again live.

During its recording in 1966, the idea of tape loops was still a new concept, and hearing Paul McCartney use backwards laughter on the track alongside George Harrison’s sitar and John Lennon’s warped vocal is the equivalent of going on an acid trip without ever having to use any substances. The band knew enough to put it at the tail end of Revolver, but Martin told them that recreating something like that was a pipe dream.

Of course, today, many samples could be made out of the basic tracks to turn ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ into something interesting live, but The Beatles weren’t that concerned about not playing any of their new material. They had already started to grow tired of life on the road, and considering how much they were going to do on albums like Sgt Peppers, it was as if modern technology hadn’t caught up to them.