The 1989 recording Jeff Lynne called his favourite musical experience
The strange thing about the Traveling Wilburys is how many songs could easily have been released under the band’s name, but never were. With so many major songwriters involved in the group, tracks constantly drifted in and out of the Wilburys orbit, and it’s hard to know whether that ever really troubled Jeff Lynne.
This was because, in no uncertain terms, the forming of the supergroup was one of the happiest times in each of the members’ lives and careers. They just instantaneously seemed to work in complete harmony together, and in doing so created songs that would last a test of time longer than the band and the people in it ever did.
Yet despite only lasting three years and two albums on paper, the reality was that the imprint of the Traveling Wilburys went far deeper into the back catalogues of each of the band members than you might first imagine. Take Roy Orbison as the prime example: he obviously sadly never lived to fully see the project through, but his presence became treasured to everyone around him.
It was for this reason alone that Lynne credited the man with one of his favourite ever experiences in making music, simply because he felt so honoured to be working in his orbit. It spoke volumes about the type of person Orbison was that even global megastars were so excited to be close to him, but that was just the magic of the song.
And when it came to a track like ‘You Got It’, which ended up being released posthumously in January 1989, one month after the singer’s death, the experience became one of the fondest moments Lynne ever had to look back on. “I was so thrilled that I got to write it with him, record it, sing background vocals, mix it, and have it be a great big hit. It couldn’t have been any better,” he later recalled.
This might seem an odd thing to say in some people’s eyes, given that the pair had just spent a pretty sizeable amount of time together in the Traveling Wilburys – why would a solo song stick out so much? To Lynne, it was the fact of clearly being loved and appreciated by Orbison that meant the most, and he didn’t need the guise of the band to prove it.
Although this was the case, it didn’t mean that the rest of the motley crew were far away. Indeed, Lynne and Tom Petty wrote ‘You Got It’ as a joint effort, and some of the background instrumentations were provided by George Harrison, even though he ultimately went uncredited for it.
Basically, what you could take from the story was that whenever Orbison called for help, the rest of them came running. It was, of course, the mark of them all being true friends – but it was also the fact that they worshipped the ground he walked on, and would do anything to please the person they considered to be the grand master of the Traveling Wilburys.
Orbison went to his death, perhaps never fully appreciating the impact he left in this life, but if there was anything the band could be sure of in the aftermath, it was that they made his final years as fruitful as they possibly could. He was a man who gave so much of himself, but it was clear, at least in Lynne’s view, that every piece of that love was felt right back.
