The 1991 album George Harrison wanted to reunite the Traveling Wilburys: “Preserve our friendship”
George Harrison didn’t want to take a second of being in the Traveling Wilburys for granted.
As much as people liked the idea of a bunch of their favourite artists coming together to have a jam session, Harrison was always aware that getting this gang of musical legends together in one place was nearly impossible when he started making that first record. But even though they made a musical miracle work out on that first record, Harrison knew that the whole thing could end up in a second as well.
Life is always unpredictable to a certain degree, and no one understood that more than Harrison. He had already lost one of his best friends at the start of the decade when John Lennon passed away, and getting the chance to be in a band all over again did help calm his nerves. He knew no other band than being in The Beatles, so having just a shred of anonymity did wonders for his state of mind. He could just be a player in the band again, but getting the news of Roy Orbison’s passing wasn’t going to be all that easy.
Orbison was always the rock behind a lot of the Wilburys’ tunes, and even if they weren’t always using him on every single track, no one was having a better time listening to him sing than Harrison was. He was starstruck for the first time in a while, but according to Tom Petty, he remembered that Harrison was a bit more reserved when trying to make sense of Orbison’s death.
This is the kind of tragedy that would have rocked the industry, but Harrison’s dry wit could always turn up in even the most grim circumstances. When Petty first heard the news, the first phone call he got was from Harrison, with him recalling, “[He said], ‘Aren’t you glad it’s not you? It’s OK. He’ll be around. You just gotta listen.’” And if Harrison was going to keep going, he was going to take the rest of his friends with him.
He didn’t see himself as a solo artist in the first place, and since everyone else was interested in making another record, he wasn’t going to pass that up. And while Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 is definitely a step down from what everyone was used to hearing from him, you can still hear all of them trying their best to have some fun. Because, as far as Harrison was concerned, that album could have been the make-or-break moment for the band.
They didn’t think that they could have moved on without Orbison, and the fact that they could was just Harrison’s way of trying to get everyone back on the same page, saying, “From my point of view, I just tried to preserve our relationship. I worked so hard to make sure that all the guys who were in that band, and consequently on record and film, that their friendship wasn’t abused. Just to preserve our friendship – that was the underlying contribution, I think, that I was trying to do.”
And while the album wasn’t the fireworks show that the first one was, most of the band did end up walking away with a fondness for it. Jeff Lynne wasn’t always the biggest fan of the ramshackle production by any means, but when they are all strumming away on tunes like ‘New Blue Moon’, you can tell that they are genuinely happy to be playing together while they are all still standing.
And given that the record also managed to make eternally grumpy Bob Dylan fond of it, it has to at least be something right. The Wilburys weren’t meant to be a serious band in the same way that most people looked at their favourite acts, but when you see where Harrison had been through all of his solo years, he wasn’t going to form a band like this if he didn’t want it to go on for a long time.
