The album that made George Harrison form The Traveling Wilburys: “You and me should have a group”
Every band that’s ever been formed usually has some magic on their side. Regardless of how well every musician might be on their own, there’s only so far that can go when there’s no chemistry to speak of between any of the members. Although George Harrison had the potential to work with whichever band he liked by the late 1980s, his work on Cloud Nine became the litmus test for him starting the Traveling Wilburys.
Because if Harrison had his way, he probably wouldn’t have put out any more albums by the time the decade wound down. The death of John Lennon had already cast a dark shadow over the rest of the 1980s, and as much as Harrison wanted to preach the good news that he heard from his higher power, the fact that everyone rejected it the minute he got up on his high horse did nothing to persuade him to put out more music.
But after working on Gone Troppo, Harrison did get the creative juices flowing again when working with Jeff Lynne. Having stepped back from being the main man behind ELO, Lynne’s friendship with Harrison led him to suggest a new album of songs, co-writing tracks like ‘This is Love’ and the Beatles tribute song, ‘When We Was Fab’. Although the charm was dripping out of the record, the B-side to one of the singles was a different story.
Since Harrison needed one more track, he persuaded Roy Orbison to join the session, which they recorded at Bob Dylan’s house. With the help of Tom Petty rounding out the lineup, the record label actually had a good idea for once and elected the new supergroup to make an entire album out of what they had built.
Then again, Lynne knew that Harrison’s arm didn’t need to be twisted to get the idea off the ground, telling Uncut, “We’d been working on Cloud Nine for about three months, and one night, we were listening back to what we’d done, having a beer, and George said, ‘You know what? You and me should have a group.’ ‘A group, really? Who should we have in it?’ ‘Bob Dylan.’ ‘Bob Dylan? Oh, yeah, of course. What about Roy Orbison?’ ‘Yeah, great, he’ll be good!’ We both liked Tom. And everyone wanted to be in it.”
But half the reason why The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 works so well is because it’s not trying to be some fireworks show. Every one of these musicians had seen the greatest heights that anyone had ever seen, but that didn’t matter if they just had a couple of acoustic guitars and the right song at their disposal.
Outside of the classics like ‘End of the Line’, the album felt like a breeding ground for where they would go next. Petty would take Lynne with him for the album Full Moon Fever and write hits like ‘I Won’t Back Down’, while Lynne would eventually cut his own solo record of material with Armchair Theatre.
Although half of the story behind The Traveling Wilburys feels like a happy accident that managed to turn into a full-time band, no one had the same career ambitions as they did before. This was just an excuse to jam with friends and have some fun, and if Cloud Nine hadn’t caught on like it did, maybe we wouldn’t have seen it come to pass at all.
