‘Armchair Theatre’: The greatest album The Traveling Wilburys never made
The only crime The Traveling Wilburys ever committed was having their career last for so little time. They were every ageing rocker’s dream band, and with only two albums to their name, every member could have had a wealth of great material to pull from if they had the chance to get together again. While Roy Orbison’s death did lead to Traveling Wilburys Vol 3 sounding a bit anaemic, there’s a good chance that the long-lost Wilburys album actually already exists by one of its members.
Then again, it’s easy to see that Wilburys charm rubbing off on every one of the members afterwards. The signature production of Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever did have Orbison’s vocals and George Harrison’s guitar on a handful of songs, and even though the former Beatle waited years before putting out a proper final album, half of the uptempo moments on Brainwashed feel like they could have been Wilburys tracks.
If there was one person responsible for bringing all of them together in the first place, though, it would have to be Jeff Lynne. Harrison may have had the idea to form the group in the early days, but Lynne was the one putting that wall of sound together, usually layering acoustic guitars on top of each other or getting everyone’s voice to blend perfectly well against the lead singer half the time.
But Lynne didn’t like to call attention to himself that much anymore. He had been through the stadium rock circuit with ELO, and now he was content to work behind the board for the rest of his life if that’s what he wanted. Listening back to what he was doing, though, Armchair Theatre was the only Wilburys solo album that managed to capture the spirit of those sessions.
Outside of having a handful of WIlburys on the final track, Lynne’s first proper solo album has all the trappings someone should expect out of a classic Wilburys romp, from the callbacks to the golden age of rock and roll to the charming lyrics that sound like a man rocking in his rocking chair. Even when he manages to get Harrison on a track like ‘Every Little Thing’, it never stops sounding like Lynne is in control, having that same charm that he had when singing on ‘End of the Line’.
If there is one person that separates this from the Wilburys, it’s Michael Kamen. Given his fantastic history with orchestration and his eventual work with both Petty and Harrison, though, hearing him add the perfect instrumental backing on these tunes should at least warrant him a ‘sixth Wilbury’ acknowledgement.
While the reviews at the time ranged from solid to middle-of-the-road, Armchair Theatre represents one of the happiest side projects for the supergroup. Lynne didn’t have to cater to the pop charts anymore, but this was proof that even without his old band or his new Wilburys buddies, he could still make an album that put him on even ground with his fellow living legends.
It’s a shame the record never received the respect it deserved in its time, but maybe it’s for the best that it was buried beneath the later Petty, Dylan, and Harrison classics. Those artists might have a more vast body of work, but this is still a delightful piece of rootsy rock and roll that anyone can stumble upon.
