The forgotten 1991 album that secretly featured the Traveling Wilburys: “Just dropped in”
The number one rule of the Traveling Wilburys was always about having fun every time they strapped on their guitars.
The entire idea of having this great supergroup would have fallen apart if one of them got the slightest bit of ego about themselves, and each of them seemed more than happy to do whatever they could to make their songs sound as great as they possibly could. At the same time, you wouldn’t think that the greatest bunch of musicians in the world would have so small an ego that they managed to become sidemen for a few recording sessions.
At the same time, that kind of anonymity was the kind of thing that George Harrison had been chasing ever since The Beatles broke up. He wanted nothing more than to be a member of a band, and even though All Things Must Pass would become one of the biggest albums that any former Fab had ever made, Harrison would have forgotten that entire phase of his career if it meant that he could hang out with a bunch of friends whenever he made one of his records.
And with the Wilburys, he had the closest thing that he could to an equal band when looking at the roster. Anyone could have easily focused on Bob Dylan or Roy Orbison whenever they were listening to their tunes, and even if Harrison did feel overshadowed from time to time, all it took was the right slide guitar solo for him to remind everyone of why he was a legend. But there were always people on the fringes of being Wilburys as well.
Everyone who joined the band depended on how Harrison was feeling on that day he first hatched the idea with Jeff Lynne, but there were definitely some others who would have joined without question. Elton John had slightly planted the idea of Harrison forming a group, but aside from the piano legend getting sidelined, there were also rumblings of the band being joined by Roger McGuinn before they ended up going in a different direction.
And while no one was going to fill the shoes of Orbison when he passed away, there were a few rumours that Del Shannon was in talks to join before he died. Tom Petty usually did a good job at putting those rumours to bed whenever he was asked about it, but since all of the Wilburys got along so well with the ‘Runaway’ singer, they weren’t about making an unofficial Wilburys track for one of Shannon’s last albums.
Lynne was already producing his album Rock On!, but it only took a few phone calls before Petty and Harrison showed up at the studio as well, saying, “Del Shannon was around, but as a friend. Jeff and I had both done records with him in the Seventies, and he was starting to get active again. One night, I remember Jeff said, ‘Del’s in town, he’s at the studio.’ Jeff, George and I surprised him, just dropped in. We sang some backgrounds for him that night. That’s probably where the rumours come from.”
And the fever didn’t exactly stop there, either. During the sessions for what became the band’s final album together, one of the rare tracks from the album included Lynne singing a version of ‘Runaway’ as well, which bled over into Petty namechecking the song when he and Lynne got together to come up with the lyrics for ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’.
It’s stretching to call Shannon an honorary Wilbury since he never played on any of their records, but he was at least doing enough to be a friend of the band. He would have happily joined if he were given a chance, but there was no way that anyone was going to entertain the idea of stepping into Orbison’s shoes after he already made one of the greatest comebacks with the band.
