How did the Traveling Wilburys get their name?
The Traveling Wilburys didn’t emerge the way usual bands do. For starters, every member was already established, as is often the case with supergroups. However, what made this particular assembly unique was the nonchalance with which it came together. Working on Cloud Nine, George Harrison floated the idea as casually as suggesting a lunch date. “We should have a group, me and you,” he said.
He was talking to Jeff Lynne when he uttered the immortal words, expressing the sudden desire to “do an album with some of my mates” before he had even finished his eleventh studio album. Harrison had worked with Lynne before, but what gave the musician such an immense wave of inspiration during Cloud Nine was how obvious such a venture felt. A supergroup? Nothing felt more natural. A no-brainer.
Like many aspects of the band, the name came to be during these unique Cloud Nine sessions, unexpectedly in the haze of immense creativity and organic presence. Presence is an underrated concept when it comes to musical creativity, but without it, ideas like coming up with the greatest supergroup in history just don’t appear, at least not as easily as they did when Harrison dedicated himself to establishing his next step long before finishing his current one.
This was the kind of presence Harrison was completely unaware of, which is probably for the best, given that the origin story of the band’s name changes depending on who you ask. Harrison himself has jokingly shared several versions of the story, each one more far-fetched than the last. After all, it’s likely safe to dismiss his claims that the Duke of Edinburgh and the Pope personally suggested they name the band the Traveling Wilburys.
And as for the widely held belief that the name came from Harrison’s casual remark, “We’ll bury ’em,” during a session, Lynne claiming that to be a “fabrication” suggests there’s more to the story than that. The most likely explanation stems from Harrison deciding to one day call the studio equipment their ‘Wilburys’. At first, they called themselves The Trembling Wilburys, but following a suggestion made by Lynne, they then adopted the name ‘The Travelling Wilburys’.
How did the band get together?
Lynne had been endeared to The Beatles since observing them creating The White Album. They inspired him so much at that moment that he channelled many aspects of their sound into Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). However, Lynne didn’t emerge as merely another half-baked cover band; ELO was the closest thing to picking up where The Beatles left off, earning him praise and respect from former members like John Lennon.
Then, while working on Cloud Nine, he helped spark a unique energy in Harrison, one that saw the words falling out of his mouth as naturally as breathing. “We should have a supergroup,” he had said, his craving of what would later become The Traveling Wilburys unintentionally manifesting a unique entity that could only exist at a specific time and place, culminating in the bringing together of five names unlike no other—Harrison, Lynne, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison.
Harrison was working on a B-side for ‘This Is Love’ at Dylan’s studio with Lynne, Petty, and Orbison when he decided they should utilise the tools in front of them to work on joint material. When he played the label the song, ‘Handle With Care’, they decided it was too good to be a B-side and floated the idea of using the song as guidance for a full Wilburys album.
As Mo Ostin, who was chairman at the label, later reflected: “We urged him on. George felt the spontaneity of it, felt its driving force. He always had great instincts.”
