Studio skits and magazine cutouts: How Monty Python inspired The Traveling Wilburys
You may think the humble jokes you share with your friends are worlds apart from the high-brow conversations shared between some of music’s elite, but you would be so painfully wrong if that were the case, because The Traveling Wilburys, a who’s who band of musical elite, built some of their finest music on the sort of in-jokes we mortals share amongst our own friends.
Because, despite the fact that The Traveling Wilburys was an all-star line-up of rock legends, with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty all sharing the microphone, this project was ultimately an exercise in humility. For all five members of the band, it was a chance to click their careers into reverse gear and enjoy the basic function of making music with their friends.
This meant stripping themselves of the luxuries that they were undoubtedly afforded through their careers. Rather than camp in one of music’s most iconic studios, they instead decided to bundle into Dave Stewart’s Californian villa and turn his kitchen into a makeshift studio. In fact, the song ‘Rattled’ from their debut album even features Stewart’s fridge as a percussive instrument, with drummer Jim Keltner deciding to bash his drumsticks against it in order to perfect that DIY sound.
But the fun didn’t start and end on ‘Rattled’. On ‘Dirty World’, the five music legends could be found truly dipping their toes into songwriting madness, in a track inspired by magazine cut-outs and Monty Python, no less.
To begin with, Harrison handed out various copies of magazines and had the icons pick out lines from articles for the lyrics that would make up the song’s conclusion. So when the otherwise serious and respected Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison end up singing about a “fuel injection” and “five-speed gearbox,” it’s all because of a quirky songwriting trope introduced by Harrison.
But the magazines weren’t the only thing Harrison introduced to the group. He had brought with him copies of a British cinematic staple, in Monty Python, which legendary crooner Roy Orbison struck up an immediate fondness for. As he dug a little deeper into their world and went on a self-professed “big Monty Python phase,” Orbison found their musical project, the Contractual Obligation Album.
Orbison quickly developed a love for the song ‘I Bet They Won’t Play This On The Radio’, which like ‘Dirty World’ sees the troupe exclaiming random and explicit words, which they then censored with car horns and chicken noises. Inspired by the silliness of the idea, Orbison encouraged the band to record something similar, which, with the help of Harrison’s magazine cutouts, eventually became ‘Dirty World’.
The British comedy group became something of a north star for Orbison and Harrison, who continued to forge a bond through their love of the group, as well as revitalise their creativity through the silliness that they inspired. In fact, according to the book The Traveling Wilburys: The Biography, Orbison and Harrison would regularly “recite and perform complete skits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus” for the others.
