The song The Traveling Wilburys forced themselves to make: “We did it very quick”
The entire point of the Traveling Wilburys was for everyone to have fun whenever they performed.
George Harrison didn’t want to get into yet another band and have the whole thing feel like a bunch of work, so the least he could do was make an album with a bunch of his friends that felt like a collective jam session. But the further you get away from their debut album, the less interested the rest of the band members were in trying to continue on with the project.
Because as much as the band was a collection of legends, there was no point in trying to keep everything going without Roy Orbison. He was an almighty God of singing, and even if he was in the background a lot of the time on their debut, he was the heart of the band that everyone couldn’t get enough of. Everyone would have expected them to break up on the spot, but Harrison wanted to still keep the band going if he could.
And it’s not like he was alone in that sentiment, either. Bob Dylan said that he preferred the band’s second record over their first, but a lot of that comes down to it being a little rough around the edges. They didn’t need to carry on if they didn’t want to, but the ramshackle feeling of the entire record made a lot more sense for a band that traditionally was used to playing a bunch of skiffle music.
But there was already some question as to who was going to replace Orbison among the band’s fanbase. The idea of even replacing him in the first place would have been a stupid question on principle, but there were already hypotheses that the band were going to end up asking people like Del Shannon to join the group before he eventually passed away, before the production could ever get started.
The band did think of Shannon enough to do a version of his song ‘Runaway’ together, but the real start to getting the ball rolling was their cover of ‘Nobody’s Child’. Everyone in the band had known the song from when they were kids, but their idea of throwing in a bunch of covers was actually the first time that the band were asked to provide a song by a charity organisation.
The Wilburys were the last people to make a song to order by any stretch, but since Olivia Harrison had been working with the organisation to benefit Romanian children, the rest of the band were only too happy to get back together to jam for a little bit, with Harrison saying, “There was a request to just do a tune that would help, you know, attract some attention, and create maybe some funds to help the orphans in Romania. So we did it, did it very quick. Talked Warner Records into putting it out. And they very kindly distributed it for us. And that’s it, really.”
Harrison certainly wasn’t a stranger to donating to good causes after the Concert for Bangladesh, but this might have been the one thing that the Wilburys needed to carry on. They had already gone through the heartache of having to carry on without Orbison, so making a few cover tunes may have been the best way for them to dust the cobwebs again and get used to playing with each other.
It’s not like they had forgotten what it was like to hang out with their friends by any stretch, but if it took one charity single to get them back in action, that was all fans could have asked for. The goal of the band always had to come from a place of fun, but sometimes, when the right opportunity presented itself, fans were treated to classic rock Avengers turning up to have a jam.
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