The musician that had the Traveling Wilburys record in his kitchen: “It wasn’t soundproofed or anything”
There are two types of people in the world. Those who roll their eyes at stupid hypothetical questions, and those who slam their fist on the table and give a well-thought-out answer. As a journalist, it’s my inherent duty to fall into the latter category. When someone asks where and when I would travel to, if given a time machine, I have a ready-made answer: Laure Canyon, 1968.
I’m always cautious to idealise a chapter in history wholeheartedly. Combined with defending contemporary artists and generally realising that every part of history had its complexities, it’s dangerous to say one area and period of time reigns supreme fully. But when you think of the music that echoed amongst those hills, it’s hard not to picture a romanticised life of barefoot living and three-part harmony singing.
Permitting the hypothetical question allows, once I moved to ‘60s Laurel Canyon, I would never return. Something was certainly in the water there, for the music that spawned from its green hills wasn’t concentrated to one decade. In the following decades, Hollywood’s hills gave way to the innovation of many bands, but even its finest scriptwriters couldn’t have predicted the formation of one band.
Made up of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, the Traveling Wilburys emerged as one of the most powerful supergroups. After the sad death of Roy Orbison, the band called it quits, leaving the world with just two albums of the unlikely formation.
There was an organic feel to their discography, almost as if you had stumbled upon the five megastars jamming together in the late hours of a Hollywood house party. Which, in effect, it was. The band cosied up in the corner of a Laurel Canyon villa, staged a private party of their own, with fellow songwriting royalty and whipped out the guitars.
Petty explained: “We were in Dave Stewart’s house and it was a nice environment because you could sort of sit outside. It was warm and the doors were always open.” A description to which Harrison added, “It had a little tiny studio, but it wasn’t a studio, it was more like just a control room, with a vocal booth so we didn’t have any space to play the guitars.”
He continued, “So we set up in his kitchen, it wasn’t soundproofed or anything. And we just put like five chairs around the kitchen and put the microphones up, and that’s it. So all those guitar parts, all those acoustic guitars were just in this kitchen”.
It was undoubtedly a refreshing approach for five musicians who had spent the previous two decades bogged down by the bureaucracy and perfectionism of commercial rock and roll. Especially given the fact that five of them were so high profile, if it wasn’t on their own accord, the chances of getting them in the same room to share studio time would have been overzealous and elaborate. By shacking up in the kitchen of a Laurel Canyon villa, the five icons were allowed to return to the organic and humble beginnings of their career, in pursuit of artistic authenticity.
