The one Traveling Wilburys album the band couldn’t agree on: “They’ll love this”
None of the Traveling Wilburys were ever going to let their egos get in the way of making great music.
They were simply a bunch of friends getting together to have some fun, and even if they were in awe of each other half the time, it didn’t take them long to get on the same page when they got guitars in their hands. Every single one of their tunes seemed to be about having a laugh, but there were a few of their projects that not everyone could see eye-to-eye on when they walked out of the studio.
But even when they started, the whole thing was meant to come from a place of fun. George Harrison only wanted the kind of band that he could hang out with, and he wasn’t looking to make money off of it. The minute that it stopped being fun, he would have shut everything down, but their debut album feels like the one project where no one really wanted to quit when they left the studio.
They only had a limited time to make it since Bob Dylan had to go on tour, but every one of them rose to the occasion to create something beautiful. Every single one of them has their time in the spotlight, and considering their track record, some of their odds and ends had no right being as good as what Roy Orbison did on ‘Not Alone Anymore’ or when Harrison flexed his power-pop muscles on ‘Heading for the Light’.
There was so much more that they had to offer, but when Orbison passed away, it felt like they had lost a piece of themselves. No one would have thought twice about replacing him when they were working on their second album, but by the time that they got together to jam, you could definitely tell that some of the magic was missing now that their golden voice was no longer there.
It’s still a decent record, but when looking back on it, Jeff Lynne remembered that the whole thing felt a bit too forced for his taste, saying, “We did a second album after Roy died, but I could have done without it. Roy was just too big a part of the original group.” A lot of that signature sheen was gone, but when you look at how everyone else rose to the occasion, the rest of the band considered the album to be another old-school romp.
Tom Petty said that the album had some of the best lead guitar that he had heard out of Harrison, and since Dylan was usually tight-lipped about any of his work, the fact that he had time to compliment the album was really saying something, saying, “Last time it was a pretty rushed affair. A lot of stuff was just scraped up from jam tapes. This time, there was a whole lot left over. The songs are more developed. If people liked the first one, they’ll love this one.”
And while it doesn’t play to the same strengths as their first album, this was the opportunity to hear the Wilburys in a more garage rock affair. There are still some great songs like ‘Wilbury Twist’ and ‘Inside Out’, but the ramshackle nature of the record actually helps it in the long run, almost sounding like the kind of thing that they could have put together over a weekend holiday strumming away on their guitars.
So even if they all didn’t see their second record the same way, the fact that they ended the project only a year after it came out does make it look a little better in retrospect. None of the songs were going to come close to the debut, but when you really think about it, having more songs by one of the biggest supergroups was never going to be a bad thing.
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