The one Traveling Wilburys line Tom Petty was knocked out by: “That just kills me”
It’s hard to think of any member of the Traveling Wilburys having an ego about them when they were working on their classics. The whole story of them coming together reads like a bunch of old friends coming together for a jam session, and since most of the album was written in a few days, it was a lot easier for them to rely on them having a good time in the studio rather than struggle over what a certain line should be on any one song. But if there’s one that Tom Petty loved more than anything when playing with the group, it was getting an education from an Olympic team of songwriters.
Then again, Petty had the perfect timing when working on the record. The Heartbreakers were already taking a break before Petty began work on his solo album, but when he became friends with Jeff Lynne and started following him to sessions working with Roy Orbison, it wasn’t long before George Harrison found his way into his life and asked if he would come along to cut the song ‘Handle With Care’.
Any other rock and roll star would have been absolutely shaking at the prospect of working with a Beatle, but Petty was always the most laid-back member of the group. He knew he was there to get a job done more than anything else, and even if he was relegated to bass half the time, it was always worth it to see Bob Dylan and Harrison go back and forth looking for what the lyrics should be for any given song.
Then again, Dylan is far less prominent on the band’s first album than the rest of the legends. It’s understandable to give Orbison a lot of chances to sing because of his golden voice, but for someone who’s known as one of the greatest lyricists of all time, seeing him be a glorified rhythm guitar player on many of the songs feels a lot more jarring than simply hearing him croak out a few tunes.
But while ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’ was his vehicle with Petty, and the heartland rocker remembered being blown away by what Dylan came up with on the song ‘Margarita’, saying, “You could give him a word and he would come up with a line. You’d never expect Bob to come in with ‘It was in Pittsburgh late one night/I lost my head, got into a fight/ I went to the Big Apple/I took a bite’. That just kills me when that came in.”
Because for all the mythology around Dylan, one of the criminally neglected parts of his music is how much humour that’s in it. He may have the voice of a generation in many respects, but he can prove to be really funny under the right set of circumstances, whether that’s being slightly sarcastic with every word he sings or throwing in an old line on a Wilburys album that makes everything a bit lighthearted.
And Dylan got a lot more room to explore that when he got to the next record. Since there was no point in replacing someone like Orbison, Dylan became far more prominent, leading to him throwing the dopey ‘yahoo’ vocals in the bridge of the song ‘New Blue Moon’, which almost sounds like a joke compared to how the other band members are singing beautifully behind him.
But never mistake Dylan’s lighthearted tune for a lack of trying, either. He was still a legend in his own right, and when working on a song like ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, fans got a better look at the songwriting craftsman they all knew from back in the day.
