The Traveling Wilburys member Jeff Lynne enjoyed the most: “The best singer I’ve ever heard”
It was probably difficult for anyone in the Traveling Wilburys not to have a good time when playing off each other.
The idea of them getting together in the first place would have been a pipe dream, but thanks to George Harrison and Jeff Lynne getting the idea when working on Cloud Nine, they figured that they would give it a shot when they needed to put together a B-side for one of the singles. But despite everyone having a good attitude about the sessions, Lynne felt that there were some members who were much better to work with than others behind the scenes.
Then again, it’s hard to really strike out when working with the greatest songwriters of the time. Bob Dylan would have had a perfect line for any of their songs when they were stuck for what to finish, and even though Tom Petty was the new kid in town, he was the one who brought a certain sense of peace to a lot of the sessions. He and Lynne were like kids in a candy store when working off of their friends, but what happened afterwards was when things started kicking into high gear.
Petty wanted the chance to work with Lynne more consistently, and since he had already been a fan of his ever since the ELO days, it made sense for him to start seeing if they could write songs together. But even if Lynne felt that Full Moon Fever was one of his favourite albums to produce, a lot of that came from the fact that the Wilburys hadn’t really gone away after the music stopped on ‘End of the Line’.
Most of Full Moon Fever has appearances by Harrison and Lynne across the record, and even though Dylan was nowhere to be found, chances are he would have tried to find the time to work with Petty since he had already jammed with the Heartbreakers on tour. But there was something about Roy Orbison that put everyone at ease the minute that he started singing from behind those black sunglasses.
Orbison may have been the antithesis of what people thought a rock star was supposed to look like, but no one was arguing with him once they heard that voice. He had the register of an angel from the other side of the world, and when looking through his career, Lynne felt that the most fun that he ever had with The Wilburys often came from when he got Orbison to sing his tunes like ‘Not Alone Any More’.
He had already started working with Orbison on Mystery Girl, but the idea of having him as one of his best friends was enough to make his head spin, saying, “He was a marvelous singer as well as a singer. The best singer I’ve ever heard. So to work with him was just marvelous. He was the sweetest guy you could ever wish to meet. Gentle, funny, not like his image at all. And you could remind him how great he is. So when we did ‘You Got It’, he was thrilled, and then he went and passed away.”
Which is probably the biggest tragedy of the Wilburys if you think about it. Orbison knew that he went out on top when he passed away, but the fact that he never got to witness the band becoming one of the biggest supergroups of the time is a shame, especially during the moment in the music video for ‘End of the Line’ where your heart just shatters when an empty rocking chair is lit depicting Orbison as his voice soundtracks that section.
Most of the Wilburys knew that Orbison was still going to be played for a long time, but there was never any question for Lynne that Orbison towered over everyone for simply being the gentlest soul in the world. He may have been the other ‘Man in Black’ this side of Johnny Cash, but underneath those sunglasses was one of the sweetest men that Lynne could have ever asked to share a studio with.
