Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys / Apple Corps LTD

The only song The Beatles and The Traveling Wilburys played

Wed 15 April 2026 17:00, UK

The entire purpose of The Traveling Wilburys was about getting five of the biggest rock stars of all time to come together to have some fun.

They didn’t need to worry about their egos when they were working with their friends, and half the time it was more fun to hide behind their personas and not put their name on the record so as not to have the same expectations as their early bands. But when you’re famous on the level of George Harrison, those pieces of The Beatles’ prime never fully go away.

Then again, Harrison was relieved to finally have a band to play with all over again. The Fab Four’s split had clearly taken a toll on Harrison after falling out with Paul McCartney, but he never wanted to lose that sense of camaraderie. He liked being in a band as much as anyone, and having someone like Bob Dylan or Tom Petty to bounce ideas off of must have been like him forming the perfect little band for himself.

If we’re being technical here, though, a lot of the personas that they put on weren’t all that dissimilar to what Macca had in mind for Sgt Peppers. Harrison might not have come around to that idea when he delved deeper and deeper into Indian music, but he did have a lot more lenience towards not putting his name on his supergroup. He was happy to be a member of the band and play rock and roll, but there was a tiny bit of connective tissue that brought back some memories from Harrison’s days of playing in Hamburg.

Because while the Wilburys were always throwing out lines to each other on their songs, they weren’t afraid to throw in a few covers as well. Some of the B-roll footage from around that time was them jamming over a meal, playing songs like ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, but when Olivia Harrison wanted one song for her charity, ‘Nobody’s Child’ was almost a no-brainer for the rest of the band to play.

It had practically become a standard for musicians of Harrison’s generation, but you have to remember how far this song goes back in his catalogue. Ringo Starr used to sing this song when he was a kid, before he had even heard of the rest of the band, and before the band had even got their first record deal. Harrison was already playing the tune with John Lennon and McCartney when they backed up Tony Sheridan on their first official recording together.

Granted, it’s not hard to see why the Wilburys version blows Sheridan’s out of the water. The Fabs were clearly starting to work out the bugs of being in the studio for the first time, and since they’re only backing up yet another big name from the skiffle craze, their parts are a lot more muted than you would expect, with only McCartney popping up occasionally if you really listen to the background vocals.

But the fact that they picked this song was only another reminder of why Harrison felt that the Wilburys could have been a more communal thing. The seeds of working with Dylan were already being planted when Harrison suggested bringing Dylan in during the Get Back project, and even when the Wilburys were solidified, Petty even remembered Harrison saying that Lennon would have happily joined the band had he not passed away a few years before.

So while Harrison didn’t need to be shackled to The Beatles when he had his “other band,” it’s not like he was willing to forget them altogether. The era of screaming girls felt like another lifetime ago at that point, but when looking at where the Wilburys ended up on this song, it’s not like Harrison was ever going to forget where he came from.