The only Traveling Wilburys song George Harrison ever performed
The idea of the Traveling Wilburys ever touring together was never going to work.
The mechanics of getting that many legends to have their schedules mapped out ahead of time would have been insane, but outside of that, all of the fun would have been taken out of the equation. George Harrison envisioned the band as being a bunch of friends getting together to have fun, but there was still room to throw in some of their tunes amongst his other classics when he performed.
That is, when Harrison actually decided to go out on the road. Despite being one of the biggest names in music, Harrison had quietly retired from the road years before the Wilburys even started. The Dark Horse tour did him no favours by being savagely bashed by the critics, but even when he had a change of heart when performing with Eric Clapton in Japan, it was easy to see where Harrison was struggling a little bit.
He would forever be a Beatle, but a lot of the shows from that tour showed a more eclectic side of Harrison. Despite the millions of best-of packages that have been released under his name, Live in Japan is probably the best catch-all for his music. There are bits from his Beatles days, some of his best solo tunes, and even songs where Clapton comes out to play with him. But even with the Wilburys being a major selling point at the time, no songs were featured on the tour.
And when looking at his live trajectory past that, Harrison’s track record gets incredibly scarce. He would make a casual one-off appearance every now and again, but even when working with Tom Petty to get Full Moon Fever off the ground, it’s not like he was going to be on the road to join him for a version of ‘Handle With Care’ or ‘End of the Line’.
Strangely enough, the only time he actually managed to show the Wilburys some love came from the final televised appearance he would ever make. When appearing on VH1 alongside Ravi Shankar, Harrison had some time to go through some of his own tunes, including debuting the new song ‘Any Road’, which would eventually turn up on Brainwashed after his death.
In between the beautiful versions of songs like ‘All Things Must Pass’, Harrison did find time to throw in the song ‘If You Belonged To Me’ from Traveling Wilburys Vol. III. But for all the great tunes that he wrote with the Wilburys, why the hell would he have settled for a song that he didn’t sing on? Most of the studio version is done by Bob Dylan, but given Harrison’s track record, him coming back to Dylan wasn’t all that surprising.
Despite John Lennon being the Beatle that fixated on Dylan for a while, Harrison was the true Dylan aficionado throughout his career. He was always thrilled at the idea of being in a band with him, and while Vol. III is commonly looked back on as a forgettable piece of the supergroup’s catalogue, ‘If You Belonged To Me’ is the most in line with what people think of when they picture Dylan.
It’s a little goofy to see Harrison playing up this kind of tune for his final performance, but knowing what we know now, this is the perfect addition to what would be the last time most of the public would see him. He might not have known that this would be the end, but adding a tinge of humour next to the spiritual songs with Shankar and a musical prayer like ‘All Things Must Pass’, those few songs show a man that was content to have done as much as he could do with life.
