The Roy Orbison song the Traveling Wilburys threw out
There was no doubt that any of the Traveling Wilburys could write their fair share of classic tunes.
Even if not all of them were necessarily making the next answer to their own masterpieces, it was always more fun for them to have a laugh playing the music that they loved rather than throwing whatever slop that they could think of on their solo efforts. Whenever they got together, it was about having fun, but that didn’t mean that every single artist got their way behind the scenes, either.
After all, it’s hard to satisfy a band that had five different icons in one group. All of them were perfectly cordial with each other and could make the best music that they could under the right circumstances, but if there are only ten tracks on their debut album, there would bound to be a few stragglers that would get forgotten along the way.
But considering what they had to work with, it’s still tremendous to hear all of them working off with each other so well. George Harrison had spent years sounding like he would rather be anywhere but in the recording studio, but after getting together with his pals and coming off a hit record of his own, he sounds as animated as ever when working on tunes like ‘Heading for the Light’ or playing off his bandmates on ‘Handle With Care’.
Then again, there’s a good chance that any song that the band pulled out could have been sung by Roy Orbison and there would be no complaints. He was the biggest voice of the whole group, and even if he didn’t have the same star power as a former Beatle or even Tom Petty at the time, one only needs to listen to ‘Not Alone Any More’ once to see the kind of operatic voice that was taken from us so soon.
Despite his tragic passing of a heart attack months after the album was finished, Orbison doesn’t sound like he’s in ill health for a second on the record. He loved the idea of being back on top again with a bunch of his pals, but even if he had a perfect showcase throughout the record, there was one tune that he had been working on that the band didn’t think was right for them.
There were bound to be a few extra tracks after Orbison completed Mystery Girl with Jeff Lynne, but the song ‘Winged Victory’ was never meant to make the final cut, with biographer Ellis Amburn saying, “Roy offered to those wanting to know who wrote the songs on Vol. 1 was his statement that the lead singer on each cut wrote that particular song. While Bob Dylan had four songs, Roy had only one, because his solo, Winged Victory, based upon William Blake’s The Sick Rose, was thrown out.”
Then again, this most likely wasn’t a case of anyone being malicious to Orbison by any stretch. They would have gladly given him all the time that he wanted without worrying about their own egos, but it also came down to who’s voice sounded the best, and even if Orbison sounded great on ‘Not Alone Any More’, there was no way to make a record that airtight without having to sacrifice pieces along the way.
Even if there were some stragglers to be found on Lynne’s solo album and Petty’s solo album in the years since, it’s not like any of them are of lesser quality, either. They simply wanted the best album they could make, and some of those “lost” Wilburys songs might as well be little reminders of why those musical legends worked so well together.
