The 1991 Traveling Wilburys song only meant to be a joke: “It was silly”
The idea of the Traveling Wilburys feels almost too perfect to actually exist.
Getting that many legends in one band is the kind of thing that most rock fans talk about in hushed tones but never actually see happen, but when George Harrison had the right idea, he was willing to move mountains to have all of his friends together in one group. But even when they were making some of the best songs that any of them had made in decades, that didn’t mean that any of them were taking themselves all that seriously, either.
The whole point of the band was supposed to have a bunch of friends getting together to hang out, and they did have a little bit of tongue-in-cheek humour when they released that first album. Getting members of Monty Python to write the liner notes for the album was already going to be a bit of a ride when you opened up the record, and even when they credited each other on the album, the made-up story about how all of them were brothers from decades before was a good way of taking the edge off the fact that all of them were stars in their own right.
But when Roy Orbison passed away, it was bound to be hard to keep the morale up. Orbison was the one that everyone idolised to a certain degree, but even if he was no longer around, Harrison wasn’t willing to give up. He wanted to make the best record that he could to keep playing with his friends, but it’s not like Vol III is anywhere close to the lightning-in-a-bottle energy of their debut.
It’s not a complete dud by any means, but when you look at the kind of music that each of them had been making in their solo careers, this was clearly meant to be a bit of fun. There are still some great tracks on there like ‘She’s My Baby’ and ‘Inside Out’, but you can tell by the sound of everything that they wanted to make something a little looser. And for Petty, that meant writing some of the goofiest lyrics that any of them had ever made.
Granted, most of their songs were about simple topics every time they wrote. Nothing on that first album could be considered too deep by any means, but even if a song like ‘Dirty World’ was a bit of a laugh, ‘Wilbury Twist’ was the kind of skiffle-style song that would have served as the perfect party jam circa 1957 or some sort of dance routine that you’d see in a second-rate family comedy.
And Petty wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that assessment, either, saying, “The first verse was me just trying to make George and Jeff laugh. And I don’t know where the idea for a twist song came from, and maybe that was George. And then he got carried away with that song and it really got pretty funny. Even had a chart made up, a dance chart. It was silly. And we liked things to be silly.” It might have been a joke, but the band didn’t need to go as hard as they did on the backing track.
Aside from the absolutely gorgeous saxophone line, the electric guitars are incredibly hot in the mix, almost like Harrison saved all of his guitar hero moments for the very final track on their last album. It’s not like they weren’t playing into the joke of the song when they made the video, either, going so far as to have John Candy star in it and make a lot of the mock dance moves that Petty is singing about.
‘Wilbury Twist’ isn’t necessarily the most intelligent rock and roll song ever made, but considering the band would never make another record again, having this be their final bow is actually a lot more appropriate than anything else they made. Because at the end of the day, all of them wanted to have fun, and you can feel all of them grinning up their sleeves every single time they trade verses between them.
