The singer who turned both Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne into musicians
When The Traveling Wilburys came together, it was probably the sort of event that prompted several questions about how the band would even manage to work on a fundamental level.
Of course, having five elite songwriters within your ranks is surely something that’s going to bolster your chances of success, considering that they’d all have been able to bring their own fanbase over to the new project, plus, if they were all still capable at writing at the top of their game, they’d undoubtedly have been able to muster up a handful of hits between them.
But then again, getting all five heads to come together and be able to function properly is the biggest obstacle that the group would have faced, and knowing whether there would have been any compatibility between, for example, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan, would have raised a few concerns among fans of each individual party.
That said, despite the differences in their respective career outputs up until that moment, with Lynne having taken a decidedly more pop approach compared to Dylan’s folkier leanings, there was one person within the band’s lineup who both looked up to as perhaps the most formidable and influential figure, and someone who had been a major songwriting inspiration for them given his lengthy career.
The figure of Roy Orbison was not only useful to the rest of the Wilburys as a guiding light and oracle of songwriting wisdom, but he had written a number of songs prior to joining forces with the rest of the supergroup that the four other members considered to be among the greatest of all time. Having begun his career in the early 1950s, he’d already had a number of hits before the other members had even started their respective careers, and virtually all of the others saw him as an idol of sorts.
Both Dylan and Lynne, in particular, credit Orbison with having helped them learn how to write more proficiently and develop their craft as songwriters. During an interview with Forbes in 2019, Lynne claimed that hearing songs such as ‘Only the Lonely’ as a teenager suddenly drew him into a world of glorious yet simplistic songwriting that made him question the ins and outs of songcraft.
“When I was little, when I was 13, I would think, ‘Who’s the bloke who goes and puts it all together and makes it into this beautiful thing?’” Lynne said, talking about how he inquired about the structure and production of songs, adding, “I do my best, but I’ll never get near that one, I don’t think.”
Similarly, Dylan claimed that hearing the early works of Orbison was a transcendent experience for him that opened his mind to a world of straightforward songwriting, which he would continue to pursue throughout his career. “His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn’t even been invented yet,” he claimed in Chronicles, Volume 1, noting, “He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes.”
While Orbison’s passing after the first Traveling Wilburys album would have had a profound effect on both songwriters, as well as on George Harrison and Tom Petty, both would have undoubtedly been changed by having had the pleasure and privilege of working with one of their songwriting heroes and learning from someone who they considered to be a master of his craft.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.