The Traveling Wilbury that made the world a better place for George Harrison: “It would be awful”
The Traveling Wilburys weren’t out there to win any major awards or anything.
The band were simply a bunch of the greatest talents in the classic rock world that happened to be best friends getting together for a jam session. Even though the rule of everyone was to check their ego at the door every time they played, George Harrison was more shellshocked every single day whenever he got to work with his fellow legends.
While people like Tom Petty would have been considered lucky to even share a space with Roy Orbison for a few seconds, the fact that they all got along so well was the real miracle behind everything. Harrison and Jeff Lynne only had a slim idea of what they wanted the group to be, so the fact that all of them were able to work well together and complement each other’s voices was a happy accident much of the time. And for as much of the spotlight as one of them could have owned, each of them had their own place in the group as well.
I mean, no one else was going to tell Harrison how to nail the perfect slide guitar lick for a second of the song, nor was anyone going to claim that they could sing any of the vocal lines better than Orbison. All of them had their highs, but the fact that Bob Dylan actually managed to say ‘yes’ was a miracle.
Because if you think about it, Dylan isn’t really the kind of person that tends to play well with others. You can count The Band if you want to, but since they were his backup group, it’s not like they weren’t used to him calling the shots. Petty had already noticed how Dylan conducted a group when the Heartbreakers joined him on tour, but it’s hard to argue with someone who’s that devoted to their artistry.
Even though you wouldn’t catch Dylan’s enthusiasm from the video for ‘Handle With Care’ with him scowling the entire time, he was more than happy to be in his version of a musical gang. This was the equivalent of a bunch of kids having fun for him, but when looking back on his work, Harrison felt that there would have been a piece missing from his musical heart had Dylan not been there.
For the former Beatle, Dylan helped everyone see things that everyone might have taken for granted, saying, “If Dylan hadn’t said some of the things he did, nobody else was going to say them. Can you imagine what a world it would be if it didn’t have a Bob Dylan? It would be awful.” While Harrison is right on the money about Dylan’s legacy, it did make for the occasional funny moment when they were recording.
Even when Harrison wasn’t standing next to Dylan in the studio, Jeff Lynne remembered the guitarist tapping him on the shoulder to tell him how excited he was that Dylan was even in the studio. Think about that for a second. Here is a guitarist that is by far one of the most decorated musicians in all of music, and yet he was still susceptible to becoming a total fanboy if he had the right person standing in front of him.
Then again, Harrison never felt any shame in spreading his love for the artist he admired. He believed that there was a genuine connection between artist and audience, and even if he and Dylan became friends after the fact and would speak highly of each other, Harrison never once stopped being a fan of the rock and roll poet that changed the world.
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