The Traveling Wilburys members Jeff Lynne thought were total opposites: “Poles apart”
The entire journey of the Traveling Wilburys still feels like the happiest accident in rock and roll history. Any member of the supergroup could have easily stuck to their respective careers and the world would have kept turning, but thanks to George Harrison needing one B-side, the world was gifted some of the greatest dad rock ever conceived by human hands. And while Jeff Lynne was a great person to balance out everyone on the production side of things, he knew that not everyone had the same strengths when they picked up an acoustic guitar.
Then again, this might have been the first band where showboating was never an issue. Every member knew that fans would get a kick out of seeing them sing on anything, so seeing Bob Dylan and Tom Petty rub elbows with Harrison was enough of a thrill to get them through a song like ‘Handle With Care’. If there’s one person who was the glue of the Wilburys, though, it was Roy Orbison.
The whole point behind the group was about finding the right kind of musicians to hang out with rather than the best in their field, but getting someone with Orbison’s voice didn’t hurt either. As much as Harrison and Lynne guested on Petty’s records and Dylan used the Heartbreakers on the road, getting the bonafide superstar behind ‘Only the Lonely’ was enough to make even a former Beatle starstruck.
What’s even stranger is how they managed to get Dylan to work in a group like this. As much as Dylan may have been friends with Petty and Harrison and had even co-written a few tunes with them, he never seemed to be a person who catered to democratic decisions. He was the one who ruled his band, but now that he had someone like Orbison to bounce off of, the group’s debut had the best of both worlds, with Dylan’s lyrics being absolutely biting while also having Orbison deliver something gentle.
And even though that sounds like it shouldn’t work, Lynne is the perfect person to balance those situations. ‘Not Alone Any More’ was never going to work had it been given to Dylan, and while Orbison does have a few passing backing vocals on a song like ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, that kind of lonesome outlaw tale is the kind of tune that Dylan had been singing for years at that point.
So while Lynne felt that Dylan and Orbison didn’t have the most compatible skills, he knew the Wilburys was a great way to hybridise both of their sounds, saying, “One of the most amazing things ever about the Wilburys was this poles apart thing of Roy and Bob Dylan. That’s what I thought was wonderful: the best singer and the best lyricist, and they’re both in the same group.”
Had neither of them been in the band, it would never have worked. Orbison could have made everything too sincere had he been given free rein, and considering how dominant Dylan became on Traveling Wilburys Vol. III, it was clear that the band needed that soaring voice behind them half the time they played.
Still, that doesn’t mean the band was completely forgettable after Orbison’s tragic passing. It was simply a different band at that point, and considering the whole band came together through a series of strange coincidences, it was only natural that they break things off when it didn’t feel right.
