“It was considered”: Tom Petty’s biggest regret about the Traveling Wilburys
If you were to ask anybody who their dream musicians are to see performing together live, chances are about half of them would have been in the Traveling Wilburys. Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne—the lineup itself seems a thing of miracles, with names that could have only come together when the stars, quite literally, aligned.
It seems like a strange fever dream now, to think about how these musicians even came together long enough to write music in the same room. But then again, this kind of nonchalance in the face of complete and utter magic is what made it all happen in the first place. After all, Harrison floated the idea to Lynne once, almost in the same way you’d ask someone how they felt about having a burger for lunch. The kind uttered in a mumble while looking down in a half-attempt at passing it off as a joke.
Though, of course, we know now it was anything but. “D’you know what? Me and you should have a group,” Harrison had said.
Lynne, playing along with what he thought had been an off-hand jest, replied, “Who should we have in it?” To which Harrison said, “Bob Dylan.” Still “half laughing”, Lynne then suggested Roy Orbison, but Lynne was deadly serious: the only joke in the room seemed to be the fact they hadn’t already formed yet. A fitting revelation for two musicians working on an album called Cloud Nine.
The greatest band that never toured
To be fair, it was a bit of a pipe dream. The only reason they all actually managed to come together was because Harrison and Lynne set it up casually, working with Dylan, Petty, and Orbison on a Cloud Nine B-side in a sort of Parent Trap-type situation where they let it happen with coordinated serendipity. Of course, it worked, and they soon decided to record new material for a separate project, signalling lift-off for the Wilburys in a way that felt entirely organic, despite the previous orchestration.
But all dreams have their fallbacks, bits and pieces that could have gone differently to make it all seem that little bit more shrouded in its familiar ethereal haze. The Traveling Wilburys was a dream lineup for everybody, but beyond the studio, that’s all their presence would remain: a dream. One left to the firm grip of eternal mythologisation, never to see the light beyond the walls of the studio. In other words, they never stood before a live audience—a factor Petty has long regretted.
In true Wilburys form, however, this seemed more a lack of stringency than a lack of interest. “It was considered often,” Petty told Kevin O’Hare. He continued, “We talked about it many nights and then never really did it. We might have some beers and plan it all night and then in the morning we’d be like, ‘Well, no.’ Especially when we became successful, there were all kinds of people trying to get us to do tours.”
Knowing how much Harrison loved the feel of being in a band again, Petty had no doubts that it would have been a success, internally and externally. But he also knew the challenges with trying to coordinate dates with solo artists, let alone five global megastars, each with different projects on the sidelines and plans to be elsewhere. Still, despite these hurdles, it’s difficult to ignore the slight suspicion that perhaps never hitting the road was a sort of blessing in disguise.
After all, if we’re to overlook the obvious benefits of touring, there are many acts throughout history who never made it out, or only did occasionally, adding to the unrelenting demand or the familiar kind of mystique that keeps a band interesting. While the Wilburys never had to play any sort of game to make sure people stayed eyes transfixed, keeping themselves away from the stage no doubt gave their story a sort of inexplicable mystification, adding to the unimaginability of these five names even getting together in the first place.
