The Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne called the most uncomfortable: “It depends on his mood”
To Jeff Lynne, getting asked to put together the Traveling Wilburys must have been like winning the musical lottery.
Anyone could have dreamed of making songs that sounded half as good as The Beatles, but the thrill of being face-to-face with George Harrison and all of his legendary friends would have been enough for anyone to pinch themselves every single minute they were together. But just because everyone was friends didn’t mean that every one of the sessions went off without a hitch.
Then again, if you’re a singer, how the hell were you supposed to be comfortable standing next to someone like Roy Orbison? He was one of the greatest vocalists to ever walk the Earth, and even if the rest of the band made songs suited to their voices, everyone would have deferred to Orbison and been happy to play guitar next to him. But Harrison didn’t start this band to be a backup group for one of his singing idols.
Everyone needed to contribute, and Lynne’s songs always seemed to suit him perfectly. He was the one who could see the big picture as a producer, and while he wasn’t going to step on anybody’s toes, he would rather have the odd verse to sing and maybe play a rockabilly tune like ‘Rattled’ than worry about competing with what his bandmates were doing every single time they played.
All the Wilburys knew at least to leave their egos at the door whenever they played their songs, but the idea of working with others wasn’t always the best fit for Bob Dylan. He was the kind that told every band he worked with how his songs were supposed to go and ask questions later, so when working with his friends, he wasn’t going to shoot them down because they didn’t make the songs that he wanted.
He was willing to go along with the program, but even for Dylan’s track record, the band’s debut went incredibly quickly. All they were looking to do was make a handful of decent tunes, but since Dylan had to leave for a tour a few days before they wrapped up, he wasn’t exactly the most laid-back person in the room when it came time for him to run through his own songs like ‘Dirty World’.
No one was questioning whether he could keep up with everyone else, but Lynne felt that Dylan was never altogether comfortable with the experience, saying, “I don’t know whether Dylan even felt that he should be doing it. But he never ceases to amaze me. It depends on his mood – well, that’s not the right word, I suppose. But sometimes he’ll go in, and he’ll sing the best fuckin’ thing you’ve ever heard. Like equally as good as any blues singer.”
Dylan even proposed the idea of calling the entire band ‘Roy and the Boys’, but there are pieces of the album that wouldn’t have been nearly as good without him. Any number of his songs would have never worked on his own records, and when looking at a tune like ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, that entire storyline felt like the perfect song ripped out of some sort of long-lost Western movie.
That kind of Americana slant was something that Dylan knew like the back of his hand, and even if he didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, the fact that he made so many of those songs work was a testament to the kind of musician that he was. He was never one to back down from a challenge, and while being one of the biggest stars all over again wasn’t all that fun for him, he could happily step away from the press and be happy to play a few tunes whenever his friends broke out the guitars.
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