Why The Traveling Wilburys never travelled
Despite being right there in the title of the band, The Traveling Wilburys never actually got around to travelling. However, it’s not like their individual members were reclusive. Bob Dylan was well within his ‘Never Ending Tour’ era during this time, and Tom Petty was still one of the biggest concert draws in the world. Roy Orbison had spent some time out of the spotlight, but he continued to play shows when he could. Even Jeff Lynne could go on the road from time to time.
It was George Harrison who was apprehensive. At the time that Harrison formed The Traveling Wilburys, the former Beatle hadn’t gone on a concert tour since 1974’s disastrous trek in support of Dark Horse. During that jaunt, Harrison’s problems with laryngitis frequently flared up. Paired with a hostile response to his joint performances with Ravi Shankar and a heavy addiction to cocaine, the Dark Horse tour permanently soured Harrison on the idea of touring.
That would be until a short 1991 tour of Japan. Harrison was convinced by longtime friend Eric Clapton to perform a short 12-date tour, on which he busted out Beatles classics that stood beside his own solo songs. Harrison seemed to enjoy the tour, which wound up being his last, so much so that he even threw around the idea of taking the Wilburys on tour.
“That would be something I’d like to experience,” Harrison claimed in 1991. “I’ve always played around in my own mind what a Wilburys tour could be. Would each person do a solo set and then do Wilburys at the end, or would we all go right on from beginning to end and make everything Wilburys? It’s an intriguing thought. We could have a great band up there and the four of us could play acoustic if we wanted to. We could all sing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and Bob could sing ‘Something’. Or we could just sing our individual songs and make them Wilbury tunes, as if we’d recorded them that way. Whatever it was, we could do it.”
While Harrison remained confident that the four Wilburys could do it (Orbison had already passed away by that time), the tour never manifested. Each of the four members made good livings on their own and probably had massive scheduling conflicts that kept a tour from ever actually happening. But according to Tom Petty, it’s probably for the best that the Wilburys never took themselves on the road.
“I think it would work, if we wanted to do it,” Petty said. “I don’t think we ever considered it, really. There were a lot of nights when the conversation would roll around to that. But I don’t think anybody ever took it seriously. I think it would ruin it in a way. Then you’re obligated to be responsible and it’s not in the character of that group. It would make it very formal and that would be the wrong spirit.”
Check out ‘End of the Line’ down below.
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