The reason why the Traveling Wilburys were so successful, according to George Harrison
Life is short, legends are rare, and as a result, there seems to be a shared societal discomfort in remembering our immortal heroes as occasionally silly or unserious characters. Timothée Chalamet’s otherwise excellent portrayal of Bob Dylan is thus deprived of some of the real man’s cheeky spirit, as was Will Smith’s Muhammad Ali and Marisa Abela’s Amy Winehouse.
Will the upcoming Beatles biopics take the time to remember how important the Fab Four’s absurdist sense of humour was to their appeal and likability, or will we be dragged into the usual dirges of the successful but secretly tortured, miserable artist? If George Harrison were still among us, it’s a good bet he’d wish for the former.
While certainly remembered as a serious character in his role as the spiritually engaged ‘Quiet Beatle’, Harrison was also a lifelong fan and supporter of comedy and satire, as best evidenced by his financial backing of films like Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Time Bandits, and Withnail and I, not to mention the mockumentary The Rutles, which relentlessly poked fun at his own band.
George had been through enough early in his life to recognise a cynical cash grab or artists who were taking themselves too seriously. This would have made him extremely hesitant to sign up for a strategically planned supergroup, or an all-star band designed to herd nostalgic Boomers into the record shops.
When Harrison did suddenly find himself standing alongside fellow legends Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne as the Traveling Wilburys in 1988, it was only because the band had been put together not by a scheming record label executive, but by the hands of fate.
In a documentary made during the recording of the first Wilburys album, Harrison explained, “The thing about the Wilburys, for me, is if we’d have tried to plan that, or if anybody had tried to say, ‘Let’s form this band and get these people in it,’ it would never happen. It’s impossible. The thing happened completely just by magic, just by circumstances. Maybe there was a full moon that night or something like that.”
As the story goes, Harrison was asked by his label to record one more track ahead of the release of his 1987 solo album Cloud Nine, and arranged to do so with producer Lynne at the last minute, borrowing Bob Dylan’s studio to get the job done. Orbison and Petty, who’d also worked with Lynne, heard about the session and decided to stop by. No pressure or anything.
As Harrison and Lynne were fleshing out a new song called ‘Handle With Care’, though, the thought occurred to them to ask their famous friends to join in the fun, and there you had it: the most organically constructed supergroup of all time.
Harrison never lost sight of the importance of that spontaneity, and he and his Wilbury brothers approached their songwriting and recordings with the same loose mindset, never trying to create something legendary or overtly “important”. Fun was the key, and listeners seemed to recognise and appreciate it.
“I think that comes across, just the playfulness of it,” Harrison told Today in 1990. “We had a ‘don’t really give a damn’ kind of attitude… I think people got stuck in a concept of what the record business is, whereas, with the Wilburys, it was just something that was very flippant.”
The first Wilburys record did have a couple of moments of serious, anthemic reflection, particularly on ‘End of the Line’. But the majority of the record is surprisingly goofy, from Dylan’s Springsteen-roasting ballad ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’ and Harrison’s joyous ‘Heading for the Light’ to the very silly auto mechanic puns of the doo-woppy ‘Dirty World’: “You don’t need no wax job, you’re smooth enough for me / If you need your oil changed, I’ll do it for you free.”
Legends can indeed be flippant, and contrary to popular belief, it’s a great thing to behold.
