Music / The Traveling Wilburys

Pictured: Musical Awesomeness^note Left to right: Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison

Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze,
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please.
Well it's all right, doing the best you can,
Well it's all right, as long as you lend a hand.

—"End Of The Line"

The Traveling Wilburys were a band comprised of Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne.

For years, Harrison played around with the idea of forming a band out of established musicians who could come together as equals and make music by hanging out and jamming. This began to take shape during production of Harrison's eleventh studio album, Cloud Nine.

Temporarily based in Los Angeles and away from his FPSHOT^note Friar Park Studio, Henley-on-Thames home studio, Harrison had asked Lynne to help produce a b-side and arranged to record it at Dylan's garage studio. Before the session he and Lynne shared a meal with Orbison and invited him to join them at the recording and on the way there, they stopped by Petty's house to retrieve a guitar and asked him to come along.

And so, by sheer coincidence, some of the best musicians of the 20th century came together to record a b-side before realization dawned that Harrison had found the band he'd been looking for.

One of the greatest supergroups of all time, this rare confluence of nearly 200 combined years of musical history came together in the very late 1980s to produce two albums (or so—see below).

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Discography:

• Volume 1 (1988)
• Volume 3 (1990)

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The Traveling Wilburys provide examples of the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: Many of their songs come across as this - taking standard rock lyric tropes and pushing them just a little bit too far into absurdity.
• Alien Abduction: Mentioned as a possible explanation for the title character vanishing in "Maxine".
• All There in the Manual: The Liner Notes and peripheral materials describe the group as members of some ancient clan of nomadic musicians, and give each member a Wilbury family name; a different one on each album. The group is apparently made up of half-brothers, all sons of Charles Truscott Wilbury, and different mothers.
• Anonymous Band: The members took on tongue-in-cheek alter egos, claiming to be half-brothers and the illegitimate sons of an itinerant singer named Charlie T. Wilbury. The Wilbury clan was given a fairly detailed backstory in the albums' liner notes courtesy of Michael Palin. The members also used different names for each album, for a total of nine Wilburys.
• Anti-Love Song: "You Took My Breath Away" at first sounds like a love song, but is clearly not on the pro-love side of things.
• B-Side: What "Handle With Care" was originally going to be, until the label executives heard it and decided an album was in order.

• Crazy Jealous Guy: Played for Laughs in "Where Were You Last Night?"
  Where were you last year?
  You sure as hell weren't here!
• Dance Sensation: "The Wilbury Twist" invites the dancer to, among other things, fall on his ass, put his teeth in a glass, and put a blindfold on so his friends can get away from him.
  Could be YEARS before you're missed!
• Empty Chair Memorial: The music video for "End of the Line" cuts to an empty rocking chair with Roy Orbison's guitar lying in it during his stanza, as he had died before shooting the video.

• Indecipherable Lyrics: In "Margarita", largely because some of the lyrics appear to be an Indian language (Author Appeal for George Harrison perhaps?)
• Intercourse with You: "Dirty World", according to Word of Godinvoked, is an Affectionate Parody of Prince. Which means you get Bob Dylan singing lines like
  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
  Oh baby, the pleasure be all mine
  If you let me drive your pickup truck and park it where the sun don't shine
• In the Style of: "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" was Bob Dylan's attempt at writing a Bruce Springsteen song.
• Joisey: "Tweeter and the Monkey Man", which also gives us examples of...
  • Murder Ballad: fused with surreal pulp in a manner reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino.
  • Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: "Jan had told him many times, 'It was *you* to *me* who taught in Jersey everything's legal as long as you don't get caught"
  • Affectionate Parody of Bruce Springsteen. Nearly every other line has a reference to one of his songs, and the scenario itself is a stew of every trope in his ouvre.
  • No Name Given: The undercover cop in "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" is always referred to as "The undercover cop".
  • Shoot the TV: The monkey man at the end. Apparently he objected to his portrayal in the news coverage.
  • Sole Survivor: Implied to be the fate of the Monkey Man.
  • Trans Tribulations: Tweeter. Notable that it's taken seriously, and portrayed non-sexually.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": After recruiting Roy Orbison just before a concert of his in Anaheim, Harrison, Lynne, and Petty kept punching each other and repeat "He's in our band, too!" in excitement.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Reportedly the inspiration for Handle With Care came from Harrison looking over at the markings on a crate used to ship some of the studio equipment.
• List Song: "Cool Dry Place", which is essentially about a rock star waking up at the end of The '80s and wondering how he got all this stuff for making music.
  ...reverbs we can't use, lots of DX7's and old athletic shoes...
• Noodle Implements: "Cool Dry Place" mostly mentions musical machines, with the addition of a few oddities.
  • "Dirty World", too. Most of the items sound like they're taken from a car advert, but there are exceptions.
• Punny Name: The group's name originates from a piece of banter George Harrison and Jeff Lynne came up with while recording, in reference to mistakes: "We'll bury^note Wilbury them in the mix."
• The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction: "Last Night"
• Self-Titled Album: Twice.
• Special Guest: The Wilburys recorded a version of The Beatles' "I Call Your Name" as a tribute to John Lennon, with Ringo Starr added to the lineup as lead singer.
• Super Group: Big time. It's hard to imagine a more super group even being possible.
• Un-Installment: The two albums released by the Wilburys were titled The Traveling Wilburys Volume 1 and The Traveling Wilburys Volume 3, respectively. Tom Petty's solo album Full Moon Fever may count as an unofficial ''Volume 2'': Jeff Lynne was the producer for it as for the other two volumes, and some tracks feature contributions from some of the others.
  • Jeff Lynne's solo album Armchair Theatre, released just three months before Volume 3, is a possible contender as well, especially noting the presence of George Harrison as one of the record's primary personnel.
  • There's also a theory that "Volume 2" is What Could Have Been if not for Orbison's death, a missing episode that was deliberately omitted as a sign of respect for Roy.
  • Another story has it that the band members agreed while they were recording Volume 1 that they'd never do a Volume 2 — so they didn't.
  • The Rhino Entertainment complete works box set regularizes the disc numbering by including a DVD (containing a documentary and all the band's music videos) as disc two.
• Visual Pun: In the "End of the Line" video, Roy Orbison's absence is noted with an empty rocking chair that nevertheless keeps on rockin'.
• Vocal Tag Team: Obviously; all five pretty much share lead and backup vocal duties. Enforced Trope on Volume 3, where several of the songs were originally recorded with Dylan as lead vocalist and later overdubbed to add lead vocals by other members.

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