Trivia / The Traveling Wilburys

• Awesome, Dear Boy: The group existed because each member, a legend in his own right, leapt at the opportunity to work with other legendary musicians.
• Development Gag: In "Dirty World", one of the Noodle Implements mentioned is "She loves your Trembling Wilbury"—The Trembling Wilburys was the working name for the band ("wilbury" being an in-joke Harrison made about engineers claiming that "we'll bury" mistakes in the mix).
• Died During Production: Roy Orbison died before Volume 3, which was dedicated to him; that's why they never made any more, and George Harrison and Tom Petty have since followed him.
• Executive Meddling: A positive example—George had all the others over just to record a B-side, and the producers rather sensibly informed him that this "B-side" deserved to be the first track of an album.
• No Budget: It might come as a surprise considering the amount of talent and fame involved in the band, but the creation of their albums were bare-bones efforts. The members recorded their guitar parts in Bob Dylan's kitchen while vocals were recorded in Dylan's home studio (really just a room with some recording equipment and sound-dampening material on the walls).
• One-Take Wonder: Bob Dylan sang through the vocals of "Tweeter and the Monkey Man" once to warm up and nailed the recording on the very next take while rewriting the lyrics on the fly.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Roy Orbison was hugely admired by the other members of the band, to the point where Jeff Lynne borrowed Orbison's tactic of wearing sunglasses to cope with his Performance Anxiety, and here they all got to work with him as equals. In fact, George, Tom, and Jeff were punching each other like schoolboys after recruiting Orbison, because they couldn't believe he agreed to work with them.
  • Beatles superfan Jeff Lynne already got to work with one of his idols by co-producing George Harrison's Cloud Nine, but here he got an even bigger deal by becoming Harrison's bandmate.
• Throw It In!: There was very little planning that went into the songs, the only real logistical issue being figuring out when everyone would be available to get together.
  • Much of the band's work came from the five members sitting together and jamming on guitars while tossing lyrics ideas back and forth to see what everyone liked.
  • The title for "Handle With Care" came from the writing on a box George Harrison happened to see while at Bob Dylan's home.
  • The group itself qualifies, having originally gotten together just to put together a B-side (see Executive Meddling above).
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was talk of a tour, which sadly never came to be due to Roy Orbison's death.
    George Harrison: 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.
  • Although each member had alternated being enthusiastic or cool toward the idea of a tour, when Harrison (who was the band's defacto leader) had cooled on the idea of the tour, Tom Petty stated that he got down on his knees and begged George to do the tour because of how much money they could make. No dice.
  • Also, Del Shannon was briefly considered as a replacement for Orbison, as Jeff Lynne was producing Shannon's comeback album, but he died before they could do anything together. The Wilburys paid tribute by covering his hit "Runaway".
  • Pre-Wilburys, George Harrison made some comments in interviews around the time he released his Cloud Nine album in 1987 that someday he wanted to put together a Supergroup of "old guys", mentioning Eric Clapton and Elton John as possible bandmates. The comments were just tongue-in-cheek, but still, imagine if those two had been Wilburys...
  • Bob Dylan originally just hosted the group at his home and was more focused on keeping his guests fed while they worked on song ideas. He became involved in the music when George Harrison asked him for help with lyrics and he started giving input.

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