why did travelling wilburys break up

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How the Traveling Wilburys Said a Fond Farewell to Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison 's death in December 1988 came just six weeks after the release of Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 . The famed supergroup decided to pay homage to their departed bandmate when they reconvened to make a video for the record's second single.

Released on Jan. 23, 1989, "End of the Line" presented a unique challenge: Each member of the Traveling Wilburys had originally contributed solo vocals, with the exception of Bob Dylan . Orbison sang the third verse, while also taking part in group backing vocals.

The set the clip aboard aboard a railway train, with Tom Petty , Jeff Lynne , George Harrison and Dylan performing the track alongside drummer Jim Keltner. When their departed bandmate's vocal lines came, the camera showed a guitar sitting in a rocking chair next to a photo of Orbison.

"End of the Line" was only a minor success, peaking at No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but stands today as a touching tribute from the Wilburys to their fallen friend.

All of them had solidified themselves as legends in the music world before coming together to make this album. In keeping, Vol. 1 was approached as an enjoyable experiment and a change of pace from their solo work. Lynne said the project nevertheless changed his whole musical outlook.

"There was a lot of fun involved because you're strumming these brand new tunes that you've just made up, you know, milliseconds ago," Lynne said in a 2012 interview . "There you are doing it and then you've got to write the words and then you're singing in. And that's all happening in a matter of probably like four hours. It did change my way of thinking about things and show me the other way of doing it, which is actually doing it quick."

Watch the Traveling Wilburys' Video for 'End of the Line'

The LP became a multi-platinum international Top 20 hit, reconfirming Orbison's legend even as he worked on a solo LP which would be released posthumously .

Over the moon with its success, Orbison gave Petty a call in late 1988: "He phoned me about three days before he died, he was just going on about how happy he was – you know, 'the Wilburys, ain't it great?'" Petty recalled in a  1989 interview  with Norwegian TV. "Somehow I felt that he could tell things were going his way."

The Traveling Wilburys reconvened for another album without Orbison, but it wasn't as well received. Harrison still marveled that this joyful collaboration had happened at all.

"Just the fact that we were able to get together and produce two albums and four videos to me is sort of a bit of a small miracle, really," Harrison said in a 1990 interview , "and then the pleasure and the fun of writing the songs, recording them and the various other things that have happened because of the Wilburys. ... It's a good thing we're all good friends; it's an excuse to hang out together really."

Orbison's impact on the era resonated long after he was gone. "I was very glad to have worked with Roy and to have known him really," Petty said. "The last year of his life we spent a lot of time together, we got to know each other really well. ... I wish he could have seen it – maybe he did see it, maybe he does see it."

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THE HISTORY OF THE TRAVELING WILBURYS

Which one do you believe..., by mo ostin.

The birth of the Traveling Wilburys was a happy accident. Warner Bros. Records’ International Department had asked that George Harrison come up with a B-side for “This Is Love,” a single from his Cloud Nine album. At the time it was customary to couple an A-side with a never-before-heard track, giving the single extra sales value.

This was mid-1988. Cloud Nine was just out. George, along with cowriter Jeff Lynne and their friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison, had been hanging out in Dylan’s studio. I suppose George figured that as long as his pals were on hand, why not use them to knock off this flipside?

A couple of days later George came by my office to play the new “B-side.” We went next door to A&R head Lenny Waronker’s office so he could hear it too. George played us “Handle With Care.” Our reaction was immediate. This was a song we knew could not be wasted on some B-side. Roy Orbison’s vocal was tremendous. I really loved the beautiful guitar figure that George played. The guys had really nailed it. Lenny and I stumbled over each others’ words, asking, “Can’t we somehow turn this into an album?” (I also had a suspicion that perhaps George had been hungering for another band experience.)

We urged him on. George felt the spontaneity of it, felt its driving force. He always had great instincts. Being as smart as he was he had a remarkable ability to pull people together. Think about The Concert For Bangladesh — only George Harrison could have made that happen.

Once the idea of a full, collaborative album was in front of us, George took over. The five frontmen (Harrison, Lynne, Petty, Dylan, and Orbison) decided not to use their own names. George and Jeff had been calling studio equipment (limiters, equalizers) “wilburys.” So first they named their fivesome The Trembling Wilburys. Jeff suggested “Traveling” instead. Everyone agreed.

The group was born: five guys with star stature in their own rights, but it was George who created this Wilbury environment where five stars could enjoy an ego-free collaboration. Everybody sang, everybody wrote, everybody produced — and had great fun doing so.

You can hear George’s humility and good nature reflected in the Wilburys and their music. To my thinking, this was a perfect collaboration. All five were good friends who admired and respected one another. Roy Orbison was somebody they all idolized. Of course, they revered Bob Dylan too. But Bob was closer to being their contemporary, so it was Roy who gave the project that special glow from rock ’n’ roll’s early formative years.

Reflecting on all this, I recall a few years before when my wife Evelyn and I had been in London. George had invited us to his house, Friar Park, to celebrate Evelyn’s birthday. Roy was a houseguest there at the time, so perhaps this could have been an early hint leading to the Wilburys. So, too, might it have been the time Tom, George, and Jeff (Bob wasn’t able to make it, as he’d just injured his hand) came to dinner at our house a year or so before “Handle With Care.” For us, Tom had played a new song, as yet unrecorded, called “Free Fallin’,” backed by his two future Wilbury mates. Lenny and I loved the song so much we asked Tom and the guys to do it at least three times that evening.

Perhaps even then they all were Wilburys. They just didn’t know their last name yet.

With the huge international success — over five million copies sold — of Traveling Wilburys, Volume 1 , a follow-up was inevitable. George, being George, titled the second album The Traveling Wilburys, Volume 3 . Sadly, by this time Roy had died, but there was still great excitement when we visited the Wilburys, recording in the Wallace Neff-designed house at the top of Coldwater Canyon. Being with those guys, in that setting — truly memorable.

I’m glad that a song that had once been destined for semiobscurity as a B-side became the catalyst for something so lasting and joyful. Rolling Stone magazine named Traveling Wilburys, Volume 1 one of the 100 Best Albums of All Time.

Mo Ostin Chairman Emeritus Warner Bros. Records 2007

By Tiny Hampton

The etymological origins of The Traveling Wilburys have aroused something of a controversy amongst academic circles. Did they, as Professor “Bobby” Sinfield believes, originate from the various Wilbury Fairs which traveled Europe in Medieval times, titillating the populace with contemporary ballads, or were they rather derived from, “YE TRAVELING WILBURYS”, who were popular locksmiths during the Crusades and used to pick or unlock the jammed chastity belts (rather like today’s emergency plumbers.)

Dr. Arthur Noseputty of Cambridge believes they were closely related to the Strangling Dingleberries, which is not a group but a disease. I think this can be discounted, not only because of his silly name but also from his habit of impersonating Ethel Merman during lectures. Some have even gone on to suggest tenuous links with The Pillsburys, the group who invented Flour Power.

Dim Sun, a Chinese academic, argues that they may be related to “THE STROLLING TILBURYS”, Queen Elizabeth the first’s favourite minstrels, and backs this suspicion with the observation that The Traveling Wilburys is an obvious anagram of “V. BURYING WILL’S THEATRE”, clearly a reference to the closing of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre by Villiers during an outbreak of the plague. This would account for the constant traveling. Indeed, many victims of the plague and St.Vitus’ dance literally danced themselves to death, and it is this dancing theme that resurfaces with The Wilbury Twist. Not a cocktail but a dance craze, reminiscent of The Wilbury Quadrille made famous at Bath in 1790 by Beau Diddley, and the Wilbury Waltz, which swept Vienna in the 1890’s.

One thing, however, remains certain. The circumambulatory peregrinations of these itinerant mundivagant peripatetic nomads has already disgorged one collection of popular lyrical cantata, which happily encapsulated their dithyrambic antiphonic contrapuntal threnodies as a satisfactory auricular experience for the hedonistic gratification of the hoi-polloi on a popular epigraphically inscribed gramophonic recording. Now here’s another one.

Professor “TINY” Hampton is currently leading the search for Intelligent Life amongst Rock Journalism at the University of Please Yourself, California.

By Hugh Jampton

The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still forever, began to go for short walks — not the “traveling”, as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back. They must have taken to motion, in much the same way as penguins were at that time taking to ledges, for the next we hear of them they were going out for the day (often taking lunch or a picnic). Later, we don’t as yet know how much later, some intrepid Wilburys began to go away for the weekend, leaving late Friday and coming back Sunday. It was they who evolved simple rhythmic forms to describe their adventures.

A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became, and the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.

As the Wilburys began to go further and further in their search for musical inspiration they found themselves the object of interest among many less developed species — nightclub owners, tour operators and recording executives. To the Wilburys, who had only just learnt to cope with wives, roadies and drummers, it was a blow from which many of them never recovered.

A tiny handful survived — the last of the Traveling Wilburys — and the songs gathered here represent the popular laments, the epic and heroic tales, which characterize the apotheosis of the elusive Wilbury sound. The message of the music travels, as indeed they traveled and as I myself must now travel for further treatment. Good listening, good night and let thy Wilbury be done . . .

Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, University of Krakatoa (East of Java)

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What ever happened to the Traveling Wilburys?

What happened to the Traveling Wilburys? -- EW looks at the mysterious disappearance of the boomer-rock supergroup

In searching for a cool song to cover on her upcoming solo album, Jenny Lewis of L.A. indie-pop band Rilo Kiley went for one of her mom’s favorite groups. ”I wanted to do a Traveling Wilburys song,” she says. ”My mother was into it. It was always on in the house and on the radio.” But tracking down the two albums by the boomer-rock supergroup — a collaboration between George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne — was harder than expected. ”I couldn’t find them anywhere,” she says. ”Finally, a friend got one in a used-record store bin for $1, so I copied his.” Lewis ended up recording a sweet, twangy version of the Wilburys’ ”Handle With Care” with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst for her January 2006 album, Rabbit Fur Coat .

So why have both of these critically acclaimed platinum albums — 1988’s Vol. 1 and 1990’s Vol. 3 — gone out of print? ”It’s a simple explanation, really,” says Tom Petty. Originally held by Warner Bros., the albums’ rights reverted back to George Harrison (who acted as the group’s manager) in 1995. ”George really wanted to do another Wilburys record, with the idea of bringing them all out on CD at once,” says Petty. ”But we just never got around to it.” Thankfully, someone finally has. According to Petty, the Harrison estate is working on a reissue for sometime in 2006, which would include some unreleased tracks and a DVD of footage that was recorded in the studio. ”I guess people live off their brother’s old copy,” he says. ”And I think they’d really like some new ones!”

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The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys , a Free Film Documenting the Making of the 1980s Super Group">Watch The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys , a Free Film Documenting the Making of the 1980s Super Group

in Music | February 26th, 2021 8 Comments

“It real­ly had very lit­tle to do with com­bin­ing a bunch of famous peo­ple,” says Tom Pet­ty about the Trav­el­ing Wilburys. “It was a bunch of friends that just hap­pened to be real­ly good at mak­ing music.”

One of the most mod­est super­groups of the 20th cen­tu­ry, one that fate and chance threw togeth­er for a very brief peri­od, the Trav­el­ing Wilburys made music that sits out­side the usu­al his­to­ries of 1980s music, fea­tur­ing five men in dif­fer­ent states of their careers. Tom Pet­ty was about to have a come­back, George Har­ri­son had just had one, Jeff Lynne was no longer hav­ing chart hits as ELO, but he was shap­ing the sound of the late 1980s as a pro­duc­er, Roy Orbi­son was *about* to have a posthu­mous come­back, and Bob Dylan was…doing what­ev­er Dylan does—every album he put out in the ‘80s had an equal num­ber of detrac­tors and come­back claimants. Put it this way: the Trav­el­ing Wilburys didn’t feel like a nos­tal­gia act, and nei­ther did it feel like a mar­ket­ing idea. It was actu­al­ly light­ning in a bot­tle.

“It was George’s band,” Lynne says in the above mini doc­u­men­tary, but it wasn’t real­ly formed as one. It just sort of *evolved*.

As he explains ear­ly in the doc, Har­ri­son was hav­ing din­ner with Roy Orbi­son and Jeff Lynne and invit­ed them along to a stu­dio in Los Ange­les the next day. He had the han­ker­ing to make a tune, and they wound up using Bob Dylan’s home studio—the nor­mal­ly reclu­sive Dylan actu­al­ly picked up the phone on the first ring and gave the okay. And Harrison’s gui­tar was over at Tom Petty’s house, so he came along as well. The song they record­ed that day was “Han­dle with Care,” which fell togeth­er like mag­ic. (Dylan pro­vid­ed the title after look­ing over at a card­board box).

Har­ri­son sat on the song for a while, hav­ing no idea what to do with it. The only thing he could do, was to record nine more songs and call it an album. Which, once they had found time in everybody’s sched­ule, they did. The songs were record­ed at the home stu­dio of Dave Stew­art (of the Eury­th­mics) and final­ized back in Lon­don with Har­ri­son and Lynne. The group gave them­selves the assign­ment of one song writ­ten and record­ed per day. That the record isn’t a mish-mash of jam­ming, left­over ideas, and cov­ers, and instead has a legit­i­mate amount of clas­sic sin­gles and career-high­light moments is a tes­ta­ment to the friend­ship between the five (and drum­mer Jim Kelt­ner, who knew them all).

Friends indeed, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t also big fans of each oth­er. What’s cool to watch in the doc is how in awe they all seem: George is amazed by Bob’s cryp­tic scrawled lyrics and his abil­i­ty to nail a song on essen­tial­ly the first take. Tom Pet­ty is in awe of George’s demo­c­ra­t­ic ways with choos­ing who gets to sing one of the songs, regard­less of who wrote it—really, how do you fol­low Roy Orbison’s ver­sion of a song? But Tom Pet­ty still had a go.

The album main­tains that friend­ly vibe in the record­ing: micro­phones were mobile to catch music wher­ev­er it hap­pened. Jim Kelt­ner played rhythm on the inside of the kitchen’s refrig­er­a­tor. Songs were writ­ten in the kitchen. And after the work was done, the music would con­tin­ue. “A lot of ukule­les till dawn,” says Har­ri­son.

Roy Orbi­son only made it into the first music video off of the album, “Han­dle With Care.” He passed away just after the album went plat­inum in 1988, and appears as an emp­ty rock­ing chair on the next video, “The End of the Line.”

The four remain­ing Wilburys would reunite for one more album (jok­ing­ly titled Vol­ume 3 by prankster Har­ri­son), but the first album still sounds time­less, five friends just hav­ing a good time togeth­er.

The True His­to­ry Of The Trav­el­ing Wilburys will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries , a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More .

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son Wrote His Last Let­ter to Austin Pow­ers Cre­ator Mike Myers, Ask­ing for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

Sad 7‑Foot Tall Clown Sings “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” in the Style of John­ny Cash, and Oth­er Hits by Roy Orbi­son, Cheap Trick & More

The Sto­ry of WHER, America’s Pio­neer­ing, First All-Woman Radio Sta­tion (1955)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast . You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills , and/or watch his films here .

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Comments (8) |

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Comments (8), 8 comments so far.

I’d argue that Orbi­son made his come­back just as he was about to die, and died at his sec­ond-peak. Remem­ber, his songs were just fea­tured in mul­ti­ple David Lynch films, he had that wild­ly-pop­u­lar Black & White Con­cert, where he was backed by oth­er super­stars, and his song “You Got It” and his album, “Mys­tery Girl”, were at the top-of-the-charts when he sud­den­ly ascend­ed into Rock & Roll Heav­en. Good for Roy, he was a nation­al-trea­sure!

Hi, good arti­cle over all but you got a major fact wrong about Roy Orbi­son and his involve­ment in the first Wilbury album. He was fea­tured on almost every sin­gle track on the album and well as a stand alone song, above and being the tit­u­lar Han­dle With Care. His pres­ence was huge, and I don’t know how you couldn’t know that unless you haven’t actu­al­ly lis­tened to the record you’re talk­ing about. Very strange.

I caught that too. But what do I know, I’m an old rock and roll ani­mal with one foot in the grave. I record­ed this doc on DVD from the Sun­dance chan­nel decades ago. Still have it and coin­ci­den­tal­ly just watched it again.

For myself, this group of incred­i­ble guys will always be a part of my music world. All of them leg­ends, and sad­ly 3 are gone. When TW was active­ly record­ing and tour­ing, I was not famil­iar with them. I’m embar­rassed about that, although I was always lis­ten­ing to all of them indi­vid­u­al­ly. I just was not aware of the group itself. I love the music now and will always!

They didn’t say that Orbi­son wasn’t involved with every track on the album. Only that he was in one music video. Which is absolute­ly true.

Orig­i­nal writer here: yes, that was an unfor­tu­nate typo on my part, writ­ing “song” instead of “music video”. I was Run­ning Scared from the inter­net com­ments at first, and was Cry­ing over it , but now we’ve fixed the error. I apol­o­gize and ask for [Pret­ty Woman riff} Mer­cy!!!

I’m not an IT guy. Where can I watch the doc­u­men­tary of the Wilburys?

If you read the artical,it said he only made it into the first Music Video off the first album

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The rock supergroup was comprised of Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, and Tom Petty.

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They must have been the ultimate Anglo-American supergroup, though that was never their avowed intention. Traveling Wilburys actually fell together by accident. The kismet can be linked to George Harrison and Jeff Lynne’s fortuitous meet in Los Angeles in spring of 1988, with the former looking for studio time to record a B-side. Mutual friends Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan would join the former Beatle and the Move/ELO stalwart, and then, as if that weren’t mind-boggling enough, George was doing some business at Tom Petty ’s house, and the laidback Floridian hopped aboard. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, given that lot’s track record!

In keeping with Harrison’s love of a practical joke and well-chosen pseudonym (or alibi), the quintet adopted alter egos: George became Nelson; Lynne settled on Otis; Dylan plumped for Lucky; Roy took the country option with Lefty; and Petty’s handle was the grand-sounding Charlie T, Jr. While they made two albums, they would never use their real identities. Old masters of the masquerade for sure, but the two discs they left behind – the second was recorded in the wake of Roy Orbison’s posthumously released album Mystery Girl (Roy died in 1988, aged just 52) – are packed with great songs, some real Dylan gems, classic Harrison licks and a smooth country-rock sound courtesy of Petty and Lynne’s studio expertise and genius for harmony and melody. Both albums are recommended for discovery, particularly if you are a fan of any of the above – chances are, you love ’em all.

While they were only properly extant during the years 1988 to 1990, Traveling Wilburys had plenty of previous. George Harrison was pondering what to do after releasing his Cloud Nine album and, during a radio interview in LA, he conversationally dropped the bombshell that he’d like to link up with some mates. He already had the concept, since the name Traveling Wilburys had been an in-joke for him and Jeff Lynne. The idea snowballed and became a reality. Over a meal with Roy Orbison, it was decided to put plans into place and Bob Dylan was contacted for the use of his Malibu studio. As luck would have it Bob wanted in, and when Harrison went to collect a guitar he’d stashed at Tom Petty’s home, he too expressed an interest in joining the session that resulted in ‘Handle With Care’.

This song was deemed so good that it was used to open the Wilburys’ debut album,  Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 . That track became their most successful single, with high placing in the US, UK and Australia. A definitive country-rock’n’roller with a descending folk-rock chord sequence and an opening salvo that recalled ELO’s ‘10358 Overture’, ‘Handle With Care’ was completed with drummer Jim Keltner.

The album proper would be certified triple-platinum and won great acclaim. Dylan’s ‘Dirty World’, ‘Congratulations’, ‘Tweeter And The Monkey Man’ (a hilarious trip through the mythology of Bruce Springsteen ’s blue-collar hinterlands) and the reissue bonus track ‘Like A Ship’ are the equals of anything the man unleashed around that time. George fans were also delighted by ‘Heading For The Light’ (another bonus track that’s essential to catch is ‘Maxine’). With Roy Orbison bringing in his archetypal weepie ‘Not Alone Any More’, Tom Petty draggin’ on ‘Last Night’ and Lynne delighting all with his powerful ‘Rattled’, the set exceeded all expectations. Sometimes this kind of project can fall flat on its backside, but the Wilburys pulled it off with ease. The group effort ‘End Of The Line’, with its rhythmic freight-train delivery, is particularly poignant since it was released as a single a month after Orbison’s death. (The Wilbury’s next single was a cover of ‘Nobody’s Child’, a song The Beatles had covered in Hamburg in 1961 with Tony Sheridan. It was gifted to the benefit album, Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal , released in July 1990.)

Though events surrounding Orbison’s unexpected demise caused the remaining four Wilburys to take stock, they had the Wilbury bug, and the second album, confusingly called Traveling Wilburys Vol 3 (a piece of Monty Pythonesque espionage hammered home by the fact Michael Palin wrote liner notes for the debut, and Eric Idle did the same for the new recordings) was rushed out in Autumn of 1990 while lead-off single ‘She’s My Baby’ was on the airwaves. Featuring Gary Moore on lead guitar, Jim Horn on sax, Ray Cooper on percussion and Keltner (aka Buster Sidebury) behind the kit, this joint effort was credited to four new folks: Clayton (Lynne), Spike (Harrison), Boo (Dylan) and Muddy (Petty).

Once again, Dylan stepped up to the plate with some exceptional songwriting. ‘If You Belonged To Me’ and ‘Where Were You Last Night?’ are full of his colloquial genius, and ‘7 Deadly Sins’ is vintage Bob. Petty stretched out more here too, combining with Dylan on ‘Inside Out’ and bossing the room on ‘Cool Dry Place’ and ‘You Took My Breath Away’. The George’n’Jeff camaraderie shines through on ‘New Blue Moon’; the closing dance number ‘Wilbury Twist’ (“Grace is the key to successful dancing,” according to Eric Idle’s notes) was a fitting finale. The reissue bonus tracks restore ‘Nobody’s Child’ to the fold, while there’s a stirring corer of the Del Shannon hit ‘Runaway’ (tying in with the fact that Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers were working on a new album with the great man, Drop Down And Get Me – and very fine that was as well).

Both of the Wilburys’ essentially good-natured and entertaining albums are also available on the box set The Traveling Wilburys Collection , with a DVD featuring their five music videos, a tongue-in-cheek documentary called The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys (rest assured, it’s not) and a choice of formats including the desirable deluxe edition, linen-bound and containing a collectable book for the connoisseur. You might then hunt down the vinyl edition since that comes with a bonus 12” featuring some extended versions and a great remix of ‘Not Alone Anymore’. The box was issued six years after George’s death; his son Dhani plays lead guitar on Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Ship’ and adds backing vocals to that and the reconfigured ‘Maxine’, a song that his father had written, so bringing the project to a suitable close.

Grand sales and sterling press aside, it’s worth pointing out that Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group in 1989. The pity is that this crack group never toured – though none were averse to the principle. But as Tom Petty pointed out, that might spoil the moment. “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.”

He was probably right, but then we still have the original music made by the five sons of Charles Truscott Wilbury, Sr. Sir, we all owe you a big one.

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