It’s hard to really pick favourites when working amongst friends. There are many times when people are having too much fun to worry about whether something is perfect behind the scenes, but as long as the feeling is right, that’s normally enough for artists to give a song the green light. But George Harrison knew when the Traveling Wilburys were starting to congeal.
Granted, Harrison may have been one of only two people who realised what he had on his hands with the Wilburys. Everyone else in the band was happy to work with each other, but when listening back to the tapes, Harrison and Jeff Lynne are the ones who should be commended for helping put the band together, only managing to get everyone together in time before Bob Dylan went out on tour.
Then again, the quality of the tunes throughout their time together towered over everything else. For someone known for preaching about spiritualism, it’s nice to see Harrison put his beliefs on the shelf for a little bit to have fun with his friends. Not every song is meant to be completely serious, but they work because you can feel the band having a blast strumming away on acoustic guitars on tracks like ‘Handle With Care’ or ‘Heading for the Light’.
When Roy Orbison passed away, though, things were bound to be a little bit different. No one bothered with the idea of ever replacing that iconic voice, but Traveling Wilburys Vol. III did give fans a little hint of that spark all over again. And in Harrison’s opinion, their second time around was the first time where they actually seemed to properly gel as a group over the first one.
There is an organic feel to the whole thing with Gary Moore turning up and the band making the equivalent of garage rock, but Harrison was much prouder of getting the second record done, saying, “I think in a way, it’s a stronger record. It’s more integrated. The first one was so new to us that we didn’t know what was going to come out of it. We were more comfortable. It was easier to get together.”
For anyone who missed Orbison’s voice, though, having Dylan dominate some of the biggest songs was going to take some getting used to. There are many points on the record that are great trade-offs, like ‘Wilbury Twist’ and ‘Inside Out’, but the sheen of the first record is gone. That’s ultimately a good thing in many respects, but there would always be a slight dip on songs like ‘New Blue Moon’.
However, the only problem with the album was that it never had time to build momentum. Each of the band members went their separate ways immediately afterwards, and since Petty was releasing Wildflowers a few years later, it’s not like he was throwing every piece of his good material onto a Wilburys project.
Traveling Wilburys Vol. III does benefit from having a great flow of material and one of the most glorious dad jokes in classic rock history, but whether or not the fans liked it didn’t even matter to them. The supergroup only needed to serve themselves at that point, and by this point, hearing them make a record worked best when they were having a blast rather than forcing anything.