George Harrison on the Rumors of the Fifth Member of The Traveling Wilburys
George Harrison accidentally formed The Traveling Wilburys in 1987. He needed to record an extra single for his album, Cloud Nine. He asked Jeff Lynne to help him write it, and Bob Dylan allowed them to use his recording studio. Roy Orbison and Tom Petty tagged along to watch them.
However, it seemed strange to George to have four of the best singers/songwriters in the studio with him and not work on the song. So, all five rock stars recorded “Handle With Care,” but the record company didn’t take the single because it was too good. George held on to it until he got the rest of the guys back together to record an entire album. Thus The Traveling Wilburys were born.
The supergroup recorded two albums, Vol. 1 and Vol.3. Shortly after they released Vol. 1, Orbison died. They never considered replacing him, but George often contemplated who would make good Wilburys.
George Harrison thought about who could join The Traveling Wilburys
During a joint 1989 interview with Petty and Lynne for MTV News (George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George explained they had no plans to replace Orbison. However, he said there were a few people he imagined could join the band.
The interviewer pointed out that only four Wilburys remained following Orbison’s death. George replied, “Yeah, but when it started there wasn’t any. And we just sort of picked a few up as we, you know, drove down Ventura Boulevard.
“And there’s many Wilburys out there; as some nice man in the New York Daily News said, ‘The best thing about the Wilburys, apart from their album, is that any decent person could be one.’ So Little Richard and, uh… Jerry Lee Lewis, they could be Wilburys.”
George on the fifth member of The Traveling Wilburys
In his joint interview with Petty and Lynne, George joked that Hall and Oats couldn’t be in The Traveling Wilburys. He continued, “Keith Richards is a Wilbury, but George Michael isn’t.”
That same year, Mark Rowland was another reporter who asked George if the supergroup had any plans to replace Orbison (per George Harrison on George Harrison).
“The fifth Wilbury,” George said. “Well, I don’t know. It’s like when you go back to the Beatles. There were so many fifth Beatles, there were probably about five hundred fifth Beatles and likewise there could be, there’s many, I mean, what I saw as the Wilburys—it was an attitude really.
“Basically, it was an attitude. And I see loads of people out there who have what I would say … you know, there was somebody who wrote in a New York paper, I forget which paper it is, maybe you can find it from the press department, there was this great article and it said … I don’t know how they got into it … but it said things like, ‘Little Richard is a Wilbury, somebody else isn’t. Madonna wouldn’t be a Wilbury but … Cyndi Lauper is a Wilbury.’
“That kind of thing. It was quite funny. It’s just like an attitude and there’s loads of people—I can make a list right now and put twenty people on it who, to me, would be wonderful in the Wilburys. But the thing is, the way it happened, it happened on its own.”
George said the supergroup was spontaneous, and so was Orbison’s place in the band
George told Rowland that the great thing about The Traveling Wilburys was that it was all spontaneous. “When we do another Wilbury album, it’s going to be just as much fun, otherwise I’m not doing it,” George said. “But the thing is, it can’t be as spontaneous because we already know about it.
“But I think the songs can be spontaneous, and we can make it with the same vibe and the same atmosphere in which the way we wrote the songs and recorded them.
“The point is to be able to keep on going and have fun and lighten up a bit. You know, that’s what I think. Everybody is so serious.”
Since the supergroup formed spontaneously, each of the band member’s places was spontaneous, including Orbison’s. The Traveling Wilburys would lose that spontaneity if they filled his spot with someone.
George added, “And I think to start, like, planning it, I don’t think you need a fifth Wilbury for a start. And if we do, it will be the fellow, the woman, or whoever it is, who happens to walk in the door and be right. And not because they read in the article and figured out where—knock, knock—like that.”
It would’ve been interesting to see if George formed other incarnations of The Traveling Wilburys over the years. However, the one we got wasn’t so bad.
