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(Credit: Wikimedia)
The entire story of the Traveling Wilburys still feels like one of the happiest accidents in rock and roll history. Had the stars not aligned that fateful day when George Harrison needed a B-side for one of his singles, we may not have had the opportunity to listen to one of the greatest supergroups of all time, but when everyone got together for a jam session, it was too good for them to go their separate ways when the night was over. They were simply having too much fun, but Harrison was the first to say that everyone brought their own spice to everything.
Whereas Harrison might have been the ringleader responsible for bringing all of them together, there were always bound to be some hiccups along the way. Since there were five people who all played guitar, there needed to be another person there to help even things out, and Jeff Lynne may as well have been the orchestrator behind everything. He had the smoothest voice and could play note-perfect, but he knew when to fall back if Roy Orbison had any idea for a vocal.
And throughout the entire process, it’s insane that no one managed to let their ego get in the way of things. It’s hard to argue anyone’s lyrics next to Bob Dylan’s, but looking through the band’s work, it’s easy to see where Dylan’s strengths were used the best and when he needed to be put into the background. Still, Mr Zimmerman was never going to spend all his time in the group just writing lyrics.
His voice was by far the weakest out of the entire band, but it brought a certain character to the songs as well. You can groan all you want about how Dylan takes the reins on a tune like ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’, but for a song that sounds like it’s ripped straight out of an old Western, he’s the only person who could have sang the tune and done it justice rather than giving it to Orbison.
And it’s that slurring tone in Dylan’s voice that Harrison said the Wilburys always needed, saying, “It sounds like the kind of raggedy Bob, or what you expect is just one-off or a second attempt or something. Then the backing voices smooth it out. That’s quite a good thing, because if Bob wasn’t in it, it’d turn out sounding a little too smooth. He gives that edge to it, the roughness, which is really nice.”
There are many cases where Dylan took over too much on Traveling Wilburys Vol. III, but that was a case of them making the best of a bad situation. Orbison was no longer an option, so having Dylan step up on ‘Inside Out’ is like a reprise of what they did on ‘Handle With Care’, with Harrison lifting the track on the bridge the same way Orbison did on their first single.
Having Dylan behind the mic also allows for a bit of levity in the mix every now and again. Their first record already sounded a bit middle-aged, but there’s a lot more room for tunes that seem designed to be played by dads around the world, like the goofy ‘Cool Dry Place’ or Dylan doing his trademark ‘yahoos’ in the middle of ‘New Blue Moon’.
So as much as fans roll their eyes whenever Dylan got behind the microphone for a Wilburys song, it always served its purpose on one of their records. This was a band touched by musical angels in many respects, but even the most heavenly rock bands need those few elements that humanise them.
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