Once Upon a Time at the Top of the Charts: The Traveling Wilburys, The Traveling Wilburys Collection
Eight years ago today, a defunct supergroup – one which necessarily dispersed as a result of the death of two of its key members – received a resurrection of sorts when a collection of their two studio albums, a quartet of outtakes and otherwise-unavailable tracks, and a DVD sent them to the top of the UK Albums chart.
Their faces were immediately recognizable to even the most casual of music fans – Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty – but when Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 hit record store shelves in 1988, they were credited respectively as Lucky, Nelson, Otis, Lefty, and Charlie T. Wilbury, Jr.
Yes, even platinum-selling rock ‘n’ rollers like to have fun and get loose once in awhile, which is what the Traveling Wilburys’ songs were all about, but the band barely had a chance to enjoy their acclaim before Orbison died suddenly of a heart attack in December 1988.
Undaunted, the Wilburys reunited to record and release their second album in 1990, with Harrison contributing its title – Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 – to “confuse the buggers,” according to Lynne. With one of their number now gone, the band members took on new pseudonyms for the new record, hence the credits for Boo (Dylan), Spike (Harrison), Clayton (Lynne), and Muddy (Petty), and although the album didn’t do quite as well critically or commercially, it nonetheless found considerable success. Sadly, it would be the last album ever released by the band: with Harrison’s death in 2001, it suddenly became very hard to imagine ever hearing Traveling Wilburys Vol. 5.
After a far-too-extended period of time where both Traveling Wilburys albums were out of print and, as a result, selling for positively absurd amounts of money on eBay, a collaboration between the fine folks at Wilbury Record Co. and your friends here at Rhino resulted in the release of The Traveling Wilburys Collection, a set which, in addition to the two studio albums, also featured two previously-unreleased tracks (“Maxine” and “Like a Ship,” a pair of unfinished songs which were completed with a little help from Harrison’s son, Dhani, and Mr. Lynne) and a pair of previously-released covers (“Nobody’s Child” and “Runaway”), along with a DVD featuring all five of the band’s videos as well as a documentary. The collection was received rapturously, as evidenced by its chart-topping success in the UK, but it cruised straight into the US top 10, too.
It’s a shame that this is likely the last we’ll ever see of the Traveling Wilburys – lineups like that don’t come around every day – but the collection is the perfect way to remember just how great they were. And having said that, there’s nothing more left to say except that, like their Twist, there ain’t ever been nothin’ quite like the Traveling Wilburys.