The Traveling Wilburys: How the Journey Began
- edgarstreetbooks
- Dec 17, 2025
- 3 min read
Rock’s Greatest Supergroup
Frank Mastropolo
Some groups work together for years, honing and refining their sound until they develop a formula that yields a hit record.
Then there are the Traveling Wilburys, a happy accident that brought together five superstars in April 1988: George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. The Wilburys produced two albums; the first, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, led off with their biggest hit, “Handle with Care.”
The song came about in California when Harrison enlisted Lynne’s help to record the B-side for “This Is Love.” Lynne, who had produced Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine, was working with Roy Orbison at the time and brought the legendary singer on board. After Harrison passed by his house to pick up a guitar, Petty joined in and described the project. Dylan joined the group and invited them to record in his home studio.
“Everybody sat in the same room,” Petty told MSN. “It was all collaborative, working together as songwriters.”
“We either sat there, and somebody started a chord sequence, and somebody else joined in, and it just went from there,” added Lynne. “In some cases, people would have a bridge in their pocket, something finished that they didn’t know what to do with. So it came from both ways.”
“Everybody was there, and I thought, I’m not gonna just sing it myself; I’ve got Roy Orbison standing there,” said Harrison. “I’m gonna write a bit for Roy to sing. And then, as it progressed, I started doing the vocals, and I just thought I might as well push it a bit and get Tom and Bob to sing the bridge.”
The musicians recorded a guitar track for the first song but were lost for a lyric. Harrison revealed the inspiration for the title in The Traveling Wilburys Book.
“I looked behind his garage door, and there was this big cardboard box that said ‘Handle With Care’ on it. And that was it. Once we got the title, it just went off. The lyrics were flying around. We could have had 29 verses to that tune, it was brilliant.”
Harrison brought the completed “Handle with Care” to Mo Ostin, chief executive of Warner Bros. Records.
“We went next door to A&R head Lenny Waronker’s office so he could hear it too,” Ostin wrote. “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?’
“Once the idea of a full, collaborative album was in front of us, George took over. The five frontmen decided not to use their own names. George and Jeff called studio equipment (limiters, equalizers) ‘wilburys.’ So first, they named their fivesome the Trembling Wilburys. Jeff suggested ‘Traveling’ instead. Everyone agreed.”
In an interview with Christian Haribauer, Lynne and Petty discussed what made the “Handle with Care” recording memorable.
“What a thrill that first one was because what we struck up in there was the vocals going down,” said Lynne. “Roy Orbison was singing harmony with Tom Petty.”
“We had a very nice group vocal sound; that was something else that couldn’t have been planned because everyone’s voices are so distinctively different,” noted Petty. “When we sang together, we made this really nice blend of voices. I enjoyed that a great deal, of having a kind of harmony group. It was just kind of too good to imagine.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
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