Credit: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys
Sun 17 May 2026 18:30, UK
The Traveling Wilburys didn’t really need much motivation to get together back in the day.
George Harrison was already keen to have a band with a bunch of his mates, and getting people like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty under one roof was almost too good to be true when they first began writing their songs. But even if they had a lot going for them on that first record, there were a few people in the background who ended up giving them a lot more assistance than anyone realised.
Then again, Harrison was the first one to say that he couldn’t have done the whole thing on his own. The whole thing started off as just a conversation between him and Jeff Lynne, spitballing ideas of who they’d love to be in a band with, and it was a stroke of luck that all of their friends managed to say yes. But when looking through all of their schedules, it was going to be a tight window for anyone to work in unless they knew the right people.
Dylan already had a studio to work on ‘Handle With Care’, but when the record company suggested that they use the time to make an entire album of tunes, Harrison wasn’t going to go back to Dylan’s studio. The wordsmith needed time to prepare for a tour in between the sessions, so getting the opportunity to play in Dave Stewart’s house was a no-brainer. He may have been an odd choice, but he wasn’t that unexpected for everyone in the band.
Petty had already grown fond of Stewart after working with him on a couple of songs on the album Southern Accents, and since Harrison was also a friend, getting his house to record the songs was the perfect bridge for all of them to work. Any other recording studio would have been much too difficult for them because of the star power involved, but as long as they were there among friends, that was about as close to total privacy as they could get.
And it’s not like they weren’t comfortable, either. Stewart’s kitchen came in handy when Jim Keltner ‘played’ the fridge to get a percussive sound on the song ‘Rattled’, but the idea of joining in on the fun was never going to work for Stewart. He had his chance to perform, but after spending too much time working on Eurythmics’ next album, he could never find the time to work on both records at the same time.
So while Stewart would love the chance to perform, he was more than happy to help bring them all together, saying, “I couldn’t because I was making a Eurythmics album and then doing a world tour with Annie when they were right in the middle of it. They only had I think two weeks to make the album, which they did in my garden studio, using my kitchen. Jim Keltner used the refrigerator. I would have loved to.”
Further reading: From The Vault
The Wilburys didn’t need to get too overcrowded, but even for a band that was locked in as much as they were, Stewart could have definitely found a space to sprinkle in his magic. They relied on the attitude of getting the best line and melody for every song, and if Stewart had something that fit a little better, maybe they could have squeezed out a few more tunes rather than going through the motions on some of the songs that ended up on their sophomore album after Roy Orbison passed away.
But even if Stewart wasn’t in the band per se, the fact that he was so integral to them coming together isn’t something that any rock fan should forget. There was a lot more that he could have done, but his strong suit was always in getting everyone together and letting the biggest names in music work their magic.
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