Music / Singles & Videos

Every Traveling Wilburys Music Video, and the Story Behind Each One

The Traveling Wilburys never played a live show, which means these five music videos, shot across two years and two very different emotional registers, are the closest thing that exists to footage of the band performing as a unit. Watched in order, they also happen to tell their own small, unplanned story: five friends having fun, then four friends missing one.

Handle With Care (1988)

Directed by David Leland, fresh off directing Harrison's HandMade production Checking Out, the "Handle With Care" video was shot in October 1988 at an abandoned brewery in Los Angeles. The concept is disarmingly simple: all five Wilburys gathered around a single microphone, performing the song more or less as they'd actually recorded it. It's the only video to feature Roy Orbison, and, grimly, in retrospect, the last piece of footage of him performing with the band before his death two months later. By all accounts, Orbison spent much of the shoot entertaining the rest of the group between takes by reciting entire Monty Python sketches from memory.

End of the Line (1989)

Filmed in Los Angeles in December 1988, just days after Orbison's death, "End of the Line" presented the surviving band with a genuine problem: how do you shoot a video for a song built around five voices when one of those voices belongs to someone who just died? Directed by Willy Smax and set aboard a moving passenger car pulled by a steam locomotive, the video features Harrison, Petty, Lynne, and Dylan (plus drummer Jim Keltner) performing the track together. When Orbison's third verse arrives, the camera holds instead on an empty rocking chair, his guitar resting against it beside a framed photograph. It's a small, unshowy piece of visual tact, and it remains the most quietly devastating moment in the band's entire audiovisual output. Tom Petty later recalled that Orbison had called him just three days before he died, giddy about the album's early success: "he was just going on about how happy he was, you know, 'the Wilburys, ain't it great?'"

She's My Baby (1990)

The lead single from Vol. 3, "She's My Baby" reintroduced the band as a foursome, with guest guitarist Gary Moore (credited on the record as "Ken Wilbury") adding the track's lead solo. It became one of the album's two genuine radio hits, peaking at number 2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.

Inside Out (1990)

Set on a mocked-up concert stage, the "Inside Out" video opens with the sound of an orchestra tuning up and closes on muted applause, a small, knowing wink at a band that had, by this point, still never played an actual concert in its life. "Inside Out" had been the very first song the reconvened foursome wrote for Vol. 3, and Harrison later said finishing its music within an hour of sitting down convinced him the band could keep going without Orbison.

Wilbury Twist (1991)

The band's swan song, both musically and visually. Filmed in Los Angeles on February 28, 1991, the "Wilbury Twist" video enlists Monty Python's Eric Idle and comedian John Candy to attempt, with enthusiastic incompetence, the song's entirely fictional dance craze. It's the last piece of new material the Traveling Wilburys ever produced, and arguably the most purely silly note the band could have chosen to go out on, which feels, on reflection, exactly right. Read more about the song and its invented dance moves here.

All five videos are included on the bonus DVD packaged with The Traveling Wilburys Collection, alongside the documentary The True History of the Traveling Wilburys.