Music / ↳ Like a Ship

Like a Ship

Written by: The full band (Vol. 1-era outtake) Additional 2007 contribution: Jeff Lynne (Otis Wilbury), guitar solo; additional backing vocals from Lynne and Dhani Harrison Album: Bonus track on The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Vol. 1 disc)

The second of two rediscovered Vol. 1-era outtakes added to the 2007 reissue, "Like a Ship" spent nearly twenty years unreleased before Jeff Lynne returned to finish it properly, adding a new guitar solo and extra backing vocals (alongside Dhani Harrison's own contributions) to bring the recording up to a releasable state.

That a producer as famously meticulous as Lynne was willing to revisit a decades-old unfinished track rather than simply leave it as a rough historical curiosity says something about how much care went into the 2007 reissue generally. This wasn't a label padding out a box set with scraps; it was the surviving band, quite literally, finishing work they'd started together in 1988.

Like its sibling outtake "Maxine," "Like a Ship" naturally reads as a lesser cousin to the ten songs that made the original album's final cut, but its existence at all is a small gift to anyone who thought they'd already heard everything this band ever recorded together.

See the companion outtake, Maxine, or read more about the 2007 reissue.