Music / ↳ Rattled

Rattled

Written by: Jeff Lynne Lead vocals: Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison trade the lead Length: 3:00 Album: Vol. 1, track 3

A fast, unapologetic homage to the 1950s rock and roll all five Wilburys grew up loving, "Rattled" leans hardest into rockabilly of anything on the record, built around Jeff Lynne's bass and George Harrison's lead guitar. Of the whole band, only Roy Orbison had a genuine direct link to that era, having been signed to Sun Records during rock and roll's founding years, and his presence gives the homage real weight rather than pure pastiche.

The best piece of trivia on the entire album lives inside this track: the percussive "rattle" that gives the song its texture and its title isn't a studio effect at all. It's drummer Jim Keltner, credited on the record as Buster Sidebury, tapping his sticks against the grille of a refrigerator during the session, because that's apparently the sound George Harrison and Jeff Lynne decided the song needed, and a fridge happened to be the closest thing that made it.

It's a small, concrete reminder of how much of this album was built in the moment, out of whatever happened to be in the room, rather than planned in advance. Nobody wrote "refrigerator percussion" into a session brief. Somebody just noticed a fridge and started hitting it.

Previous track: Dirty World. Next track: Last Night. Or see the full Vol. 1 tracklist.