Music / Vol. 1 (1988)

Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 (1988)

Released: October 18, 1988 (US) / October 24, 1988 (UK) Label: Wilbury Records, distributed by Warner Bros. Producers: Otis Wilbury (Jeff Lynne) and Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison) Certification: Triple platinum (RIAA, US) Chart peak: #3 (US), #16 (UK)

Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 is the album that shouldn't exist and somehow does: ten songs, five legends, recorded almost entirely live around a single microphone in a borrowed kitchen, that ended up outselling most of what any of its individual members had released in years. For the full story of how it came together, see the complete band history. This page covers the record itself.

Personnel

• Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison): electric and acoustic guitars, slide guitar, Dobro, lead and backing vocals
• Otis Wilbury (Jeff Lynne): electric and acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards, lead and backing vocals; drums and cowbell on "Handle With Care"
• Charlie T. Wilbury Jr. (Tom Petty): acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals
• Lefty Wilbury (Roy Orbison): acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals
• Lucky Wilbury (Bob Dylan): 12-string acoustic guitar, harmonica on "Handle With Care," lead and backing vocals
• Buster Sidebury (Jim Keltner): drums
• Jim Horn: saxophones; Ray Cooper: percussion; Ian Wallace: tom-toms on "Handle With Care"

Tracklist

1. Handle With Care: the song that started it all, born as a B-side that got promoted to an entire album. Full story on our band history page.
2. Dirty World: credited primarily to Dylan, built from the whole band trading absurd punchlines to finish one running joke of a lyric.
3. Rattled: written mainly by Lynne, a fast, rockabilly-inflected highlight.
4. Last Night: Petty's, with the group's usual collaborative lyric-doctoring throughout.
5. Not Alone Any More: Roy Orbison's sole lead vocal on the album, and one of the most quietly devastating tracks the band ever cut.
6. Congratulations: a bitterly funny Dylan kiss-off, credited to him alone among the band's usual joint songwriting arrangement.
7. Heading for the Light: Harrison-led, built around Lynne's dense, layered production style.
8. Margarita: Petty's, breezy and unfussy.
9. Tweeter and the Monkey Man: Dylan's sprawling narrative epic, widely read as an affectionate homage to Bruce Springsteen's early story-songs.
10. End of the Line: the closing track, conceived by Harrison, that became the band's accidental tribute to Orbison after his death; the story behind its music video is here.

Reception and Legacy

Rolling Stone included Vol. 1 on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1980s, ranking it at number 67. The record won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1990 and was nominated for Album of the Year, ultimately losing to Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time. It became, according to Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin, a genuine surprise even by the label's own expectations: over 5 million copies sold worldwide, at a moment when neither Dylan nor Orbison had come close to those numbers in years.

The album's liner notes were written by Monty Python's Michael Palin, credited under the invented academic pseudonym "Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket," part of the band's elaborate fictional family mythology. Art direction came from David Costa at Wherefore Art?, with photography by Gered Mankowitz and Chris Smith, and portraits by Neal Preston.

Continue the story with Vol. 3, recorded two years later without Roy Orbison, or explore the 2007 reissue that brought both albums back into print.