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• PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: Susan MacDonald (Huntsville Festival of the Arts), Andrew Brooke Photography
• VIDEO CREDITS: Andrew Brooke Photography

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Paul Hopkins'

Roy Orbison &

The traveling wilburys experience, welcome to the official website for national touring sensation paul hopkins' roy orbison & 'the traveling wilburys experience'. whether you are thinking about coming along, have already seen the show or may even want to book us, we are delighted that you have dropped by. we are now in our sixth touring year, celebrating the music of the traveling wilburys. they were a ‘once in a lifetime’ supergroup and although they were only together a short time, and never toured, they became a phenomonen. their first album rocked the music industry, and sold over 5 million copies worldwide. the traveling wilburys were made up of five music legends: roy orbison, jeff lynne, tom petty, bob dylan and george harrison. we pay tribute to these global superstars in our show and not only will you enjoy the hits made famous by the wilburys, but you can also enjoy music by these individual icons too. please take some time to read all about us and find out the latest news. if you would like to get in touch please either give us a call, email us or get in touch via social media. we would love to hear from you..

Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison and Bob Dylan are totally irreplacable and no other can ever really come close. But we hope you will enjoy celebrating their music with us and have a lovely time in our Wilbury World. Thank you for visiting our site.

We are so looking forward to seeing you all soon at one of our shows when restrictions allow. a night out with friends and enjoying some live music seems like a distant memory but things are hopefully getting better folks and we will be back in theatre again. please visit our tour dates page for more information. thank you and stay safe. love from us all xxx.

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With ‘The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1’, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne entered new territory.

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The Traveling Wilburys are one of the few bands to genuinely merit the “rock supergroup” tag , though given the self-assured and humorous nature of the five members, it was probably a label they would have dismissed. The quintet – George Harrison , Bob Dylan , Tom Petty , Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison – were all global stars at the time of recording their first album together , The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 , the sessions for which were joyous affairs that took place across April and May 1988.

Listen to The Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 on Apple Music and Spotify .

“We would have some coffee and somebody would say, ‘What about this?“ and start on a riff,” recalled guitarist and co-producer Lynne. “Then we’d all join in, and it would turn into something. We’d finish around midnight and just sit for a bit while Roy would tell us fabulous stories about Sun Records or hanging out with Elvis Presley . Then we’d come back the next day to work on another one. That’s why the songs are so good and fresh – because they haven’t been second-guessed and dissected and replaced.”

Multi-instrumentalist Lynne, who had previously been a key member of Electric Light Orchestra, had been working with Harrison as co-producer of his album Cloud Nine , during which time the pair had taken to referring to recording errors with faulty equipment as “Wilburys” (adding the punchline, “We’ll bury “em in the mix”). When the newly formed group were deciding on a name, Harrison suggested The Trembling Wilburys, but Lynne’s variant of “Traveling” went down better with the remaining trio.

The musicians were all assigned names in the new band: Nelson Wilbury (Harrison), Otis Wilbury (Lynne), Lefty Wilbury (Orbison), Charlie T Wilbury, Jr (Petty) and Lucky Wilbury (Dylan), and elaborate backstories were created for the characters. Harrison’s close friend Derek Taylor, former press manager for The Beatles and, later, jazz singer George Melly, even wrote an extensive fictional history of the quintet.

“The only thing I could think of was to make an album”

For The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 , they persuaded Monty Python’s Michael Palin to write liner notes. Using the pseudonym Hugh Jampton, (EF Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, Faculty Of Sleeve Notes, University Of Krakatoa, East of Java), Palin joked: “The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realising that their civilization could not stand still for ever, began to go for short walks – not the ‘traveling’ as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back.”

Lynne was the common link in the tale of how they really got together. While working with Harrison, he was also co-producing Orbison’s album Mystery Girl , on which Petty sang backing vocals and played acoustic guitar. One night when they were socializing, Harrison suggested that they join him on a track called “Handle With Care.” The song was to be the B-side for the “This Is Love” single he was putting out in Europe, ahead of the release of the Cloud Nine album. They rang Dylan, who agreed to let them record it in his garage studio. On the day it was cut, Dylan, who had been making them a barbecue lunch, decided to join in the musical fun.

As soon as the spontaneous single was laid down, with its catchy melody and knowing undercurrent of world-weariness (“Been stuck in airports, terrorized/Sent to meetings, hypnotized/Overexposed, commercialized”), the musicians knew they had created something special. “I liked the song,” Harrison said, “and the way that it turned out with all these people on it so much that I just carried it around in my pocket for ages thinking, ‘Well what can I do with this thing?’ And the only thing to do I could think of was do another nine. Make an album.”

The executives at Warner Bros loved the single and agreed to a complete record. The five friends, sharing songwriting and singing duties, were an instant and extraordinary superstar collaboration.

“He clearly meant it as praise”

Though The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 is only 36 minutes long, it is full of terrific moments. “Dirty World,” a mischievous love song, features some great call-and-response vocals and typically classy saxophone work from Jim Horn, whose playing was so widely admired that he had played on albums with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Carpenters , Frank Sinatra and Dizzy Gillespie. Other talented session men on the album include percussionist Ray Cooper and Ian Wallace (so dynamic with David Lyndley’s El Rayo-X band), who plays tom-toms on “Handle With Care.”

“Last Night” is a melodic love song, while “Heading For The Light” is a spiritual quest that is vintage Harrison. One of the standout songs is “Tweeter And The Monkey Man,” which started when Dylan – years ahead of social media, obviously – said he wanted to write a song about a man called Tweeter, set in New Jersey. Petty, who joined in writing the song, said Harrison bowed out of lyric duties on a track he thought was “just too American” for him to meaningfully contribute to. “Bob was like, ‘Yeah, we could use references to Bruce Springsteen titles.’ He clearly meant it as praise,” said Petty. The references to Springsteen songs such as “Mansion On The Hill,” “Thunder Road” and “Highway 99” are littered throughout an evocative track.

Tragically, Orbison died of a heart attack just six weeks after the album’s release, on October 17, 1988. But on the sweet ballad “Not Alone Any More,” the 52-year-old showed in his lead vocals that he had lost none of the vocal mastery that had made him a rock’n’roll legend.

The closing track was the vibrant “End Of The Line,” on which the group chirpily sing, “Well it’s all right/Even if you’re old and gray/Well it’s all right/You’ve still got something to say.” With so many magnificent individual albums behind them, and a collective age of 222, these five wonderful Traveling Wilburys proved they had something wonderful to say together.

The Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 can be bought here .

October 17, 2018 at 11:24 am

“…the pair had taken to calling studio equipment “Wilburys”.”

No, it had nothing to do with the equipment. When they had an instrumental or vocal flub, or a variant recording they didn’t like, they would say “we’ll bury it in the mix.” Those unwanted bits because known as “Wilburys,” as in “we’ll bury.”

Terry Hughes

January 21, 2021 at 6:30 am

The group as whole put out some serious music they are and always will be super stars in the music industry it’s a sad a story like there’s was cut off so short

Jason Draper

October 17, 2018 at 4:19 pm

Thanks for the clarification MrG800 – we have corrected that textual Wilbury…

October 17, 2018 at 8:19 pm

The big O’s death and the album release were in 1988 not 1998 as mentioned in the article

November 10, 2021 at 8:32 pm

Thank you Outby10! We’ve corrected that now.

Innocent III

October 18, 2020 at 4:44 pm

Truly amazing how well it all holds up. Can’t play the record without breaking into a smile.

October 19, 2021 at 10:41 pm

The record was made in L.A.(Dylan´s place)not in England

November 10, 2021 at 8:30 pm

Thanks for the eagle eye, Jose! We’ve amended the text now to correct that mistake.

William Michael McDonald

June 3, 2024 at 12:42 am

The best superband of all time! (imho)

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The official releases...

The traveling wilburys music.

George Harrison first mentioned the Traveling Wilburys during a radio interview with Bob Coburn on the Rockline radio station in February 1988. When asked what he planned to do as a follow-up for his Cloud Nine album, Harrison replied: “What I’d really like to do next is… to do an album with me and some of my mates… a few tunes, you know. Maybe the Traveling Wilburys… it’s this new group I got: it’s called the Traveling Wilburys, I’d like to do an album with them and later we can all do our own albums again.

“Wilbury” was a slang term first used by Harrison during the recording of Cloud Nine with Jeff Lynne. Referring to recording errors created by some faulty equipment, Harrison jokingly remarked to Lynne, “ We’ll bury ’em in the mix”.   Thereafter, they used the term for any small error in performance and the term was used again when the group were together…

Limited Edition

Picture disc.

The Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 gets a 30th-anniversary limited edition 12-inch picture disc, celebrating this blue moon moment in rock ’n’ roll history. With an A-side featuring the band’s bold logo, a B-side displaying an Alberto Tolot photo of the Wilburys, and a die-cut sleeve revealing the picture disc in all its glory, this vinyl version is an aesthetically stunning salute to the world’s ultimate supergroup.

2CD/DVD Box Set

Nearly twenty years after the creation of the band, and over a decade since the music was last available to fans, the music of The Traveling Wilburys is reissued in this collection. The previously released albums Traveling Wilburys Volume 1 and Traveling Wilburys Volume 3 feature inarguably some of music’s greatest singer-songwriters, as the iconic band The Traveling Wilburys.

Deluxe Limited Edition

By overwhelming popular demand, The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Deluxe Limited Edition) is back. Linen-bound with the Wilburys logo on a linen-bound box, theDeluxe Limited Edition follows the original cream-colored Traveling Wilburys Collection, which sold out on the first day of its worldwide release in June 2007.

Deluxe linen-bound box

The Traveling Wilburys’ all-star configuration had such a rockin’ good time cutting the track ‘Handle With Care’ that they decided to release it under the Wilburys moniker. The band’s camaraderie can be heard in every groove of their albums Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 and Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3, reissued here on vinyl with a bonus 12′ of remixed and previously unreleased tracks.

This edition of the Wilburys’ GRAMMY-winning 1988 debut album, Traveling Wilburys Volume 1, is now available after being out-of-print for over a decade. The album won the GRAMMY for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, and introduced the Wilburys’ classics ‘Handle With Care’, ‘End Of The Line’ and ‘Heading For The Light,’ among others.

After being out-of-print for over a decade, The Wilbury’s second album, 1990’s Traveling Wilburys Volume 3, is now celebrated with a new edition. Though it was their second release, the album was mischievously titled Vol. 3 by George Harrison. According to Jeff Lynne, “That was George’s idea. He said, ‘Let’s confuse the buggers.'”