I’m going to break some ice with this week’s BROW. This will be my first post to feature this amazing Beatles-related supergroup.

George Harrison wanted to come up with a unique B-side for his upcoming This Is Love single release of May 1988 and rounded up some of his friends to help him on the recording: Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan & Roy Orbison. George had left his guitar over at another friend’s house: Tom Petty. When George swung by to pick it up, he told Tom about the plans and Tom offered to come along and help out with the record too. When the resulting song, Handle With Care, was recorded, it was decided that it was just too good for a B-side filler track. George used the already recorded Cloud Nine track Breath Away From Heaven as his needed B-side and the five musicians decided to make a whole album together. Besides, they were having fun.

This, of course, is the story of how the Traveling Wilburys were born. The name stemmed from the slang term Wilbury coined by George and Jeff Lynne during the making of George’s Cloud Nine album to describe various pieces of equipment laying around the studio. In October 1988, their very successful debut LP Volume One was released which included Handle With Care along with another all-to-familiar big hit called End Of The Line. Unfortunately, Roy Orbison died of a massive heart attack in December 1988 just prior to a planned trip to London to make two music videos for the album.

The four surviving Wilbury’s reunited for the 1990 CD Volume Three. In case you’re wondering what happened to Volume Two, the name Volume Three was credited to “George being George”. On both albums the musicians used aliases with the surname Wilbury. On Volume One George was Nelson and on Volume Three he was Spike.

On November 5, 1990 a 12 inch single was released of the Volume Three hit, She’s My Baby. One of the B-sides is an instrumental version of New Blue Moon, which is featured with vocal on the album. The instrumental version is pretty catchy and never appeared anywhere else. The single, never released in the U.S. has been out of print since the early 1990′s. But now you can hear it any time you like, on the BROW.

The Traveling Wilburys, circa 1990

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1. Inside Out (1990 Traveling Wilburys promo clip) The five piece supergroup, Traveling Wilburys, released their first CD, Volume One, in October of 1988, and two months later...
2. Traveling Wilburys – She’s My Baby (1990 promo) Although, I have featured the Traveling Wilburys a couple of times in the past on the site, this will be...