Dylan’s videos: The Wilbury years

By Aaron Galbraith

For this week let’s take a quick look at the videos put out by The Traveling Wilburys. I say “quick” as once you’ve seen one Wilbury’s video you’ve seen ‘em all. Still they are a lot of fun, and it’s great to see the guys all together, especially George, Roy and Tom.

The first single was “Handle With Care” and it sets the scene for future videos with the guys all gathered around a microphone leaning in to sing their various sections of the song.

The next single came out after Roy Orbison’s death. The video for End Of The Line sees the guys appropriately enough singing on a train. For Roy’s section they touchingly used his guitar rocking on a rocking chair. Not too much for Bob to do in these first two selections.

Between the two albums there was a stand-alone single “Nobody’s Child”. There is a video on YouTube if you feel like giving it a look but it is very sad so be warned.

Moving on, the second album presented us with 3 videos for its various singles (well 4 actually).

First up it’s “She’s My Baby”.

There’s a lot more for Bob to do in this one. Plus his hat and suit combo is amazing! I’d love to be that stylish!

Now with “Inside Out” Bob is front and centre and gets some more wear out of his cool straw boater.

Well, I guess by now you got the gist, but they change things up a bit with the Wilbury Twist.

They actually put out two very similar videos for this single but I’ve chosen this one to present, due to all the celebrity endorsements here. Let’s see who you can all spot joining in with the boys here.

Here’s who I got, John Candy, Eric Idle, Jimmy Nail, Cheech Marin, Fred Savage, Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Harrelson and (hilariously) Milli Vanilli!

There was a second video which featured the same footage of the Wilburys,  Candy and Idle but the rest of the celebrities were edited out.

Here it is for those who want to spin there body, like a screw one more time!

Footnote from Tony:

If you are a regular reader you will know that Aaron picks the videos and sometimes I drop in the (usually irrelevant) odd thought.  And certainly when it comes to the Wilbury’s any thoughts I had would be very irrelevant because for much of the time on the two albums it seems a sublime array of talent is wasted.  Yes some of the songs are quite nice and do no harm, but considering the consummate array of talent, really one might have hoped for more.

Maybe the guys were all being so deferential to each other that no one wanted to push their own talents forward too much.  Or maybe when they had a good song each artist kept it hidden for their own next solo album.

For me, and of course it is as always just my opinion, the two stand out songs across  the two albums are “Tweeter and the Money Man” and “Where were you last night”, the first of which sounds to me like a Dylan song in every regard and the second although unusual for Dylan has his style.

Yet the videos for both are a picture of the album cover in one version, and the lyrics appearing on the screen in the alternate version.

Since I am sure you will be familiar with Tweeter, as it is so widely regarded as a Dylan piece, here is the video of “Where were you”.  Not because there is anything there but simply because even after all these years I still adore the song.  And it is a Dylan song one can dance too.

Even after all these decades I can still enjoy this.  It’s a lost love pop song, but sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that.

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2 Comments

  1. Que Quinteto increíble, con un Roy Orbison en su mejor momento paradójicamente muy cerca del final. Poniendo las cosas en su lugar llamaría a esta formación de estrellas
    J

  2. Translation:

    What an incredible Quintet, with a Roy Orbison in his prime paradoxically very near the end. Putting things in their place I would call this star formation

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