There never was a supergroup more super than
the Traveling Wilburys. They had
Jeff Lynne, the leader of
ELO; they had
Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the '60s; they had
Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of
Bruce Springsteen; they had a
Beatle and
Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It's impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that's missing is a
Rolling Stone), but in another sense it's hard to call
the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the '70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups. That, of course, was the key to their charm: they were a group of friends who fell together easily, almost effortlessly, to record a B-side for a single for
George Harrison; they had such a good time they stuck around to record a full album, which became a hit upon its 1988 release.
The Traveling Wilburys was big enough to convince the group to record a second album, cheerfully and incongruously titled
Vol. 3, two years later despite the death of
Orbison. Like most sequels, the second didn't live up to expectations, and by the time it and its predecessor drifted out of print in the mid-'90s, with the rights reverting to
Harrison, nobody much noticed. A few years later, though, it soon became apparent that
the Wilburys' records -- mainly, the debut, widely beloved thanks to its two hits, "Handle with Care" and "End of the Line" -- were out of print, and they soon became valuable items as the
Harrison estate dragged its heels on a reissue. Finally, the two albums were bundled up as a two-CD set simply called
The Traveling Wilburys and reissued with a DVD/digital download containing a documentary and all the videos in the summer of 2007. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine