How The Traveling Wilburys Paid Homage to Monty Python

The Traveling Wilburys are already a beloved folk-rock supergroup, but their ties to Monty Python make them even more interesting. Through clever references and cameos, the group paid homage to the English comedians with their music.

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It started with Roy Orbison’s son, Roy Jr. While the other members of The Traveling Wilburys may have been familiar with Monty Python—most notably George Harrison, who mortgaged his house to help pay for Life Of Brian—the references started when Roy Jr. introduced his father to his Python tapes.

1988, and The Traveling Wilburys were working on their first album. At the time, John Cleese was renting a home two doors down from the Orbisons in Malibu while filming A Fish Called Wanda. According to Roy Jr., he hung out with Cleese and learned how to juggle from him.

“I was going into a big Monty Python phase,” he told Rebeat Magazine in 2018. Roy Jr. introduced his dad to Monty Python when they were driving to a recording session with The Traveling Wilburys. He played the Contractual Obligation Album and Orbison loved it.

The Monty Python References That The Traveling Wilburys Used in Their Work

From the Contractual Obligation Album, Orbison loved the song “I Bet They Won’t Play This On The Radio”. The musical skit involves censoring explicit words with car horns and chicken noises. Orbison took that note and brought it to The Traveling Wilburys, and they paid homage in their song “Dirty World”.

Additionally, Orbison and George Harrison bonded over Monty Python as well. According to the book The Traveling Wilburys: The Biography, Orbison and Harrison would “recite and perform complete skits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus” for the others.

When The Traveling Wilburys put out their first album, Vol. 1, they tasked Michael Palin with writing the liner notes. Writing under the name Hugh Jampton, Palin told the fictional story of the Wilburys.

“The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still for ever, began to go for short walks,” he wrote, in part. “Not the ‘traveling’ as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back.”

For their second album, mischievously named Vol. 3 but missing Orbison, who had passed away, they brought in Eric Idle to write liner notes. Idle wrote under the name Tiny Hampton and explained the etymological origins of The Traveling Wilburys. However, he later admitted that he “just copied what Michael Palin had done for the first,” according to his blog.

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