The Traveling Wilburys were a true who’s who in 1980s rock ‘n’ roll, and if the band had gotten their way, that lineup would have included a rockstar that predated all of them (all of the surviving members, anyway). A bona fide supergroup if there ever was one, The Traveling Wilburys was composed of American and British rockers George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison.
The group offered an opportunity for five musicians, all somewhat removed from the apex of their fame, to collaborate and show the world why they really put the “super” in supergroup. For Orbison, the new band was particularly fortuitous, as he had been struggling against his career’s decline for years by the time the Wilburys formed in 1988. Tragically, he would be the first band member to pass away, only two months after the group released their debut, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1.
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After Orbison died, The Wilburys forged on. At one point, the musicians began tossing around the idea of adding another player to the mix. But who had the starpower to join a group like this one?
Elvis Presley, naturally.
George Harrison Explains How Elvis Presley Almost Became a Wilbury
No, you’re not confusing your timelines. Elvis Presley had already been dead for ten years when The Traveling Wilburys formed in sunny Los Angeles. Still, multitrack recording capabilities and archival tape meant that the Wilburys could feasibly take an old Elvis Presley recording and track over it, thereby “adding” the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll to their hallowed lineup. George Harrison recalled how this posthumous addition almost came to be in a mid-1990s interview.
“Nobody can replace Roy as Roy,” Harrison said. “But maybe we should have some other person. Then, we thought of Elvis. Somebody had talked to the Elvis estate, and they loved the idea of Elvis being in the Wilburys.” Harrison said the musicians planned to take an old Elvis record, put it into a multitrack machine, and retrack the “entire backing.” He added, “Change the chords, change the tune, whatever. Even the lyrics. And we’ll all then sing this song, and then when it comes to the chorus, we bring up the other fader, and there’s Elvis.”
During a 1995 interview with TV Guide, Harrison said the band was going to give Elvis the moniker “Aaron Wilbury,” after the hip-swinging rock ‘n’ roller’s middle name. Everyone in the group had their own Wilbury name. George Harrison was Nelson Wilbury, Bob Dylan was Lucky Wilbury, Tom Petty was Charlie T. Wilbury Jr., Jeff Lynne was Otis Wilbury, and the late Roy Orbison was Lefty Wilbury.
“We were going to do that, but we never did it,” Harrison told TV Guide. “At that point, I thought it seemed a bit too gimmicky.”
It Would Have Been an Interesting Turning of the Tables
For whatever it’s worth, this writer humbly agrees that The Traveling Wilburys made the right call by not including Elvis Presley in their lineup posthumously. For one thing, if the band wanted to use recordings of a late musician, they may as well use ones recorded by Roy Orbison, their actual bandmate. Moreover, Harrison was—as he often was—astute in his prediction that the move would come across as “gimmicky.” Of all rock ‘n’ rollers, Elvis Presley is arguably the most obvious choice, making the whole thing come across as a “low-hanging fruit” situation.
However, if Elvis Presley had actually turned into Aaron Wilbury, it would have been an interesting development in the decades-long connection between Presley and Roy Orbison. Years before The Traveling Wilburys would form—and, indeed, years before most of its members were even close to being famous—Presley and Orbison crossed paths at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. Label owner Sam Phillips hired Orbison specifically to replace Presley in the late 1950s.
Presley “replacing” Orbison in The Traveling Wilburys would almost have given their relationship this weird, leapfrogging-from-beyond-the-grave quality that the surviving musicians were probably wise to avoid.