Who played bass in the Traveling Wilburys?

There was never any type of ego when the Traveling Wilburys first got together. Any one of them could have pulled their seniority card amongst their bandmates and considered themselves living legends, but the whole reason George Harrison assembled the supergroup in the first place was because he wanted to surround himself with people who excelled at their craft and could hang out with them in between takes. But for a band with five different guitar players in the mix, someone would have to be relegated to bass.

Why do people always hate the idea of going over to bass, though? There have been plenty of legends of classic rock that have brought the low-end to the forefront of the mix like John Entwistle and Harrison’s old bandmate, Paul McCartney, but whenever any band gets together, being asked to play bass is the kind of nightmare that no guitarist ever wants to have to face.

If there was one person exempt from bass duties, it was going to be Harrison. He had practically formed the group with Jeff Lynne, and while he was more than capable of laying down a bassline, it would have been an enormous missed opportunity not to have his slide guitar singing throughout every one of their classic hits.

And it sure wasn’t going to be Bob Dylan, either. On the first record, Dylan was practically a songwriting advisor half the time, and while he didn’t get nearly as much time behind the microphone as people like Roy Orbison, and while he was more dominant, he was always better served with an acoustic guitar in his hand strumming away in the same way as other legends like Johnny Cash would be doing.

Of all the band members, Tom Petty seemed like the most logical choice. By all accounts, he was the new kid of the group that didn’t have as many years of experience under his belt, and he was even seen in the music videos playing bass. This would have allowed him to channel the kind of sound he got when playing in the band Mudcrutch, but if you listen to the record, Petty was still relegated to acoustic guitar.

So, who really played bass for the Traveling Wilburys?

Given the pedigree at hand, there was no way they were going to get a session player, so Jeff Lynne was always going to be the perfect choice to take over four-string duties. Outside of having one of the smallest egos of any massive rock star, Lynne was always looking at the stereo image of every one of his songs, which would be much easier to manage if he put the bass on himself rather than coaching someone through a take.

He and Petty were definitely the kindred spirits who were more than happy to look in awe at their rock star friends, but what Lynne does on bass on the first record is perfectly understated. He had better things to worry about like getting all the guitar tracks right and fleshing out the harmonies, but when the bass does jump out of the mix, it has a perfect bounce to it while never getting in the way of the vocal or the fantastic sax breaks from Jim Horn.

Petty may have pulled a Milli Vanilli in the music video by miming along to Lynne’s parts, but that’s not to say he couldn’t have pulled off a great bassline if he wanted to. Both he and Lynne were the adopted little brothers of the group in many respects, and since they only had a few days to put the songs together before Dylan left for a tour, it was much easier to let the production guru work his magic.