Written by: The Traveling Wilburys
Recorded: May 1988
Producers: George Harrison, Jeff Lynne
Released: 25 October 1988
Available on:
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1
Personnel
Lucky Wilbury (Bob Dylan): vocals, acoustic guitar
Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison): vocals, acoustic guitar
Lefty Wilbury (Roy Orbison): vocals, acoustic guitar
Otis Wilbury (Jeff Lynne): vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Charlie T Wilbury Jr (Tom Petty): vocals, acoustic guitar
Buster Sidebury (Jim Keltner): drums
Jim Horn: saxophone
Ray Cooper: percussion
‘Dirty World’ is the second song on Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1.
The song was primarily written by Bob Dylan, who sings lead vocals. All the other band members pitched in ideas for the final lines (“He loves your…”).
I love that track. It’s just so funny, really.I don’t know how other people write songs, but that bit, I just picked up a bunch of magazines and gave everybody a magazine. I had some copies of Autosport, and they just started reading out little things like ‘five-speed gearbox’ and stuff like that.
They had a camera on that take, when we were singing that. It’s just a static shot through the window of us around the vocal mic.
We just wrote this random list and had it on the microphone, and then we just did the take.
The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys
The final lines were recorded with the band members surrounding a single microphone, taking it in turns to sing phrases.
Every time it came round to Roy Orbison he always got the ‘Trembling Wilbury’. And it was the funniest thing! Roy would have this big operatic voice, the ‘Trembling Wilbury’, and we always collapsed every time. And no matter how we rearranged it he always ended up with ‘Trembling Wilbury’ on the end.
The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys
Love that bit of the song. I always love finding the reason behind the lyrics of a nonsense song like this. Those are my kind of songs. Love the humans-having-fun touch.