End Of The Line

‘End Of The Line’ is the final song on Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1.

I wrote the ‘All right’ bit under a banyan tree in Hawaii, because I was thinking, ‘Well, we’d better try and write one that’s like a Bob Dylan song. Wrote that bit, and then we made up the rest later, and everybody wrote the words.

It was primarily written by George Harrison. Tom Petty sang the verses, and Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison took turns to sing the chorus.

I think George actually came up with the idea for it, like, the main chord sequence, and we all contributed words to it. But George came up with the initial idea for it.

‘End Of The Line’ was released on 23 January 1989 as the band’s second single. The b-side was ‘Congratulations’.

An extended version of ‘End Of The Line’ was included on the 12″ vinyl and compact disc single editions.

It’s a very optimistic song, so therefore, we decided, even though Roy died, Roy was an optimist too, and I think I speak for all the Wilburys when I say that Roy would have liked us to have continued to do ‘End Of The Line’. It’s a very optimistic song, and we loved Roy, and life flows on within you and without you. He’s around, in his astral body. He’ll be cool.

The video was directed by Willy Smax. It was filmed in Los Angeles in December 1988.

Roy Orbison had died earlier in the month, and an empty rocking chair and photograph of him were used in the video.

We tried to do something different and have a nice film of us just playing, you know, playing and all nice shots of guitars and heads and feet and stuff.

It worked. It’s a really nice video. I’m really pleased with it because it’s got that quality photography.