Favorite Song Friday: Handle With Care

“This is the greatest album of its kind ever made,” Rolling Stone crowed in 1988 about the release of the first Traveling Wilburys album. And then added, “It’s also the only album of its kind ever made.”

As my partner here at RTB would say: Yes. And yes.

It was such a delicious experiment. Look at the names—George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, (and Jeff Lynne…de-emphasis added). Three of the, what, 15 most important figures in rock-n-roll history up to that point, plus someone (Petty) destined to not quite reach that level, but become a rock-n-roll legend in his own right? That is a Murderer’s Row to end all Murderer’s Rows. Oh, and Jeff Lynne. Who yeah, knew how to produce (and over-produce) and had some weird success with ELO back in the 70s and made all the right friends. But even though he doesn’t approach the stratospheric levels of his four Wilbury counterparts, this was a collection of talent too good even for the term supergroup.

And it was an experiment the likes of which we will almost certainly never see again. Not just because two of the Wilburys—George Harrison and Roy Orbison—are no longer with us. I’m talking about ever happening again with any other artists, period. Because it’s just so damn unlikely to get such upper-echelon Hall of Fame-level talent not only in one room together, but in a studio for a complete album. And to have it work so well.

I mean, sure. I suppose, say, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen and Bono and Chuck Berry (and Jeff Lynne) could get together and call themselves “The Wandering Rizzos” or something like that, and release an album as delightful and (miraculously) ego-free as the Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was. And when that happens, call me and I’ll offer my apology for the blanket “this will never happen again” statement. But until then, my assertion stands.

So there.

Favorite Song Friday – “Handle With Care” – Traveling Wilburys

So let’s get onto the music. 

This album came out in the Fall of 1988, by junior year of college and, as I have mentioned many times before, at the nadir of a period of rock-n-roll defined and dominated by neo-glam rock. Even though R.E.M. and U2 and The Cure and The Pixies were at their creative peaks, that kind of music wasn't dominating the charts and the airwaves the way Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, Winger, Cinderella and The Swinging Genitals were (I may have made one of those up, I’m not sure). And that sucked. Because there was great music being made. It was just being overshadowed on much of commercial radio and MTV by a cloud of Aqua Net, peroxide and penicillin.

Along came the Wilburys. No, they didn’t change rock-n-roll. I mean yes, they did, but they’d already done that—at least George, Roy and Bobby had. But instead they came in to have a little fun. Five singer-songwriter guitarists came in to turn back the clock a little bit and show us that the old guard was still capable of getting the job done. They rode into town wearing the white hats and while they didn't demolish this awful glammed up legacy (Nirvana and friends would do that a couple years later), they simply reminded us that there was still joy to be found.

For me the album, while not perfect, had a little bit of everything that I loved so much about these guys. Roy turned the tear ducts up to 11 with his glorious “Not Alone Anymore.” Bob practically poked his tongue through his cheek with a giddy and sinister “Dirty World” and with his, um, “tribute” to Springsteen, “Tweeter and the Monkey Man.” And Tom Petty, somewhat surprisingly (consider the comedic talent in the room with him, namely George and Bob), turned in the funniest song on the album, the Latin/country rumblefest that was “Last Night,” the story of groupie love that ends about as badly as it possibly could. Just great, first rate stuff from a few rock-n-roll legends. Nothing more.

But the album, in my occasionally humble opinion, really belonged to George Harrison. It was George who was out front on three songs worthy of him at his very best. “Heading For the Light” was a callback to his early solo days with a bouncing lead guitar and some perfect Beatle-esque harmonies, not to mention a nifty Ringo impression by drumming savant Jim Keltner. “End of the Line,” written by George but giving everyone a chance to step forward to the microphone, reminded us just how much he had to do with the birth and refinement of “country rock.”

And then there is this week’s pick for Favorite Song Friday, the track that led off the album and a song that I can’t help but smile like an idiot whenever I hear it, “Handle With Care.”

It’s true that all five of the Wilburys had a hand in all of the album’s songs. And the other four (particularly Roy) are given their chance to shine on this track. But this was George’s show, really. His chance to look back, now at 45, at all those years behind him and a legacy he left that literally only three other people on earth could ever understand. Not even a titan like Bob Dylan could have gotten, I don’t think, what it was like to be in the Beatles. To create what they created, the way they created it, over and over again.

“Handle With Care” doesn’t delve too deep; it’s more of a fond recollection, not unlike John Lennon had 23 years earlier with “In My Life.” It’s not confessional and it’s not the least bit blue or maudlin. It’s more a way of saying, “Geez, what a ride this was,” as he strolls down a generalized Memory Lane with his loved one.

Been beat up and battered around

Been sent up and I’ve been shut down

You’re the best thing that I ever found

Handle me with care

Reputations’s changeable

Situation’s tolerable

But baby you’re adorable

Handle me with care

I’m so tired of being lonely

I still have some love to give

Won’t you show me that you really care?

Everybody’s got somebody to lean on

Put your body next to mine and dream on

I’ve been fobbed off, and I’ve been fooled
I’ve been robbed and ridiculed
In day care centers and night schools
Handle me with care

Been stuck in airports, terrorized
Sent to meetings, hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Handle me with care

I’ve been uptight and made a mess
But I'll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care

Having been caught (albeit willingly) in the Lennon-McCartney shadow for so long, George didn’t always have the chance to showcase himself as a first-rate lyricist. But he was indeed—“If I Needed Someone” and “I Want To Tell You” and “Here Comes the Sun” and, of course, “Something” proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. And “Handle With Care” is nothing more than a top-level songwriter totally at ease with himself. Having the confidence to toss off a line like “Baby you’re adorable” (my favorite line in the song, BTW) proves that, as does the absolute unobstructed sunshine in George’s voice as he sings.

What the song really seems to be, with its gentle caution to please, go easy on him, he’s been through a lot, is a grown-up version of another song John Lennon wrote (and George had a hand in making immortal) two decades earlier, “Help!” But whereas a young John was agreeing to “open up the door’ at asking for some assistance in doing so, George was simply asking, through all the mess and success he's created, to “handle me with care.” Similar sentiments, just separated by a generation of growth.

The song propels along with a simple folk-rock chord progression that is an exercise in sweet simplicity, with some great twangy fills that George always did so well and even a neat harmonica that Dylan throws in towards the end. And again, everyone joins in the fun—Roy’s aching plea on the “I’m so tired…” bridge soars above everything like a panoramic John Ford establishing shot. And the harmonies from Dylan, Petty and Lynne—strange as that idea seems—give rich, emphatic layers to the chorus.

Roy died not long after the album, song and video were released. So the Wilburys existence was a fleeting as it was memorable. But the album and the project had a nice reach nonetheless. After this Petty set himself on another creative roll that produced some of his best work over the next 8-10 years. Bob Dylan re-invigorated his career after a somewhat ambivalent 1980s and put out some truly great records. And George kept kicking around, even getting back with Paul and Ringo (and Jeff Lynne…hee!) on the Beatles Anthology project a few years later. From this one fun little project, it seemed, plenty of good things blossomed.

“Handle With Care” started an awful lot of that, it seems. First single, first track on the album, first video, first rate all around.

Baby, it was adorable. In the truest sense of the word.