A cardboard box in Bob Dylan's garage carried a simple warning: Handle with Care. George Harrison saw those words on the morning of April 5, 1988, and by that evening they had become a song. It was intended as a bonus track for a European single by George Harrison, 'This Is Love'. The idea for the group had already begun to form while Harrison was working on his album Cloud Nine. Additional recording for the song later took place at Westlake Audio in Hollywood and at FPSHOT in Oxfordshire. The Traveling Wilburys released “Handle with Care” on October 17, 1988.
Five men around a drum machine
Harrison had written the tune that morning, with Dylan helping on the lyrics at Harrison's request. The recording happened in Dylan's home studio in Santa Monica, where five men gathered around acoustic guitars and a drum machine. Harrison, Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. That lineup alone sounds like a festival poster, but the plan was modest: a single song, recorded quickly, without a group name attached.
Warner Bros. Records heard the result and made a different call. The label decided the song was too good to sit on the back of a single. That judgment changed everything. Instead of a filler track, 'Handle with Care' became the debut single of a new group, Traveling Wilburys, released on October 17, 1988.
The label decided the song was too good to sit on the back of a single.
How the song shares five voices
The song opens the band's first album, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, and it carries all five voices without collapsing. Harrison is credited as the main writer, though the authorship is officially shared by all five members. The structure gives each of them a moment: Harrison leads the verses, Orbison takes the bridge with 'I'm so tired of being lonely,' and Dylan handles the second bridge. A 12-string Rickenbacker riff from Harrison, slide guitar, and Dylan's harmonica keep the track moving.
The single came with 'Margarita' on the B-side, and the cover used a group photograph by Neal Preston, with design by the Wherefore Art? studio. The image mattered because the band itself was the story: five famous men standing together under the Wilbury name. The song gave the joke a heartbeat.
Chart numbers and a long afterlife
On the American charts, 'Handle with Care' reached number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it climbed to number 2 on the Album Rock Tracks chart. Those are modest pop numbers, but the song became the group's most successful single in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It was the first thing anyone heard from Traveling Wilburys, and it remains the song people reach for first. The song has kept a long life beyond the charts. In 2004 it was performed at the ceremony inducting George Harrison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, and in 2006 Jenny Lewis recorded a cover for her debut album Rabbit Fur Coat.
The music video was filmed in early October 1988 by director David Leland at an abandoned brewery near Union Station in Los Angeles. The band performs around an old-fashioned omnidirectional microphone, five veterans performing a song that had started as a simple bonus track. Stylist Roger Burton dressed them in their Wilbury suits. It was the last video Roy Orbison ever appeared in; he died on December 6, 1988, less than two months after the single came out.
The whole project started with a box label and a morning's work. Harrison saw the words, wrote the melody, and asked four friends to help him finish it. The record company's refusal to bury the song created Traveling Wilburys. Thirty-eight years on, the song still opens the story of the group.