About TheWilburys.com

I'm Alex. I live in Sydney, and I've been running this site, in one form or another, since January 20th, 2007. That's coming up on nineteen years, which is longer than some of the people finding this site through Google have been alive.

I grew up on the Traveling Wilburys the way some kids grow up on classic rock radio: through the windshield, on long drives with my parents. My dad was the one who explained why this particular band mattered, somewhere on a highway I can no longer place. He put it simply: this wasn't just five famous guys in a room, it was the best of the best, and there wasn't another group like it, before or since. I was young enough that the point didn't fully land until years later. It stuck anyway.

Where this site actually started

The first version of TheWilburys.com looked nothing like this. Dark background, "TRAVELING" splashed across a distressed western-style logo, a nav bar running Biography, Discography, Lyrics, Guitar Tabs, a Message Board, the full 2007 fan-site toolkit. I built it because getting your hands on an actual copy of Vol. 1 or Vol. 3 back then was genuinely difficult. Both albums had gone out of print, and running a proper fan site felt like the least I could do while everyone waited for someone to fix that.

Somewhere in there, close to when the 2007 reissue was actually coming together, I remember getting an email from Olivia Harrison, and I think from Barbara Orbison too. Nineteen years is a long time, and I couldn't tell you today what either message actually said. What I do remember is thinking, at the time, that it was a pretty remarkable thing to have happen because of a fan site built in a spare room.

What I actually have to show for it

I collect vinyl, seriously, and the Wilburys catalog is the section of my collection I'd grab first in a fire. Most of what I own is original pressings, the actual 1988 and 1990 releases, not the later reissues. If you want to talk pressing variants and matrix numbers, I'm genuinely the wrong person to get started with. I won't stop.

Why the site still exists

The honest answer is the same one it's always been: I want more people to hear this band properly. Not just "Handle With Care" on classic rock radio, but the whole story, the whole catalog, the whole ridiculous joke about a fake dead father that somehow produced two of the better records of the decade they came out in. This rebuild exists to do that properly, for the first time since 2007.

There's also a less noble reason, which is that some part of me is still that kid in the back seat, hoping that one day my phone rings and it's Jeff Lynne, saying "Cheers Alex, love the website, you're the man." Hasn't happened yet. I'm not holding my breath. I'd be lying if I said the thought never crosses my mind.

What this site is, and isn't

This is an independent fan project, researched and fact-checked as carefully as one person reasonably can manage, but not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated on behalf of the Traveling Wilburys, any individual member, their estates, or their record label. Where this site links to products, including through Amazon, those links may eventually earn a commission; see the affiliate disclosure page for exactly where that stands today.

Band history gets slightly distorted every time it's retold online, and I've tried hard not to add to that. Where sources disagree on a detail, this site tries to say so rather than just pick whichever version reads better. If you spot something wrong, get in touch, corrections are always welcome, from a fan site that's been getting things right and occasionally wrong, in public, since before some of its readers were born.