Music / ↳ Maxine

Maxine

Written by: The full band (Vol. 1-era outtake) Additional 2007 contribution: Dhani Harrison, credited as Ayrton Wilbury, guitar solo and backing vocals Length: 2:49 Album: Bonus track on The Traveling Wilburys Collection (Vol. 1 disc)

"Maxine" is one of two songs left over from the original 1988 sessions that never made it onto Vol. 1 itself, sitting unreleased for nearly two decades until the 2007 reissue finally gave it a home. Rather than simply dust off the old tape and release it as-is, the Harrison estate brought in George's son Dhani to add a new guitar solo and backing vocals, more than fifteen years after the song was first recorded.

Dhani, who had been a child hanging around the Vol. 1 sessions and had no musical role in them at the time, earned himself an honorary Wilbury credit of his own for the occasion: Ayrton Wilbury, named for Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna in tribute to his father's lifelong love of motor racing. It's a small, genuinely moving piece of continuity, a son completing a track his father helped start, under a name that honors one of his father's own heroes.

As an outtake, "Maxine" naturally sits a notch below the ten songs the band chose for the actual album, but it's a legitimate, fully-formed song rather than a scrap, and its release gave fans a genuine piece of new Wilburys material nearly twenty years after the fact.

See the other bonus track from the same sessions, Like a Ship, or read more about the 2007 reissue.