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The Missing Messiah, a new book by Kyle Eidelman and Mark Moore, helps us understand how Western culture has gradually reshaped Jesus into our image and recognize the difference between a personalized savior and revolutionary king. If you believe there's a more dangerous, more majestic Messiah than the one you've inherited, visit missingmessiah.com to learn more today. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt.
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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. Our next story is about a band that was dubbed. the billion dollar quintet. Here's Greg Hengler with the story. The traveling Wilberries had a short history.
but a long past. The creation of the rock group was a fortunate accident. Nicknamed the Billion Dollar Quintet. The five musical legends, three of whom were in their forties, had gathered to assist a former Beatle in writing and recording what was intended as a throwaway B-side track. Tom Petty at age 38, whose career was at its peak, was by far the youngest member of the group.
She's a good girl. Love's remarried. Loves Jesus. In America, too. Roy Orbison, at 52, who was called the greatest singer in the world by Elvis.
was the oldest. Here's Roy singing, You Got It. The hit he co-wrote with future fellow Wheelberries. Jeff Lynn, and Tom Petty. Anything you want You got it Anything you need?
You got it. Anything out of You got it. And then there was former Beatle George Harrison. Here comes the sun. Here comes the song, I said it's alright.
In 1963, a young Bob Dylan would ask future bandmate Roy Orbison to record the song he wrote. Don't think twice. It's alright. Orbison would later regret his decision to reject this Dylan masterpiece. I'm a thinking and a wondering walking down the road.
I once loved a woman, a child I am told. I give her my heart, but she wanted my soul. But don't think twice, it's all right. Finally, there's probably the least known member of the traveling Wilburries. but no less talented.
Singer-songwriter and record super producer Jeff Lynn. Lin co-founded the Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO, a rock band inspired by the Beatles' complex orchestral sound of the late 60s. Between 1972 and 1986, Jeff Lin's ELO put more singles in the top 40 charts. than any other band in the world. No no no.
No, no, no, no. George Harrison's career was on fire in the late 1980s. His comeback album, Cloud 9, was certified platinum in the U.S. Thanks to the production work of Jeff Lynn. Then, in a pivotal moment in rock history, Warner Bros.
told Harrison he needed to record a B-side track for his single, This Is Love. Yeah. On the evening before the recording session, Harrison dined at a French restaurant in Los Angeles with Jeff Lynn. who had brought along Roy Orbison. with the three legends sitting together at one table.
Harrison asked Orbison and Lynn to help him record the B-side. They agreed. For the sake of convenience, Lynn suggested they record the track at Bob Dylan's garage studio. Harrison telephoned Dylan, who agreed to the idea. needing a guitar that he had left with Tom Petty.
Harrison called and was pleasantly surprised that Petty also wanted to attend. Don't be. The recording session took place on April 5, 1988. After dining on some barbecued chicken in Dylan's backyard garden, the five musicians worked out the song's lyrics. Thankfully for us, George Harrison understood that history was being made, and so he took out his personal video recorder and began shooting.
Does it say record in here, George? Is it supposed to say record in the viewfinder? Yeah. Oh yeah, there it goes. Here's George Harrison.
The thing about the Wilburies for me is if we'd have tried to plan that, or if anybody had tried to. you know, say, let's form this band and get these people in it. It would never happen. It's impossible. My guitar was at Tom Petty's house, so Tom and Jeff picked me up.
We went over to Bob's, but I got the first line, just said, bean beat up, battered around. Bean beat up and battered around. My feet. Wow, and they just kept coming with all these lines. And there was Bob and saying, Well, what's it called?
What's it about? And I finally saw behind his door this big box with a sticker on it saying, Handle with car. I said, Handle with car? He said, Oh, yeah, good. Handle with car.
with Uh I'm so tired of being lonely. I still have some love. To give, won't you show me that you really care everybody? is I liked the song and the way it had turned out with all these people on it so much, so I just carried it around in my pocket for ages thinking, well, what can I do with this thing? And the only thing to do I could think of was do another nine, make an album.
Here's Tom Petty. And I said, yeah, that sounds like a real good idea, because it had really been such magic doing the first try. Petty recalled how the group's lineup was finalized. We all jumped in a car to go see Roy play in Anaheim. All four of us ran into Roy's dressing room and said, We want you to be in our band, Roy.
He said that would be great. Harrison made the final proposal official by dropping to his knees and formally asking Orbison to join the band. The five men soon celebrated with a band meeting at Denny's on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Dylan proposed they call the band Roy and the Boys, but they settled on the quirky name The Traveling Wilberries. All five men are rhythm guitarists, but there are no excessive solos and the boys did a fantastic job at sharing the spotlight.
Harrison did emerge as the Chief Wilbury, and when the band returned to record the rest of their album, his video recorder was on again to capture the memories. starting with Tom Petty's arrival. On day one. All in a day's work for a whale brewing. And we had like nine or ten days that we knew we could get Bob for.
And everybody else was relatively free.
So we just said, well, let's do it. We'll just write us tune a day and do it that way. It was very exciting. We were in Dave Stewart's house and it was a nice environment because you could kind of sit outside. It was warm and the doors were always open.
So he sat up in his kitchen It wasn't soundproof or anything. And we just put like five chairs around the kitchen and put the microphones up. And that's it.
So all them guitar parts, you know, all them acoustic guitars are just in this kitchen. Here's Roy Orbison from Music. That's what it was all about. There wasn't a lot of deciding what to do. Not a lot of time spent planning out anything.
So we just wrote the best songs that we could write and sang them as best we could. There it borrowed out of the car. Oh, no, she was long and tall. She was long and short and fat. She was dressed to kill.
Yeah, that's good. Give me a tweet over the hill. Here's Jeff Lynn. Just sitting around in a circle, like five of us just drumming acoustic guitars and coming up with a song in like a couple of hours that was almost ready to record. It's pretty sort of unbelievable stuff.
And you've been listening to the story of what has been called the billion-dollar quintet. We're talking about. The Traveling Wilberries, Tom Petty being the youngest member, Warrior Orberson, the oldest. George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynn, the founder of ELO. with the other members.
And I can just picture the staff At that Denny's. looking at this ensemble of talent. hashing out what they would call this band. Roy and the boys, by the way, was Dylan's suggestion, telling you about the stature of Roy Orbison with the rest of this crew. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of the traveling Wilburries, here on Our American Stories.
The countdown is on for the 2026 NFL Draft presented by Bud Light. Catch all seven rounds three days live from Pittsburgh, April 23rd through 25th. Watch every pick live on NFL Network, ESPN, and ABC. NFL Network is also streaming with NFL Plus. It all starts tonight at 8 p.m.
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In our instant world, we've made Jesus a life coach, a therapist, a political ally. The Missing Messiah, a new book by Kyle Eidelman and Mark Moore, helps us understand how Western culture has gradually reshaped Jesus into our image and recognize the difference between a personalized savior and revolutionary king. If you believe there's a more dangerous, more majestic Messiah than the one you've inherited, visit missingmessiah.com to learn more today. And we continue with our American stories and the remarkable story of the traveling Wilberries. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Here again is Tom Petty, followed by our own Greg Hengel.
Sometimes we'd sing the same song, you know, just to see who sounded good or if this key fit somebody and that was a lot of fun. And George would kind of audition us, which could be really intimidating, you know, because like, you know, Roy Orbison had sing the song and then they send you out to sing it, you know, and it's like, well, damn, that's really intimidating. Last night. Tweeter in the Monkey Man was recorded in only two takes and was notable for its many references to Bruce Brinkstein's songs. Here's Harrison discussing the Dylan recording as we also hear Dylan getting feedback.
Tweeting the Monkey Man was like really Tom, Petty and Bob.
Well, Jeff and I were there too, but we were just sitting around in the kitchen and he, for some reason, was talking about all this stuff which didn't make much sense to me. You know, it was that Americana kind of stuff. And we got a tape cassette and put it on and then transcribed everything they were saying. That's what I A lamp bit of stump rolling in, a state trooper close behind. Twitter took his gun and tied him up and treated him unkind.
Undercover, cop were left tied up to a tree. Near the souvenir stand by the band factory. How's that? It was good. Huh?
Good? Yeah, I think it was good. Huh. And the walls came down. All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell. Uh better than I You did the last marketing good. Was that it? That was it? That was it, yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Road on it. George Harrison and Roy Orbison first met in May 1963 when the Beatles were scheduled as the opening act. Orbison. What Orbison did not know at the time was that the Fab 4's second single, Please Please Me, had been written by John Lennon in an attempt to emulate Orbison. Come on, come on, please, please.
We won't get like I please you. Ringo Starr would later admit. Roy Orbison was the only act that the Beatles didn't want to follow. Here's Tom Petty and Jeff Lynn discussing Roy Orbison as Roy records the Traveling Willberry's tune, Not Alone Anymore. If you're just sitting on the sofa working on a song and Roy's singing, even when he sang soft.
It's such a tone, such a sound, you know, such a a gift really. We used to always tell him Roy, you must be the best singer in the world. And he'd say, Yeah. Uh I see it through the rain, through the heartache and pain. It hurts like never before.
Jeff Lynn's production skills always make a great track even better. I see you through the rain. Every heartache and pain. It hurts like never before. Don't love alone.
Don't love alone. Don't love alone anymore anymore anymore. Brilliant. That was great, but we lost some stuff there. The band hated the notion of the supergroup, which were popular in the 1970s.
I never meant to be so bad to you. They wanted to soften the notion that they fit into this category. After all, most so-called super groups don't exactly live up to the terms. Michael Palin, one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python, was hired by Harrison to write the band's fictional biography. Palin chronicled the short story of five half-brothers who had one father, but five different mothers.
Consequently, out of sheer self-amusement, All five members of the group decided to use aliases. Their real names did not appear anywhere on the album or cover. Here's Harrison and Lynn discussing the bittersweet track. Congratulations. The only Wilbury song Dylan has performed in concert.
Done bread. One of the most amazing things ever about the Wilburys was this holes apart thing of Roy and Bob Dunn. That's what I thought was wonderful, the best singer and the best lyricist and they're both in the same group. End of the Line became the album's second single. Orbison stated at the time.
I've been rediscovered by young kids who had never heard of me before the Wilburries. Pretty woman. Walking down the street. But just four days before they shot the music video for End of the Line, and just three weeks after the album's release. Roy Orbison suffered a fatal heart attack.
Although he had complained of chest pains over the previous month, mentioning the discomfort to his close friend Johnny Cash. Orbison did not take the symptoms seriously. Here's Tom Petty. You always said that I'd be back. Roy went out on top and and I'm sure he knew that.
The last conversation I had with him was a couple of days before he died on the phone and he was just so thrilled that the Wilburies had gone platinum and he was just, isn't it great? It's great. We all felt that Roy was a real special part of the group, and it was just our ace in the hole to have that voice come in. And he was so nice, you know, and it was uh so painful when he died. Da da da da.
The video for End of the Line was shot inside a vintage passenger car on a moving train. Maybe somewhere down the road away. The end of the line. You'll think of me and wonder where I am these days During Orbison's vocal solos, the camera focused on a framed portrait of the singer. Which was perched near a weathered rocking chair that held a resting, upright guitar.
Alright, even when voice comes to show, well it's all Alright, give me one. Orbison became the first musician since Elvis in 1977 to land two posthumous albums in the top five. and the Traveling Wheelberries album Handle with Care would also win accolades such as a Grammy and were ranked number two by Rolling Stone in the category of Best New American Band, right behind Guns N' Roses. Unfortunately, the band never lived up to the traveling aspect of their name. They never toured.
Not one live appearance. Here's Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison. The whole experience was just some of the best days of my life, really. She wrote a long letter. And I think it probably was for us all.
On a short piece of paper. The thing that I guess would be hardest for people to understand is what good friends we were. It really had very little to do with combining a bunch of famous people. It was a bunch of friends that just happened to be really good at making music. Beats in the fore Me sure.
You the best. Missing this. Yeah. And only with a None of this would have happened without him. It was George's band.
It was always George's band. And it was a dream he'd had for a long time. From my point of view, I just tried. To preserve our relationship. I worked so hard to make sure that, you know, all the guys who were in that band and consequently on record and film, their friendship wasn't abused.
Just to preserve our friendship, That was the underlying contribution, I think, what I was trying to do. What remains of the traveling Wilburies is a mystique of unfulfilled possibilities and what could have been. much like a rock band that does not come out for an encore. even as the fans remain standing on their feet. and cheering.
at the top of their lungs. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And my goodness, George Harrison first meets Roy Orbison while opening for him in 1963 as a member of the Beatles. Orbison was the only act we did not want to follow, Ringo Starr would say about Orbison. My goodness, what you had in the end with this group was the best singer and the best lyricist.
And in the end, a heart attack would take Roy Orberson's life way too early at the age. of only 52. The Wilburries, we learn, well, they would never travel. The experience, Tom Petty said, was the best of his life. We were such good friends, he said, and then we hear about George.
It was George's band, by the way, Petty added. and what George kept at top of mind at all times. was quote, preserving our friendships. The story of The Traveling Wilberries, a classic American music story. Here on Our American Stories.
The countdown is on for the 2026 NFL Draft presented by Bud Lyke. Catch all seven rounds three days live from Pittsburgh, April 23rd through 25th. Watch every pick live on NFL Network, ESPN, and ABC. NFL Network is also streaming with NFL Plus. It all starts tonight at 8 p.m.
Eastern. Visit nfl.com slash draft for more information. Subscription required for NFL Plus. Visit plus.nfl.com for terms. We've been duped, hoodwinked, conned for 50 years.
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