And he was a young man then, too. What the Hell was he thinking?
That they were enjoying themselves and were enjoying making music together? Sometimes people like doing things, even if others donât think much of it.
Petty: It was all great. Itâs hard to think of a best thing. Youâre in the best band youâve seen, with all your heroes who are also your friends. Itâs still hard to conceive, just a fabulous thing.
Lynne: I think we realized it as soon as we had done âHandle With Care,â which was a B-side originally for one of Georgeâs singles off the âCloud 9â album. As soon as we finished it, we went, âWow, thatâs great.â And (Warner Brothers President) Mo Ostin said, âYou canât use that for a B-side. Why donât you finish a lot of tracks and weâll have an album?â The Traveling Wilburys, thatâs when we realized we had something good going.
Petty: I think we knew it when Jeff, George and I approached Roy Orbison, and when Roy said he was in the band. I think that night we knew we really had a group.
On getting Orbison to join:
Petty: I was so excited, I couldnât go to sleep.
What do you think it meant to George to be playing in a band again?
Petty: He absolutely loved it. He always said to me that he never really intended to be a solo act, he just found himself in that position, so when he finally did get in a band again he loved it. He was certainly more enthusiastic than anyone. We were all enthusiastic, of course, but he was the leader of the band. And he managed the band and did all the business. I think he was very proud of the Wilburys.
Tom youâve said that George in particular absolutely adored being a Wilbury. Did he ever talk about wanting to do a third album?
Petty: A lot. He talked for the rest of his life about doing it again or maybe taking it on the road. It is one of my great regrets that I wasnât a little more aggressive about getting that done. I always thought weâd have all the time in the world to do it.
On a personal level for both of you - What aspect are you most proud of as far as what you individually brought to the group?
Petty: I was just happy to be there. I always felt I was blessed to be there at all, and if I helped at all I was just grateful.
Lynne: I felt the same as Tom. I was very glad to be able to produce it with George as well, that was a really nice thing. Just to have those unbelievable voices like Roy and Bob and that, poles apart you would imagine, but when they sang together - and we all sang together - it was a lovely harmony, so I think Iâm just like Tom- really happy to have been involved with it to such an extent.
Petty: Thereâs one number, âThe End of the Lineâ - whenever I hear that itâs just very emotional for me. I really think thatâs the Wilburys at their best, it was just a terrific time. How often do you write a song thatâs for four or five people? Itâs not very often that happens but we really collaborated and put our heads together and made those songs happen.
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I think you nailed it.
Comedian Ralphie May bit the dust, heart attack. Unfortunately it was only a matter of time for ralphie as he was a very heavy set individual. He was only 45, leaving a wife and two kids.
At the Oils concert on Wed night they did a tribute to Tom Petty. They sang âI wonât back downâ. It was brilliant.
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Pity he didnât apply the same attitude to his principles.
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That is unfair. Garrett achieved much more as Minister for Conservation than he ever did as President of ACF
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I really enjoyed his first act as minister. Rolling back the solar rebate scheme.
Stand up guy.
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Fair call, and yep he was Minister, but this was down to Swan and Rudd. He did lose a few political battles.
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Yep. Unfortunately being the Minister for something doesnât mean you get your own way and can do what you want to do all the time.
Ultimately I think that is what made him leave politics. Having to be a slave to the party machine was just too much. He tried to change stuff both inside and outside the political tent. He was (potentially) naive to think he would always have the support of the party machine.
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I never find myself in a forgiving mood when it comes to Judas Garrett.
He set himself up (deliberately, with several burnt bridges on the way) as the green crusader from the outside who was going to use his profile to further the cause truest to his heart.
When he was told (and I accept that he was told) to cut the guts out of the solar rebates he should have refused. Publicly and loudly. Resigned if necessary.
The second he put on the labor coat he sold out the cause. He set a horrible, cowardly example.
Change is hard. And he squibbed it. A bloke with means, influence and apparent conviction squibbed it. Hard.
How the fark is anyone without all of that meant to make hard choices?
Sellout Judas.
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That is a hard line to take.
I have never liked parachuting in celebrity candidates and it mostly ends in tears. However to be fair to Garrett, he put in the hard yards in the conservation game, and found that he was actually powerless with a Howard Government doing nothing on the Environment.
As I understand he was promised a free hand by Mark Latham to run Conservation, but of course Lathlam lost and then imploded. Garrett didnât really get on with Rudd and was seen as an outsider. It was pure Labor spite that although he was Conservation Minister, he was lumbered with the shitee jobs, and given little support. But he soldiered on and actually built an environmental awareness to much greater levels in the ALP.
Conservation was taken off him by Gillard, and he was stripped of influence. There was no a lot he could have done better.
I was in Margaret River last year and he played at the local pub. He was in great voice, and I asked him about his life after politics. He has no bitterness and a new reality on how to get things done.
So Ding, try to not be so hard on him. He put his hand up, tried as hard as he could, fought a political machine, a capitalist system who cares little about climate change, and did some good.
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*did some good.
(Unfortunate typos on Blitz. No 4369 )
Couldnât agree more BF, Itâs almost the exact post I wanted to make.
But I have laid out the arguments in long form on PG and his tenure too many times to remember over the years, & ICBF doing it again.
Many out there still blame him for the Insulation installing deaths as well, and are completely unaware of the many letters he sent to Rudd describing the NZ experiences and imploring him to slow that part of it up until a much more rigorous certification process could be implemented, and that KRudd ended up lambasting him for it and riding roughshod straight over him, blindly ignoring his concerns.
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FWIW, I never thought he was responsible for the insulation deaths.
Goes to my point though that he should have just said no. To that and SRS rollback.
Even Labor would have found it hard to hatchet Peter Garret.
But they did
He could have hurt them more than they hurt him.
Iâd guess there were a lot of machine men that resented a Green getting a parachute, particularly from Latham.
When you become a Labor pollie, you sign your life away.
Surely that was KRudd. But I blame Rudd for nearly everything, including T Abbott, and anything Abbott did later.
I like The Spy Who Came In From the Cold for showing where blind, absolute loyalty gets you.
The only ones responsible for insulation deaths were the crooked contractors who people to their death