The live career of Jeff Lynne and Electric Light Orchestra unfortunately ended with a whimper instead of a bang, when Lynne had to cancel the final two concerts because of illness. So the July 9th show in Manchester ended up being the final bow of ELO. But, at least that night featured two great covers.
Dhani Harrison, the opening act for the final shows, joined Lynne and his band mates for covers of two Traveling Wilburys classics. Harrison’s father, George, was part of the super group. The other members included Lynne as well as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and, on the first album, Roy Orbison.
Harrison (Dhani, not George) joined Lynne for “End of the Line,” which is a pretty fitting song to wrap up a career as a live act. The two also played “Handle with Care.” The songs were pretty close to the original (given in no small part to the fact that Harrison’s singing voice sounds a lot like his dad) and you can clearly tell the audience was thrilled and having a great time, given the number of voices joining in the choruses of both songs.
Both songs were from Traveling Wilburys, vol 1. The 1988 album started as a recording session for a B-side to a single from George Harrison’s Cloud 9 album, which was produced by Lynne. Below is the video for “End of the Line,” from the July 9th show. The performance of “Handle with Care” comes from the July 6th show in Birmingham.
