"Handle with Care" is a song by the British-American supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. It was released in October 1988 as their debut single and as the opening track of their album Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. The song was the first recording made by the group, although it was originally intended as a bonus track on a European single by George Harrison. When he and Jeff Lynne presented the song to Harrison's record company, the executives insisted it was too good for that purpose, a decision that resulted in the formation of the Wilburys. The song was written primarily by Harrison, although, as with all the tracks on Vol. 1, the writing credit lists all five members of the band: Harrison, Lynne, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty.
"Handle with Care" was the Wilburys' most successful single. It peaked at number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, number 2 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart and number 21 on the UK Singles Chart, and was a top-five hit in Australia and New Zealand. Directed by David Leland, the video for the song was an MTV favourite in the late 1980s.
Petty and his band the Heartbreakers often performed "Handle with Care" in concert. Lynne sang it with them at the Concert for George, a year after Harrison's death in November 2001. Harrison's son Dhani Harrison sang lead on the song with Jeff Lynne's ELO during their 2019 US tour.
Background
"Handle with Care" came about through Warner Bros. Records, which distributed George Harrison's Dark Horse record label, pressing Harrison for an extra track for the European release of his "This Is Love" single. Having arrived in Los Angeles in April 1988, Harrison discussed the request over dinner with Jeff Lynne, his co-producer on the Cloud Nine album, and Roy Orbison, whose album Mystery Girl Lynne was producing at the time. Lynne agreed to help him record the track the following day, and Harrison invited Orbison to attend the session, after Orbison had said he "would like to come along and watch". With no professional studios available at such short notice, Harrison phoned Bob Dylan, who agreed to let them use his garage studio in Malibu. Tom Petty, who had also been working with Lynne in Los Angeles, was invited the following day, when Harrison went to retrieve his guitar from Petty's house.
In a 1990 interview for the Dutch television show Countdown, Harrison said that he started writing "Handle with Care" – with a section in mind for Orbison to sing – on the morning of the session. Lynne helped Harrison complete the music for the song when they arrived at Dylan's house; according to Petty, Harrison had the chord sequence "pretty much" completed beforehand. In another contemporary interview, Harrison recalled that he had the opening line, "Been beat-up and battered around", but otherwise, the lyrics were the result of a group effort. Harrison asked Dylan, who had been tending a barbecue for the musicians, to "Give us some lyrics, you famous lyricist." When Dylan asked for a title for the song, Harrison looked around the garage and said, "Handle with Care", after a label on a box.
All five musicians assisted in writing the song's lyrics, and sang and played acoustic guitars on the basic track. Harrison said that, having already planned Orbison's segment, he decided to include portions sung by Dylan, Lynne and Petty.
Composition
"Handle with Care" was written in the key of G major. The main riff and verses feature a four-bar chord sequence with a descending bass line. The first bridge includes a G augmented chord. The time signature throughout is 4/4, played to a moderate rock beat. In music journalist Matthew Greenwald's description, the composition is "built around a descending, folk-rock chord pattern and some ... major-key chorus movements". He identifies the song's message as being "about getting out from under the shell of the '60s fallout, along with a strong theme of survival".