1989: All You Had to Do Was Stay

The year that longevity topped the charts

Welcome to the 1989 project, where each month we’ll start with a Taylor Swift song from her 2014 album, 1989, and leap from that to music that was released or charted in the year 1989.

It’s May of 2025, which means the next song on Taylor Swift’s 1989 album is Track 5:

People like you always want back the love they gave away
And people like me wanna believe you when you say you've changed
The more I think about it now, the less I know
All I know is that you drove us off the road

~”All You Had to Do Was Stay” - T.S.

That first line reminds me of something…

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

I suppose it’s fitting to reference the last line of the last album the Beatles recorded in 1969, because 20 years later, a lot of the Beatles turned up again.

And this time, they brought friends.

Jeff Lynne on Cloud Nine

Once upon a time, a working-class kid named Jeff from Birmingham, England, wanted to be a musician. He grew up watching the Beatles explode on the world stage, and after “The End”, he found himself in a band of his own. The Electric Light Orchestra started as a project to combine rock with classical music, and led to a string of hits in the late 1970s- early 1980s.

In 1986, George Harrison (formerly of The Beatles) asked Jeff to co-produce a new album with him. George had taken a break from making music during the early 1980s and invited several friends to join him on this new project: Jim Keltner and Ringo Starr on drums, Eric Clapton on guitar, and both Gary Wright and Elton John on piano.

Cloud Nine, Harrison’s 11th album, was released in November 1987, and the second hit single, “When We Was Fab,” was a slice of Beatles nostalgia with a video replete with easter eggs for the fans. (Not that we knew the term “easter eggs” in 1987.)

A few months later, Harrison was in Los Angeles to record a B-side for a single to be released in Europe. To crib from the Wikipedia version of events:

Jeff Lynne was also in Los Angeles writing and producing some tracks for Roy Orbison on his album Mystery Girl …as well as Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever. While having dinner with Lynne and Orbison, Harrison related how he needed to record a new track and wanted to do it the next day. Harrison asked if Lynne would help, and Orbison offered his old friend his hand as well, seeing how fun it would be. Needing a studio at short notice, Harrison called Bob Dylan, who agreed to let them use his garage studio. After dinner, Harrison stopped by Petty’s house to pick up a guitar he had left there, and invited Petty along as well. Gathering at Dylan’s Malibu home the following day, Harrison, Lynne, Orbison and Petty worked on a song that Harrison had started writing for the occasion, "Handle with Care". At first, Dylan's role was that of a host, maintaining a barbecue to feed the musicians; at Harrison's invitation, Dylan then joined them in writing lyrics for the song. The ensemble taped the track on Dylan's Ampex recording equipment, with all five sharing the vocals.

That project quickly grew from one throw-away single to a full album of 9 songs, recorded under the name “Traveling Wilburys,” with each of the famous rock stars adopting a transparent pseudonym - Nelson (Harrison), Otis (Lynne), Lucky (Dylan), Lefty (Orbison), and Charlie T. Jr. (Petty) Wilbury, with drummer Jim Keltner credited as Buster Sidebury.

Released in October 1988, Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 was a big success.

A Tangled Web

Now, we have finally arrived in 1989, and all you had to do was stay!

Orbison’s Mystery Girl was released on 31 January 1989. The single “You Got It” was co-written by Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty, and members of Petty’s band, the Heartbreakers, played on much of the album. Elvis Costello contributed the song "The Comedians," and the album took its title from the track "She's a Mystery to Me", which was written by U2's Bono and The Edge.

Coincidentally, Costello’s album, Spike, was released a week after Mystery Girl, on 6 February 1989. That album featured “Veronica,” the first song I heard on pop radio that I fell in love with. In 1987, Costello began writing with Paul McCartney for the Flowers in the Dirt album, which came out in June 1989. They composed a dozen songs together, including "Veronica" and McCartney’s hit that year, “My Brave Face.”

In April, just a day after what would have been Roy Orbison’s 53rd birthday, Tom Petty released Full Moon Fever. Out of all of these albums, this one is probably still my favorite, thanks to “Free Fallin’” and “I Won’t Back Down.”¹

Bob Dylan’s 26th album, Oh Mercy, was released on 12 September, too, and while Dylan was the least involved Wilbury, even that album was linked to these others through Roy Orbison, who indirectly put Dylan in touch with producer Daniel Lanois through his pal, Bono.

There is no way to argue that this was anything but a tremendous output for aging rockers in a single year. And it is fascinating to trace the inter-relations and friendships between all of these musicians.

Long of Tooth

I am the same age now as Roy Orbison, the oldest Wilbury, was in 1988. At the time, that seemed pretty old to me, but I was only 17. Roy Orbison died at age 52 on 6 December 1988, not long after making those videos above and wrapping up his solo album. The other men were all in their forties, except for the relative infant, 39-year-old Tom Petty.

The Rolling Stones, whose ages in 1989 spanned the same range as the various Wilburys, released Steel Wheels in August that year. I remember hearing the rock DJs on our local stations joking about the “Steel Wheelchairs” tour. Lots of people were making fun of all of these aging rockers for trying to hang on to the old days and keep selling records to grown-up sixties kids clinging to the nostalgia for their glory days.

But the old timers get the last laugh in the end. The success of “When We Was Fab,” along with all of these other projects, led to the 1995 Beatles’ Anthologies. These were also produced by Lynne, using cutting-edge technology to include performances by John Lennon in “new” Beatles songs.² And THAT led to the massive Peter Jackson documentary a couple of years ago.

Even funnier? The Rolling Stones are still touring, even though it has been 35 years (one “Taylor Swift” since 1989) since they were relegated to their “Steel Wheelchairs.”

But the funniest part, and I swear this is true, is their tour’s sponsor:

rollingstones.com/tour - accessed 8 Apr 2025

1. When the latter track was covered by a pitchy tube of Botox and spite related to the illegitimate felon running for president in 2024, it didn’t sound nearly as great as it did in 1989.

2. For the sake of completeness: yes, Lynne also worked on the 2023 “Now and Then” project, the so-called “Last Beatles song”.