In addition to the lack of harmonica visuals and lack of guitar-solo visuals, someone harmonizes with Harrison on the last verse, but no one is shown singing along with him in the video.

Rob’s Wilbury review was in the magazine, not the record guide. Here’s a link. Questions for further study: Why did Full Moon Fever come out so well? Was it just that Petty had a firmer idea of how he wanted it to sound? And why has Lynne’s 1970s work (with ELO) aged so much better than his 1980s productions?

I haven’t listened to Volume One in a long time, but I pulled out Volume 3 (which I always preferred) last night, which confirmed my suspicions on the Wilburys: the funny songs (like “Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” “Wilbury Twist,” and “Cool Dry Place”) have aged well, the rest of it hasn’t.

By the way, I assume that harmonica solo was Dylan’s, because really, if he’s hanging around, why would anybody else do it?

I could’ve brought this up on your Glenn Frey post, but it’s even more clear here: You know what really dates this countdown? The inclusion of music appealing primarily to people over 30. And I kind of miss it; I was 17 in 1988, but I liked the Wilburys back then, and it didn’t seem weird or embarrassing to me that it was cheek-by-jowl with the likes of Pet Shop Boys.

Sure, VH1 existed in 1988 — I believe it was around three years old — and clearly this got a lot of play there, but that didn’t automatically disqualify a video from some lesser amount of straight MTV play. Of course, that was when both MTV and VH1 filled their days largely with music videos and thus needed a wider selection.

And of course, nowadays, even VH1 (forget MTV) is going for a demographic too young for this video. Not that either channel plays videos anymore. Ah, crap, now I’m starting to sound really old and grumpy.

It also seems, in retrospect, like Lynne’s prototype for every production job he did from the late ’80s to the mid-’90s: Harrison’s Cloud Nine (which actually precedes the Wilburys), Petty’s solo record, Lynne’s own solo record, and least successfully, the Beatles’ 1995 comeback. I’d say “Handle With Care,” as heavy-handed/thudding Lynne productions go, is up the middle: not as desecrating as “Free as a Bird” (a not-bad Lennon song badly marred by Lynne’s attempts to turn it into the Reclamation Of George Harrison project), not as deft and smooth as Full Moon Fever. On “Handle,” the double-tracking Lynne puts on Keltner’s downbeat at the end of every stanza is some kind of dreary metaphor for the boxy sound of late-’80s production.

P.S. You’re so right about Ringo. Unless the music video for Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” is a bit of fakery, Ringo obviously is tight enough with that gang to play drums when asked. And that song came out, like, six months after this one! Nothing against Keltner, but why didn’t they just get Ringo?