Songfacts®:

• The Traveling Wilburys didn't waste any time when they recorded their first album, Volume One. They had less than two weeks together, so they had to write songs quickly, and whatever they came up with had to stick.
  
  For "Dirty World," George Harrison gave his Wilburys bandmates - Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty - copies of magazines and had them pick out lines from the articles that became the lyrics for the closing section. They recorded this part by standing around a microphone and taking turns singing from the list, with each singer doing whatever item came next. At least one of the magazines was about cars, which explains the "fuel injection" and "five-speed gearbox."
• Bob Dylan sings the verses on this one, delivering it with a wink to the glib lyric built from automotive metaphors for sex ("If you need your oil changed, I'll do it for you free").
• It's clear in this song that the group was having a lot of fun. "It was just a bunch of friends who happened to be really good at making music," Tom Petty said in the documentary The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys.
  
  Tragedy struck when Roy Orbison died from a heart attack months after the album was released, but the other four members continued without him for one more album, Vol. 3 in 1990.