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Sun 1 February 2026 0:30, UK
The music Tom Petty made was never about trying to make some of the most groundbreaking songs ever made.
Rock and roll came naturally to him whenever he strapped on his guitar, and no matter what kind of tune he was working on, he was going to make sure to fine-tune everything so that it sounded like the perfect pop tune by the time he walked out of the studio. He may have had the rest of the Heartbreakers helping him polish all of those tunes, but he knew that sometimes the best partnerships needed a little bit of space if they were going to survive for the long haul.
This probably explains why he had a wilderness period of working without the rest of the band. Ever since the days of Damn the Torpedoes, Petty was always butting heads with Stan Lynch when sorting out how the drums should sound, but after working with Bob Dylan for a few years on the road, Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) was one of the first times where his songwriting sounded tired. All he needed was a break, and working alongside legends like the Traveling Wilburys certainly didn’t hurt.
Because when you think about it, Petty’s time working with George Harrison, Dylan and Roy Orbison may as well have been a rock and roll fantasy come to life. Not everyone gets the chance to see some of their favourite writers practice their craft in front of them, and even if those Wilburys tunes weren’t the most thoughtful lyrics in the world, you can hear the fun that all of them were having when putting together tunes like ‘End of the Line’ and ‘Handle With Care’.
So it’s no surprise that Petty didn’t want the fun to stop once that first record was over. He and Jeff Lynne had hit it off when they started writing tunes together, and when ‘Yer So Bad’ and ‘Free Fallin’ started taking shape, they clearly weren’t Heartbreakers songs. This was Petty’s chance to go solo for the first time, and while Full Moon Fever was one of the finest works of his career, there were bound to be some hiccups along the way when they started working on Into the Great Wide Open.
The rest of the band weren’t exactly thrilled with the way that Lynne worked, and while the album had some of the finest tunes of their career, like ‘Learning to Fly’ and the title track, it’s not like Petty couldn’t see problems ahead. Lynne was a great producer, but he wasn’t going to find himself in a rut a few years down the line and being uninspired every time he went into the studio.
He already experienced that with Jimmy Iovine, and when it came time to work on Wildflowers, Petty felt that Lynne needed to go, saying, “We were making a certain kind of record. If we did any more, it wasn’t a great idea. I felt I have to take off on my own, see what all this adds up to.” And watching him run from Lynne straight to someone like Rick Rubin ended up being one of the best choices he could have hoped for.
Rubin wasn’t a traditional producer in the same way that Lynne was, but he was instrumental in finding the right takes when working on what would become Wildflowers. He values the raw performances behind every single song, and even if not a lot is happening in a tune like ‘Crawling Back To You’, you can practically feel the tension in the air as the band lets the music carry them to a different place.
Working with Lynne seemed like a match made in heaven for the longest time, but Petty’s need to cut him loose should really be a message to any band that feels too comfortable whenever they make a record. It’s one thing to have a certain sound that you keep coming back to, but when you know exactly what you’re going to get out of a person before a record even starts, it’s probably time to change times up a bit.
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