#Wildflowers tom petty lyrics full

“That was where I was really at the top of my game as far as craft and inspiration colliding at the same moment,” he told Paul Zollo in 2005.

“I probably haven’t even told the band about this yet,” Petty said in 2016, “but they can read about it in Rolling Stone.” His focus on the LP is easy to understand song-for-song, it is perhaps Petty’s single greatest achievement. Over our video call, he shows me the Wildflowers lyric he got tattooed on his forearm a few days after the songwriter’s death, from the song “Crawling Back to You”: “Most things I worry about/ Never happen anyway”.In the final years of his life, Tom Petty spoke often about his plan to re-release his 1994 masterpiece Wildflowers as a double album and then play it straight through on a special tour. “I wasn’t sure what to make of that as it could mean a few different things, but then Tom looked at me and said: ‘Don’t worry, you won!’”įerrone remained with The Heartbreakers until Petty’s death from an accidental drug overdose in 2017. “It was funny, because when it finished Tom turned to Mike and said: ‘Well, what a difference a drummer makes’,” recalls Ferrone with a chuckle.

Ferrone remembers listening back to it for the first time in the studio with Petty, Campbell and Rubin. The first song they recorded together was “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, which went on to be a major hit. That left a vacancy which a number of drummers auditioned for and filled temporarily, including Ringo Starr, but it was Brighton-born Steve Ferrone who most impressed Petty. Stan Lynch had been the Heartbreakers drummer since they formed in 1976, but by the mid-Nineties so much friction had built up between Lynch and Petty that they finally parted ways. With Heartbreakers Tench, guitarist Mike Campbell and bassist Howie Epstein all ending up on Wildflowers, the most significant personnel change was behind the drum kit. “I think emotionally it was great to have new blood around.” “People will tell their life story to a stranger, even when they won’t tell those things to a friend,” points out Tench. And it was easier, perhaps, recording the more personal, introspective songs on Wildflowers with Rick Rubin, a producer he barely knew when they started making the album. Lynne was a hero of Petty’s, and had been his bandmate in supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, but Tench says Petty was looking for a new sound.

#Wildflowers tom petty lyrics full

It was recorded at a transitional time in his life he was privately aware that his 20-year marriage was falling apart, and publicly separating from both his record label MCA and producer Jeff Lynne, who had been instrumental in the creation of his two previous albums, 1989’s Full Moon Fever and 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open. Wildflowers is ostensibly a Petty solo record, although the majority of The Heartbreakers ended up playing on it anyway. “Even on the last tour, if we played a song from Wildflowers he’d say: ‘That’s the best record we ever made’,” remembers Benmont Tench, keyboardist and founding member of Petty’s backing group The Heartbreakers. Tom Petty released a lot of great albums over the course of his four-decade career as one of the great American songwriters, but none meant more to him than 1994’s Wildflowers.