Every Petty record would reflect the time it was made in, but in terms of his own career highlights, the music man thought nothing could beat what he did on Wildflowers.
The rest of the group had talked about feeling stifled working on Into the Great Wide Open, so bringing in Rick Rubin to work on the next record was one of the best moves they could have made.
Rubin was already known for helping acts focus on the songs before anything else, and after falling in love with Full Moon Fever, he wanted to get Petty back to his stomping grounds. The heartland rocker was up to the challenge, but even he couldn’t have imagined how much material he had to work with.
Once the album started rolling with the title track, half of the record could be considered Petty’s greatest work. Across every other song, fans get another flavour of what Petty could do as well as pieces that you didn’t even know were possible from him like the hard rocker ‘Honey Bee’ or the singer-songwriter sounds of ‘To Find a Friend’, the latter of which sounds like he’s laying the groundwork for artists like Elliott Smith.
Petty remembered Wildflowers as one of the major highlights of his recording career, telling Paul Zollo, “It’s my favourite, I think, of all of them… It went on a long time but it was very rewarding. It was coming out so good. I think, looking back over all our work, it’s just one of the most satisfying things. There are some other ones I really like, but that one I think is the most me. That’s where I live musically.”
The artist died in 2017 at the age of 66, having suffered a cardiac arrest.
The estate has reissued Petty’s 2010 blues album with The Heartbreakers, ‘Mojo’, with two new songs added to it called ‘Help Me’ and ‘Mystery Of Love’. According to Petty, ‘Mojo’ was “where the band lives when it’s playing for itself.”
Meanwhile, the other new song, ‘What’s The Matter With Louise’, was recorded around the same time as the songs from Petty’s 1994 album ‘Wildflowers’. It is now available for streaming on Amazon Music.
