The cover so good it made Tom Petty wish he’d never sung the original: “Written for him”
Although artists often give their songs away to many of their fellow musicians to see how they sound, there’s a certain magic that comes from hearing someone alone with their instrument singing what they feel in their heart. Although Tom Petty had more than his fair share of perfect performances under his belt, there was one song that he thought did it better than him.
In the 1990s, Petty’s momentum in the rock and roll scene was only continuing to gather pace. After soldiering his way through the ’80s, he was starting to become one of the respected rock veterans in the era of grunge, bringing the exact authenticity to his music that those out of Seattle were trying to emulate.
After he flirted with creating perfect records with Jeff Lynne, Wildflowers was the first album where Petty began to harness his creativity again. With the help of the rest of the Heartbreakers, most of the album features the most lived-in songs of Petty’s catalogue, from the massive blues jam on ‘Honey Bee’ to the tender beauty of ballads such as the title track and ‘To Find a Friend’.
Since the band were enjoying the ride, producer Rick Rubin thought Petty would be interested in working with another one of the artists on his roster. Immediately after working on Wildflowers, Rubin began the second instalment in Johnny Cash’s American series of albums and asked Petty to play bass in a recording session.
As Rubin would later tell Runnin’ Down a Dream, “By the end of the day, all the Heartbreakers were there. They ended up being Johnny’s backup band for that album”. Even though the album would feature Cash interpreting Petty’s ‘Southern Accents’ for the album, one of Cash’s best performances would be saved for a later date.
While the Heartbreakers would go their separate ways with ‘The Man in Black’ over the years, they always helped him in the studio whenever they got the chance, with guitarist Mike Campbell laying down the haunting guitar figure on the studio version of ‘Hurt’. As Cash neared the end of his life, though, his last handful of albums would feature many cover songs, including many from classic rock’s past.
Amid his interpretations of artists like Eagles and The Beatles, Cash would turn in a version of the tune ‘I Won’t Back Down’, delivered an octave lower than Petty had originally sung it. While Petty had been initially hesitant to release the song in the first place in the late 1980s, he thought that Cash’s version couldn’t be topped.
When talking about Cash’s version, Petty remembered, “It made me wish I had never done it. It was done with such conviction that it sounded like it had been written for him to sing”. Granted, Petty’s straightforward delivery on the initial version had a lot in common with Cash’s unmistakable style of writing.
Although Johnny Cash was never happy to stick to one side of the road, the singer used his iconic vocal to sing songs from across the musical spectrum. He always managed to make music not only sound exactly like the beating heart of his own character but thud with the same intensity of his soul.
Because of this ability to transcend sound and genre, he is, in fact, one of the undoubted best at covering other people’s material. As able to evoke emotion from reggae as he is the most recognisable ballad of all time, Johnny Cash has a habit of making others’ work more powerful, more emotional and, simply put, more Cash. It’s proof of Cash’s ability to assimilate himself with every kind of music.
While the Heartbreakers were never too far away from the genre of country, the cut-and-dry delivery of Petty on every song is indebted to Cash’s glory days, such as how he talked about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. Given the legacy Petty already had amassed the time, getting the seal of approval from Cash was one of the highest compliments imaginable and another feather in his cap.
