How Rick Rubin turned a Tom Petty warm-up riff into a global hit
Rick Rubin has something of a bad reputation these days, and for the life of me, I can’t work out why.
The guy became a legend in at least three forms of pop music, manned the boards for countless classic albums and was directly responsible for high points in the careers of artists as disparate as Slayer, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty and Jay-Z, to name just a few. His CV is among the best in the history of rock production, arguably the best, yet bringing up his name in 2025 leads to some… shall we say, mixed reactions.
At its core, the problem seems to be that people don’t really know what Rubin brings to a project and on the surface, they have a point. With most famed producers, you can identify their influence in every nook and cranny of their work, whichever band happens to be playing. Phil Spector’s wall of sound opulence. Steve Albini’s scraped-knee rawness. The dearly missed Sophie and her distorted, room-quaking synths. Rubin isn’t like those producers.
Thus, he gets pilloried as an industry plant at best and an outright culture-vulture at worst. A lucky chancer who jumps on whatever’s breaking out and claims ownership over it. In a way, they’re not entirely wrong about that, and the first person to tell them that would be Rubin himself. After all, this is the music industry. Talent-scouting and producing is based entirely on luck of the draw that people like the things you advocate for.
However, to say all Rubin does is stand near actually exciting artists and take credit for them is disingenuous. There might have been an argument for it had he only ever stayed in one avenue, but Rubin’s eye for talent has seen him revolutionise the worlds of rock, metal, hip-hop and country. That takes more than just luck, but an eye for real quality that goes far beyond mere instincts, to the point that the leading lights in all those genres take his word as gospel.
Which Tom Petty song did Rick Rubin fall for?
One of the many good examples of this fact comes from when Rubin entered the studio with Tom Petty. You see, Rick Rubin has this uncanny ability to distil the raw essence of whatever band he works with into their music. It was this knack that Petty wanted to draw on, which is why he kept Rubin away from an album with the Heartbreakers and went fully solo again in the early ’90s.
His last solo outing, 1989’s Full Moon Fever, had given his career a proper shot in the arm, and Petty was chasing that same spark a second time.
Thus, he got started writing songs for the record. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Rubin detailed how an errant riff led to the creation of a Tom Petty classic. He said, “Tom sent me demos of about five new songs, and none of them really struck me, honestly, none of them spoke to me.”
Something on the record did speak to Rubin though, something which Petty never intended to be heard by anyone. Rubin’s ears caught on “something that was played between two of the songs, like a warm up”.
He continues, saying, “I drove to Tom’s house. I played it for him and I said ‘listen to this piece, I feel like this is the best thing on the tape. Write this one!”
Petty took those chords, all three bars of them, tops, and created ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ out of them. That chord sequence that Rubin had seen something in turned into one of the biggest chart hits of Tom Petty’s career, heralding one of his biggest hit records, 1994’s Wildflowers.
That’s a knack for quality that goes far beyond mere luck and into something deeper. Something that only Rick Rubin can bring to a record.
