The rock icon Tom Petty was starstruck by: “Can you believe it?”
By any rock star standards, Tom Petty had one of the greatest resumes in the world. While anyone of his generation would have only dreamed of rubbing elbows with rock legends, Petty was one of the few who managed to work with icons like Bob Dylan and George Harrison and actually hold his own amongst the crowd. That doesn’t mean that Petty didn’t have his fanboy moments, and he was practically giddy when he got the chance to work with Carl Perkins on his album Wildflowers.
Considering the pedigree of producer Rick Rubin, it’s strange to see both a heartland rocker and the man behind Slayer and Run-DMC come together. By the time Rubin started producing Petty, he had already started moving to a new sound, and Petty was among his favourite artists he had ever heard after listening to Full Moon Fever.
Rubin wasn’t just looking to make another decent Tom Petty album. He had seen the heights that he had reached before and wanted to create something with a more organic feel to it. After bringing in the rest of the Heartbreakers to complete the album, the band went into the same studio where they recorded Damn the Torpedoes to bring the tracks to life, even including orchestral parts on songs like ‘It’s Good to Be King’ and ‘Wake Up Time’.
Petty hadn’t suddenly entered soft rock territory. He was still known as a rock star for a reason, and tracks like ‘You Wreck Me’ and ‘Honey Bee’ put him in the same company as Neil Young in terms of rockers who were ageing gracefully. No classic rock album is complete without a bluesy stomper, and Petty knew just the guy to call when working on ‘Cabin Down Below’.
While Perkins was still a legend of rock for writing songs like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, he didn’t have nearly the same amount of accolades that people like Elvis Presley and Little Richard had around the same time. That didn’t matter to Petty, who was shellshocked to see him contributing vocals and lead guitar to his song.
According to the owner of Sound City in the documentary of the same name, Petty kept his cool up until Perkins left the room, recalling, “At one point, he just slams his hands on the desk, and just goes, ‘IT’S CARL FUCKING PERKINS! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?”. Granted, that wouldn’t even be the most high-profile person that Petty would work with during this time.
When putting together material for the album, Petty ultimately chose to have Carl Wilson come down to the sessions, providing vocals on ‘Hung Up and Overdue’, which would end up on the soundtrack to She’s the One. Just a few years later, Petty would also end up being part of the backing band for Johnny Cash, eventually seeing the country music titan cover his tunes like ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Southern Accents’.
Of all the heroes he worked with, though, Perkins was one of the few who actually played alongside Petty live, eventually doing a few shows with him when the band played gigs at The Fillmore. Despite being a relic of early rock and roll in some people’s eyes, the real auteurs of the genre knew how to bring proper respect to Perkins’s name.
