The Right Mood: the song Rick Rubin called “a perfect moment in time”
Every artist making an album is always shooting for perfection. Few of them actually get there, but every now and again, there are those moments where everything seems to be flowing in just the right direction, and every musician is giving their best to make the song that much better. Rick Rubin may have been able to see some of these moments up close, but he admitted that working with Tom Petty was as close to perfect as he was going to get.
Throughout the first half of Rubin’s career, though, Petty was the antithesis of the music he would choose to listen to. He was born to be a punk rocker, but Petty was the same guy who was pumping out the same style of rock and roll that pleased too many dads to be considered all that cool.
Petty did have that punk spark in him when he wanted to. He may not have had that rough exterior that someone like John Lydon flaunted. Still, Petty was just as likely to disrupt the system if things didn’t go according to plan, including going up against his record label when he found they were screwing him out of royalties.
By the time Rubin had begun to mellow out, he knew he needed to work with the same guy who made Full Moon Fever, remembering that he played it millions of times in the car. Petty may not have been available right then, but good things come to those who wait.
After finishing Into the Great Wide Open, Petty wanted a more authentic sound for his next solo record when Rubin came into the picture. Wanting to get back in touch with his roots, Rubin took Petty back to the same studio he recorded Damn the Torpedoes to get the best sound he was looking for.
Although Wildflowers would become one of the greatest highlights of Petty’s later career, Rubin felt that ‘Hard On Me’ was among the best tracks he had ever worked on. Never a single, the song is one of the most authentic lyrics that Petty would ever write about a doomed relationship, which is especially poignant given that he divorced his wife shortly after the recording happened.
For Rubin, this was all of the emotion that great tracks thrive on, saying in Rick Rubin in the Studio, “It’s one of the first songs we cut together, so it’s got some emotional relevance to me personally. Both the song is good, the tone is great, and the mood of the performance just captures the song perfectly. It’s a perfect moment in time.”
Since the last few records Petty made with Jeff Lynne were beautiful for what they were, they did have a bit too much polish on some songs. Here, you can hear every single note perfectly, almost like you’re in the room watching them perform the piece and coming up with little pieces of magic on the spot. Many Tom Petty records are built on capturing a certain feeling, but given how well this works as a deep cut, it makes sense why Petty said the album scared him because of how good it was.
