‘Into the Great Wide Open’: wonderfully evergreen Tom Petty songs that live on forever
No artist is really the judge of which of their songs are going to stand the test of time. They can certainly try their best to make songs that people can relate to whenever they make a record, but it’s up to the audience whether they are going to be celebrated in the same breath as music legends or be relegated to the bargain bins. Even though Tom Petty had already made some of his best tracks in the 1970s, he was one of the few legends in classic rock whose craft kept getting better with time.
But for any established artist, getting better over time is a lot easier said than done. Even if there are more daring projects people want to take on in their later life, it’s clear that people like Roger Waters may have been way over their heads when he felt that it was time to revamp an album like Dark Side of the Moon for the next generation. But for Petty, it was all about writing the next great song.
And it’s not like he didn’t have great teachers to learn from. While the heartland rocker had already been taking lessons from people like Leon Russell before he even began working on his first album, rubbing elbows with every member of the Traveling Wilburys probably didn’t hurt when it came to crafting his next batch of tunes. As it turned out, though, Petty found out he didn’t need his band, either.
After making Full Moon Fever with Jeff Lynne, Petty earned some of the biggest hits of his career, like ‘Free Fallin’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’, but there were still moments where things felt hollow. The record might have stood well on its own as Petty’s first proper solo outing, but it wasn’t going to be a perfect fit unless he had the rest of his band filling out the space around him.
Then again, it’s hard to see Into The Great Wide Open as an extension of Full Moon Fever in some respects, with Lynne being back on production duties with the rest of the band in tow. Listening to it in context, there are pieces of the record that best what Petty did on his own, like hearing them cutting loose on ‘Out in the Cold’ and ‘Makin’ Some Noise’ and even managing to make ‘Free Fallin’ sound even better on the near-identical track ‘All The Wrong Reasons’.
Even if Petty has his personal favourite albums in his catalogue, he had to admit that Into the Great Wide Open had yet to wear out its welcome with him, saying, “That record gave us some of our most evergreen songs. It’s our biggest album in Europe. But suddenly, we were in a business where you could feel bad about selling only a few million records and recording some songs that live forever.”
But so what if the songs weren’t bumped up to iconic status? Petty still had a few great singles off the record like ‘Learning to Fly’, and even if not every track had the same immediacy as his previous outing, tunes like ‘King’s Highway’ only seem to get better with time, with every generation resonating with songs about going out on the open road dreaming of something bigger on the edge of the skyline.
Wildflowers may have been right around the corner and was about to flip everything on its head, but Into the Great Wide Open feels like the perfect bridge between the glossy and rustic sides of Petty’s sound. It may not have soared as high as his last record, but was anyone complaining when they still could sing along to the title track?
