“I love that song”: The alt-rock track Tom Petty always wanted to make
Tom Petty never stopped being a fan of rock and roll music. He may have had his traditional Bob Dylan and Byrds records to return to, but he kept his ear close to the ground even when times seemed bleakest for his brand of heartland rock. But when the 1990s rolled around, it turned out that his spirit was an unintended blueprint for what half of the alt-rock bands had wanted to do since the beginning.
Because if Neil Young was considered ‘The Godfather of Grunge’, Petty may as well have been the cool uncle of the Seattle scene. He certainly wasn’t going to be making any of the massive riffs that Soundgarden or Alice in Chains pumped out, but when he first heard what the new kids were doing, he figured that they were working from the playbook that he had initially started with when he made his debut record. And looking at how the rest of the world responded to Wildflowers, it’s not like he didn’t have a good reason to think that.
At the same time that grunge was taking over the charts, the soft rock sphere was also going through its fair share of shakeups. There had been people like Michael Bolton who brought layers upon layers of prime Gouda to the equation, but once bands like REM started to break onto the scene, the time had come for people like Counting Crows to start pulling from people like Petty when establishing their own sound.
And let’s not forget about the country-rock crowd. While Petty was never particularly aligned with country, he always had a healthy respect for all kinds of American music, and when he saddled up with Johnny Cash for a record, it didn’t take long for aspiring country artists to pull from what he was doing. But in terms of artists he could co-sign, Petty kept it more in the musical family.
He had his ears laser-focused on bands like Nirvana and had even asked Dave Grohl to play drums with him, but his fellow Wilbury Bob Dylan had already had him focus on his son’s band, The Wallflowers. And while Jakob Dylan sounds absolutely nothing like his old man when singing songs like ‘One Headlight’, Petty felt that some of his tunes were good enough to warrant covering.
“I got that record really early on before it came out, and I thought it was damn good. I played it over and over and over again. I love that song ‘Invisible City’ that they never put out as a single.”
Tom Petty
Although his flirtation with alt-rock songs like Beck’s ‘Asshole’ was short-lived, Petty felt like a proud uncle listening to what Jakob could do on his own, saying, “I got that record really early on before it came out, and I thought it was damn good. I played it over and over and over again. I love that song ‘Invisible City’ that they never put out as a single. But I was going to do that song. I’m really proud that things went so well for him.”
Then again, the deep cuts kept artists like Petty going. The label might not see the power in a song like ‘Invisible City’, but it serves its purpose as one of their hidden gems the same way that people would have to go searching for tracks like ‘Southern Accents’ and ‘All the Wrong Reasons’ in Petty’s catalogue once they get past those first singles.
But above anything else, there’s a certain romance in listening to The Wallflowers’ music that was always evident whenever Petty played. Not all of it was easy to listen to, and it could be more than a little bit heartbreaking in the right place, but all it serves to do is remind you of why that heart beats in the first place.
