The Tom Petty album Rick Rubin didn’t enjoy making: “There was a frustration”
Any producer’s job is to know the material they are working with intimately. As much as people like to think that the gig is just turning the knobs and making sure the guitars aren’t sounding like they’re being recorded in a trash can, it takes a certain passion to work with an artist and practically serve as the musical coach behind everything in the studio. There are a few moments where things don’t work, though, and Rick Rubin was at the end of his rope once he began work on Tom Petty’s Echo.
While Petty’s post-Wildflowers statement might not have been the record that Rubin wanted to make, it wasn’t the album that Petty probably wanted, either. He had already been through the nightmare of throwing together the soundtrack to the film She’s the One, and now he had to deal with putting out another record while dealing with his recent separation from his wife.
Musicians aren’t dancing monkeys, and you can’t just ask someone in that state to suddenly come up with amazing songs on a whim, especially if it’s someone like Petty. He would gladly go to war with anyone who wanted to side against him, but maybe he thought that getting these songs down on paper was the only way he’d be able to work through his pain.
Honestly, the album doesn’t get off to that bad a start. Half of the record is a truly gripping look at Petty’s heartache, including songs that sound like he’s at his lowest, like ‘Room at the Top’ and the title track. Once the album reaches its end, it starts to sound like Petty is running on fumes half the time, including one song where he doesn’t even bother to get behind the mic on ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’.
Whereas Petty’s previous output was all about making the best music that he could with Rubin as an overseer, the producer said he thought that he could barely get a handle on him anymore, recalling in Petty: The Biography, “Echo was the only time that I saw anything like ego-y behaviour in Tom. I feel like there was a frustration but also a sense of acceptance that this was out of control…He was just in his head more, less open, wearing shades all the time. Just like, separate”.
While Rubin’s knack for sparse arrangements is still on this record, it feels less like a conscious creative decision and more like it’s the only thing the band has to work with. Although Petty managed to lick his wounds and crawl out of the darkness, it would end up being the last full album he would record with Rubin, electing to work with his protege George Drakoulias on the album The Last DJ.
Then again, maybe that turn towards dour material led to Rubin switching things up in the next phase of his career. If you look at the bands that he produced afterwards, like System of a Down and the return of John Frusciante in Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rubin became more fixated on songs that had a lot more tempo and hit you in the face from the moment they started. He may have been following his muse, but chances are, when you see someone as down and out as Petty was during Echo, you will do whatever you can to stay out of that headspace.
