The Tom Petty classic influenced by Steve Miller
Tom Petty once said he was almost scared by how good Wildflowers turned out. After having a second wind with the success of albums like Full Moon Fever, Petty’s choice to work with Rick Rubin on his second solo album made for some of the most refined songs of his career, putting both the hard rock flair and the calm acoustic side of himself under one roof. While the album might have been great from top to bottom, it wasn’t exactly the most single-friendly for radio.
Although some Petty classics are sprinkled throughout the tracklisting, like ‘You Wreck Me’, his new label Warner Bros didn’t think there was anything great to sell to the radio. It’s not like they didn’t have a point either, with most of the tracks being on the acoustic side and morphing into jam sessions sometimes.
Looking to put together a hit, Mike Campbell remembered Petty returning to the drawing board while listening to The Steve Miller Band, recalling in the Wildflowers documentary, “There was a discussion between me, Rick and Tom that there wasn’t really a hit on this record. And somebody said, ‘what sounds like a hit?’ and somebody else said, ‘That Steve Miller song ‘The Joker’’. Tom went home with that idea and then came back with a song”.
What fell out of Petty was ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’, sporting the same laid-back tempo as the Steve Miller tune with a completely different vibe behind it. Unlike Miller’s song being a braggadocious claim about his history, Petty prefers to talk to his lover as they roll another joint and turn the radio up as loud as it will go.
Although the tune might have been great, the only thing missing was a drummer. Since Stan Lynch didn’t take to the material and would soon be fired from the group, the band started bringing in makeshift drummers to fill the time. Though Petty had worked with great drummers like session legend Jim Keltner and Ringo Starr, it wasn’t until Steve Ferrone sat behind the kit that he knew they were onto something.
Ferrone remembered the whole thing as a bizarre form of auditioning, telling Runnin Down a Dream, “I was bringing my stuff up to the studio, and as I was walking in, another drummer was walking out. He had me go in, and the first song that we did was ‘You Don’t Know How it Feels’”. According to Petty, he was shocked by how quickly the song came together with Ferrone, claiming, “he went down and played the track once without hearing it, and we got a take. And I was like ‘that’s what I’m talking about’”.
Although Lynch and Ferrone had two fundamentally different styles, Ferrone’s adapting of The Heartbreakers’ old material worked wonders when the band went on the road again. From that point forward, Rubin saw Petty’s demeanour change regarding the drums, saying, “It looked like he was comfortable for once. Like he didn’t have to worry about the drums anymore”.
Despite writing all the songs on the record and even writing ‘Feels’ on commission from the rest of the group, Petty always maintained that the album was as much about The Heartbreakers as it was about him. Though it bears his name on the front, pianist Benmont Tench remembers Petty always coming back to the band dynamic, recalling, “He would often come up to all of us and say ‘Wildflowers was the best record we ever made’, because, at that point, all of the band was playing on it”.
