The Tom Petty album Rick Rubin walked out of: “That infuriated me”
There isn’t a rule that says every producer has to like whichever band they’re working with. It’s a job just like any other one, and the goal is to help the talent improve everything that they have for when the time comes for the red lights to come in the studio. While Rick Rubin has spent the better part of his career honing that kind of talent, Tom Petty remembered that he couldn’t even be bothered to show up when working on the album Echo.
Almost a decade prior, though, Rubin had already started cementing himself as one of the biggest Tom Petty fans in the world. It might not make the most sense for the producer behind Slayer and Beastie Boys to become a heartland rocker, but he knew that he had to work with Petty at some point after listening to Full Moon Fever, which marked his first major solo outing outside the Heartbreakers.
Once Rubin did sign on to produce Wildflowers, he wasn’t exactly interested in building tracks like Jeff Lynne had. No, this had to be authentic, which meant that every member of the Heartbreakers sans drummer Stan Lynch was brought in to work on it, making songs like ‘You Wreck Me’ and the title track sound absolutely magical.
Since the good vibes were still rolling, Rubin stuck around for the leftovers soundtrack album for She’s the One, but as soon as Petty filed for divorce, things started taking a drastic turn. Despite knowing that it was coming, Petty started to detach himself from the studio on Echo, spending his days wasting away in a chicken shack while also worrying about bassist Howie Epstein falling prey to his own demons.
While the music was still fantastic on tunes like ‘Room at the Top’ and ‘Free Girl Now’, Rubin couldn’t bear to see the rest of the project through, eventually leaving halfway through mixing. Although the lion’s share of the work had already been done, Petty was furious that Rubin would just leave the entire band out to dry.
When discussing the problems with Echo, Petty recalled how pissed he was that Rubin would wash his hands of the operation, saying in Petty: The Biography, “We got up to do the mix on that record, and Rick left, right when we were going to mix. That infuriated me. So I mixed the record with Richard Dodd and [guitarist] Mike [Campbell]. And I changed the production credits to ‘Produced by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell with Rick Rubin. Which pissed Rick off. But I thought, ‘If you don’t mix the record, you’re not the producer.’”
Despite boasting some of Rubin’s minimalist touch behind the board, it does make a little bit of sense why he wasn’t in the picture anymore. Petty had created a record that was much more raw than he could have predicted, and hearing him front and centre as he discusses his problems is something that none of his other Rubin albums could really boast.
Petty would later disown Echo because of its dreary tone, but looking back on it, it’s a fascinating look into his state of mind in one of his darkest hours. After all, music is the best medicine for emotional problems, and since Petty came out on the other side, it was far from a total wash.
