The Tom Petty album Rick Rubin was desperate to match
Rick Rubin is one of music’s great anomalies. How has a man who doesn’t have any technical skills or musical experience become one of the most revered and respected producers in the world? Well, it depends on who you ask; for instance, if you ask Rubin himself, he would tell you that he surrounds himself with the music he loves and is constantly trying to push creativity as far as he can.
“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not,” he said, “It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, ‘I’m not good at being a monk’. You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
Rubin has never put too much pressure on himself when it comes to output. He has always believed that as long as you create the right environment, are happy with what you make, and do so with integrity, the work you produce will reflect your positive attitude toward that work.
That being said, that’s not to say that Rubin doesn’t have standards. A lot of the time, when he was working with artists, they were people he was already fond of, and so he had a standard in mind when it came to producing work with them. One person with whom this happened was Tom Petty.
After recording with Warners Bros Records with the Travelling Wilburys, Petty decided that he wanted to move over to the record label as a solo artist as well. As a fan, the moment Rubin heard that he was moving over to the label, he was keen on working with Tom Petty in a bid to create one of his best albums yet. While they approached the record with a clean slate, there was an album that Rubin was indirectly trying to match during these sessions.
Rubin said that putting together Wildflowers was “Just a casual process of getting together every afternoon for two years.” While recording the music, the album that Rubin constantly had playing in the back of his mind was Full Moon Fever. “I just hoped we could have songs as good as Full Moon,” he said, “But with more rock ‘n’ roll, more personal approach, as opposed to a pop presentation.”
You can tell that Petty felt particularly free on this album. Not having a strict schedule and just living in the album and recording when something struck aligns with Rubin’s traditional method. Petty’s free-flowing state is best reflected in the fact that he decided to release this album just under the name Tom Petty, as opposed to his usual band name, Tomy Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty admitted that they did this because they wanted there to be more freedom attached to the record.
“Rick [Rubin] and I both wanted more freedom than to be strapped into five guys,” Petty explained when discussing the album and this new means of recording.
