“In my life”: Tom Petty on the favourite records of his career
Artists who have been around as long as Tom Petty was don’t really think about trying to make another smash hit every time they go into the studio. The heartland rocker already had plenty of songs in the pipeline to fill out a greatest hits setlist, and whenever he came back to the studio, it was his opportunity to put in some songs for the touring setlist and maybe even create that next piece of solid gold. Although Petty had a great backing group to stand in front of, he admitted that one of the best records that he was involved with didn’t have half of the Heartbreakers on it.
Granted, it’s not like Petty had to rely on the Heartbreakers for everything he did. He knew he wanted a specific group behind him when he first started cutting his teeth as a songwriter, and when Mudcrutch fell through, he folded half of the members into the Heartbreakers later. But after only a decade, he felt the need to work with some fresh blood.
Southern Accents already saw him working outside the norm by bringing in Dave Stewart from Eurythmics to write on the album, but by the time the Traveling Wilburys officially began, he was interested in making something authentic to himself when he made Full Moon Fever with Jeff Lynne. That sound didn’t exactly gel with the Heartbreakers’ live sound, but when they came back on to record on Wildflowers, Petty had made one of the most sophisticated productions of his career.
When you’ve spent time layering one guitar part after another, though, there comes a moment where things need to get stripped back down. Even when Petty started to fall back down to Earth by making an acoustic-based record on Highway Companion, he knew that he needed to get in touch with his bar band roots, and that meant building bridges with his first band from long ago.
Although Mudcrutch never had a fair shot in the 1970s, Petty resurrected them with fellow Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell for a record. As much as the album is indebted to their roots in the Florida rock scene in the 1970s, hearing them interpolate the bluegrass anthem ‘Shady Grove’ and play through some heavy rock on ‘Scare Easy’ was a look at the darker side of the pictures that didn’t show its face very often.
Even when Petty started to find his way back to his true love, he felt that Mudcrutch was one of his personal favourite records, saying, “I got the Mudcrutch album done, and I thought, shit, this is one of my favourite records I ever made in my life. And it was made in about two weeks. I wanted to get back to just performing in the studio so that if we went onstage, we can exactly recreate it. It’s just six guys playing, right? You couldn’t do this kind of record without a unit like that, that can really communicate with each other without talking too much.”
And that telepathy is apparent in every one of the backing tracks. The picking riff in ‘Shady Grove’ is no walk in the park to play in unison, and considering how well Campbell works off of Tom Leadon on the instrumental ‘June Apple’ is proof that they took a few cues from how the Allman Brothers Band used to harmonise their guitars.
Petty may have left Mudcrutch songs as a separate entity, but there’s a reason why he ended up coming back to that live sound when working on Mojo. Anyone can spend time piling on guitar overdubs, but the measure of any great act is being able to capture that energy playing off each other.
