‘Wildflowers’: The Tom Petty album that predicted his divorce
Music is a unique art form, capable of showing you parts of yourself that you never knew existed, thoughts and feelings from your deepest subconscious that seem to spew out onto the page. This is particularly true of deeply introspective songwriters like Tom Petty. He might have penned some of the most upbeat and iconic rock songs of the 1970s and 1980s alongside The Heartbreakers, but if you pay attention to the lyricism of the Florida musician, he regularly explored the inner-most reaches of his feelings and subconscious, most notably on his 1994 solo album Wildflowers.
His second solo record, created without The Heartbreakers, Wildflowers came at a pivotal point in Petty’s career as well as his personal life. At the time, the songwriter had finished working with The Traveling Wilburys, which saw him achieve many of his lifelong goals as an artist, including working with George Harrison. That era coming to an end must have been difficult for Petty, particularly when viewed in addition to the issues Petty was facing within his personal life, with regard to his marriage with Jane Benyo Petty, who he had been with since 1974.
The relationship between Petty and Benyo was tumultuous at the best of times, as you might expect for a world-famous rock star touring the world while taking copious amounts of drugs. When Benyo was also introduced to the world of drug use, the pair’s relationship became increasingly strained and argumentative.
As you might expect, Wildflowers is among Petty’s most vulnerable and emotional records, with many of the songs included on the record dealing with themes of loss and isolation. The album’s title track, for instance, might sound like a fairly upbeat love song upon initial listening, but when viewed within the context of Petty’s life at the time, was clearly hinting at something a little more heartbreaking.
The creation of that song seems to support this idea, with Petty once revealing, “I just took a deep breath, and it came out. The whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it.” That would certainly seem to suggest that ‘Wildflowers’ was lying dormant within the mind of Petty, just waiting for an opportunity to be released out into the world. You could take this idea further and suggest that Petty was keeping many of his complexities and emotions bottled up, only relieving the valve every now and then when in need of songwriting inspiration.
The following few years after Wildflowers was released, many of Petty’s thoughts and anxieties expressed on the album became a reality. Two years after its release, Petty and Benyo filed for divorce. In the wake of that divorce, the songwriter struggled with drug addiction, particularly heroin use, which dramatically impacted his life. This period of dark addiction and deep depression certainly put Wildflowers in a different light, knowing that he must have been going through similar emotions when writing that record.
Indeed, if you look at Petty’s next major project after that 1996 divorce, The Heartbreakers’ 1999 album Echo, that record largely deals with the sad aftermath of the demise of his relationship with Benyo. In many ways, Wildflowers and Echo represent very similar atmospheres and emotions, almost as though the two records are companion pieces to each other.
Thankfully, Petty did recover from his heroin addiction with the help of then-girlfriend Dana York, who he would later marry in 2001. The singer regularly credited his wife with saving his life, and his later sobriety would be reflected in the quality of work he produced during the 2000s and 2010s until his passing in 2017.
