How Tom Petty “Stumbled” Into the Album He Later Called the “Favorite LP That I’ve Ever Done”

Some of the best moments in musical history happen by accident, and the second studio album by Tom Petty is no exception. The Floridian rock ‘n’ roller released Wildflowers in November 1994 on the heels of several successful, hit-making albums, including Southern Accents (“Don’t Come Around Here No More”), Into the Great Wide Open (“Learning to Fly”), and the compilation album Greatest Hits (“Mary Jane’s Last Dance”).

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After touring extensively and undergoing a personnel change with the dismissal of drummer Stan Lynch, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were effectively on break in 1994. But as Petty explained in a later interview, “It’s very hard for me to take time off. So, I just made an album.” Petty employed über-producer Rick Rubin to help him track songs one by one as he recorded them, which was unlike Petty’s usual album-making process.

The end result was different from the Heartbreakers and Petty’s supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys, but that was never his explicit intention. “I didn’t have any plan,” Petty said. “I just wrote songs and put them down.” In the end, it turned out to be a point of pride in Petty’s career.

Tom Petty Said His Second Solo Album Was Among His Favorites

Intentional or not, Tom Petty created a much different soundscape on Wildflowers than any of his previous works with The Heartbreakers or The Traveling Wilburys. The Wildflowers collection was vast, spanning thoughtful acoustic numbers like the title track to the rocking “You Wreck Me”. Speaking to Paul Zollo, Petty said, “I think it kind of hits every area of music that really speaks to me. It’s got a little rock, some blues, some folk. And I think it’s maybe my favorite LP that I’ve ever done.”

“I think as a whole, it’s a real long piece of music,” Petty continued. “It’s almost seventy minutes long. But that’s the one that really gets me when I hear it. I can kind of go, ‘Wow, I’m really proud of that. That came out exactly like I wanted it to.’”

Rick Rubin’s involvement was a massive help that wasn’t lost on the other members of The Heartbreakers, who still performed on the album despite their outfit officially being “on break.” Mike Campbell later recalled, “We were worried a little bit if we could trust Rick or not to do what we wanted to do and not take it in the wrong direction,” per Rolling Stone.

“I don’t know if ‘worry’ is the right word,” Campbell clarified. “We had to learn to trust him deeply and spiritually with the songs. And then once that happened, we all went along for the ride. We had the freedom to explore.”

That exploration certainly paid off. Wildflowers went triple-platinum, peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and No. 7 in Sweden.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic