Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Tom Petty and the Creation of “Wildflowers”

Transcript

Tom Petty and the Creation of “Wildflowers” · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
0:14
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
0:17
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
0:20
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
0:23
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
0:29
Speaker 1: enjoyed the episode. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to
0:33
Speaker 1: Broken Record. This is the final episode of our first season,
0:37
Speaker 1: and it's a special episode because it's about Tom Petty.
0:41
Speaker 1: Every now and again there is an artist who provides
0:43
Speaker 1: the soundtrack for his or her generation. I think Tom
0:47
Speaker 1: Petty was one of those people. He died in October
0:49
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen after a fortieth anniversary tour with his band
0:53
Speaker 1: The Heartbreakers. Only a few weeks after his passing, Rick
0:57
Speaker 1: Rubin and I met at Rick Studio to talk about
1:00
Speaker 1: Tom Petty, in particular about the contrast between that effortless,
1:04
Speaker 1: laconic California sound and the man behind it. We didn't
1:09
Speaker 1: think of this at the time as something that we
1:10
Speaker 1: would turn into an episode. We were just sitting in
1:13
Speaker 1: the old Bob Dylan tour bus at Shango La, drinking tea.
1:18
Speaker 1: I was never really a Tom Petty fan growing up.
1:20
Speaker 1: I liked more aggressive music before that, punk rock and
1:23
Speaker 1: harder things. He was a little melodic for my taste.
1:26
Speaker 1: And then The Full Moon Fever came out. I remember
1:31
Speaker 1: I bought it after I heard maybe the third or
1:34
Speaker 1: fourth single, which was a lot of singles in a
1:36
Speaker 1: row to be really good, to think, Wow, there's something here.
1:39
Speaker 1: It's like, this is beyond just a good song. And
1:42
Speaker 1: I bought the album, and I remember I listened to
1:43
Speaker 1: it every day, over and over. It was the only
1:45
Speaker 1: CD I had in my car for probably a year.
1:48
Speaker 1: It's perfect driving music. It moved Ricks so much that
1:52
Speaker 1: he wanted to work with Tom Petty, and when Petty
1:54
Speaker 1: signed a new deal with Warner Brothers Records, Moe Austin,
1:57
Speaker 1: the head of Warner Brothers, made that happen. Between nineteen
2:01
Speaker 1: ninety two and nineteen ninety four, Rick and Tom Petty
2:03
Speaker 1: recorded a mid career masterpiece and one of Petty's favorite records, Wildflowers.
2:11
Speaker 1: We started making Wildflowers, which is the album in question,
2:14
Speaker 1: and part of him getting out of his MCA deal
2:18
Speaker 1: a record early was to deliver a greatest hits record,
2:21
Speaker 1: and part of delivering the greatest hits record was to
2:23
Speaker 1: add two new songs to it, and it's hard to
2:26
Speaker 1: write a song to fit in with the greatest songs
2:28
Speaker 1: you've ever written. It's just a difficult task. Almost every
2:32
Speaker 1: time that happens, it doesn't work out well. And we
2:35
Speaker 1: were already working on Wildflowers, and Tom very wisely said,
2:39
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like what we're making here is
2:41
Speaker 1: a very specific body of work, and even though we're
2:48
Speaker 1: in the middle of this, if we have to do
2:50
Speaker 1: songs for the Greatest Hits album, I'd rather do them
2:52
Speaker 1: separately in a separate studio and kind of think of
2:56
Speaker 1: it as its own thing. So while we were set
2:59
Speaker 1: up it Sounds City working on Wildflowers, we set up
3:02
Speaker 1: at Oceanway with slightly different band. The original drummer of
3:07
Speaker 1: the Heartbreakers was in that session, not in the Wildflower sessions,
3:12
Speaker 1: so it was the entire original Heartbreakers, and we did
3:16
Speaker 1: two songs, one of which was Last Dance with Mary Jane,
3:21
Speaker 1: and that was on the Greatest Hits So it was
3:23
Speaker 1: like to write a hit to order for the Greatest
3:26
Speaker 1: Hits album was an unbelievable feat. And then we also
3:29
Speaker 1: recorded at that time with those with that band. Maybe
3:34
Speaker 1: I want to say we probably recorded about fifty songs,
3:36
Speaker 1: just because there was such a machine of a band.
3:41
Speaker 1: They had been a band their whole lives. Have you
3:43
Speaker 1: seen the Peter Bugdanovich documentary, Yeah, really worth seeing. It's
3:48
Speaker 1: like four hours long, and when you watch it you're
3:51
Speaker 1: owed by how many great songs he has, Like one
3:54
Speaker 1: after it's like, how can there be this many good
3:56
Speaker 1: songs from one person? You don't put it together that
3:59
Speaker 1: it's all. So the band had been a band since
4:02
Speaker 1: they were in high school together. All knew each other,
4:05
Speaker 1: they knew a million songs. They used to play cover songs.
4:07
Speaker 1: So because we had the band in the studio and
4:10
Speaker 1: I think Tom was kind of having fun. Once we
4:13
Speaker 1: got the heavy lifting out of the way of getting
4:15
Speaker 1: the song we needed, he said the second song would
4:18
Speaker 1: be a cover song, and he thought it would be
4:20
Speaker 1: this thunderclap Newman song, which it ended up being. But
4:23
Speaker 1: we recorded, as they say, about fifty songs to choose
4:25
Speaker 1: from fifty. Probably how unusual is that it's not a
4:30
Speaker 1: lot of bands can do it. It's like it's you
4:32
Speaker 1: have to be really good to be able to do that.
4:34
Speaker 1: But those songs, many of which ended up there was
4:37
Speaker 1: a white box set called playback. Most of those songs
4:41
Speaker 1: were on playback, so it wasn't just for I mean
4:43
Speaker 1: we didn't know that. We didn't know they'd ever come out.
4:45
Speaker 1: It was just sort of having fun. But while they
4:47
Speaker 1: were in there, we thought, let's take advantage of let's
4:49
Speaker 1: just play a bunch of songs. What was How did
4:52
Speaker 1: they write music? Was it very collective? No? It was
4:55
Speaker 1: usually Town with an acoustic guitar. More often than not,
4:58
Speaker 1: would write a song by himself. Then he would often
5:01
Speaker 1: make homemade demo with a drum machine and put on
5:05
Speaker 1: the parts that he wanted, So more often than not,
5:09
Speaker 1: there would be a demo that sounded like a less
5:13
Speaker 1: professional version of the final that we would bring to
5:16
Speaker 1: the band, and then that would be the starting point
5:19
Speaker 1: that we'd work. He's writing music and lyrics, everything, everything, everything.
5:24
Speaker 1: Now the other members of the band contribute a tremendous amount,
5:28
Speaker 1: but the initial framework was always set by Tom First.
5:31
Speaker 1: On occasion, Mike Campbell would bring in a guitar, a
5:34
Speaker 1: guitar idea first, or maybe even a guitar bassed song,
5:39
Speaker 1: and then Tom would take that, rework it and make
5:41
Speaker 1: it into a Tom Petty song. But probably one or
5:45
Speaker 1: two an album. Maybe, is there anyone you've worked with
5:47
Speaker 1: who is who compares to Petty and so terms of
5:51
Speaker 1: how prolific they are, I don't know that he was
5:54
Speaker 1: always so prolific. I think he would go through phases
5:57
Speaker 1: because I remember there were a couple of years where
5:58
Speaker 1: songs were not coming so quickly, and when we recorded
6:01
Speaker 1: the fifty songs, they weren't all necessarily new songs. A
6:04
Speaker 1: lot of them were songs they remember from growing up.
6:07
Speaker 1: Some may have been old songs of theirs that they
6:09
Speaker 1: never recorded. Some of them may have been Elvis songs
6:12
Speaker 1: or just songs they like. How long were you in
6:14
Speaker 1: the studio in that for the Wildflowers album, we were
6:18
Speaker 1: in for around two years, but it wasn't every day.
6:21
Speaker 1: It'd be like whenever there was stuff to do. So
6:23
Speaker 1: he'd like, he'd have five songs and he's like, let's
6:26
Speaker 1: record these five, and we'd go in and it would
6:28
Speaker 1: be a couple of weeks of work or maybe a
6:30
Speaker 1: month of work to get those five, and then he
6:33
Speaker 1: would go back to writing, and then maybe two months
6:35
Speaker 1: later there'd be another batch. It wouldn't do the same thing,
6:37
Speaker 1: and then at the end we would take it all
6:39
Speaker 1: and kind of do whatever it took to get him done.
6:43
Speaker 1: So you get him in one of his fertile periods. Yes,
6:47
Speaker 1: and I had very good fortune in that. The full
6:52
Speaker 1: mun Fever album, the one that I loved, he made
6:53
Speaker 1: with Jeff Lynn, who's from Electric Light Orchestra, who's a
6:56
Speaker 1: really brilliant musician and songwriter. They did the Traveling Wheelberries together,
7:03
Speaker 1: and Jeff Lynn really was a hard ass about the songs.
7:10
Speaker 1: The songs had to be good and sort of pop
7:13
Speaker 1: song power. So for several years before I got to
7:17
Speaker 1: work with him, he'd been sort of whipped into the
7:21
Speaker 1: song is the most important thing in the world shape.
7:24
Speaker 1: And then our styles of production are very different, so
7:28
Speaker 1: jeff is more methodical. Everything has to be in time
7:33
Speaker 1: and in tune. He won't record a drummer playing the drums.
7:36
Speaker 1: He'll record a drummer playing one drum, so like for
7:39
Speaker 1: the whole song, he'll just play the kick drum the
7:41
Speaker 1: whole song. He'll just play the high hat the whole song.
7:43
Speaker 1: He'll play the toms, so everything is very controlled and
7:49
Speaker 1: meticulous and perfect. I try to make more, at least
7:55
Speaker 1: in this case, it was more about the organic moment
7:58
Speaker 1: where it felt it felt more live and more human
8:02
Speaker 1: warts and all, not to make it sound I would
8:05
Speaker 1: call it like hyper real. So it was. It sounded real,
8:09
Speaker 1: but real on a particularly good night like not not randomly,
8:17
Speaker 1: they're just playing it. It was a very good version,
8:22
Speaker 1: that precision of jeff Lynn. Yeah, you can hear it
8:27
Speaker 1: in Full Moon Fever. But you but you responded to
8:31
Speaker 1: that you liked ful? Yeah, I loved it. I loved it.
8:34
Speaker 1: I wouldn't make it in that way, but it's got
8:37
Speaker 1: great power. When you go back and listen to full moviever,
8:41
Speaker 1: can you detect the Jeff Lynn influence? Absolutely? What's the thing?
8:45
Speaker 1: Can we play it? Can we play a song? Absolutely?
8:50
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of Tom Petty songs that
8:52
Speaker 1: are anthems. Yes, they get played it like that gets
8:56
Speaker 1: played in sports, and that's very it seems very counter
8:59
Speaker 1: to the ethos. But now I understand why. The precision
9:03
Speaker 1: of it is what gives it its its anthemic martial quality.
9:07
Speaker 1: And of course it's going to be played at football
9:09
Speaker 1: games when they are but I think I think the
9:11
Speaker 1: leason they played at football games is also I won't
9:13
Speaker 1: back down. I know, you know, I mean no, but
9:16
Speaker 1: it's that. But it's it's the lyric, but it's overlaid.
9:18
Speaker 1: The song is is it's like a marching down the road.
9:23
Speaker 1: Very it's disciplined and absolutely but it's at odds with
9:27
Speaker 1: his image as a kind of hippie yeah, mellow, and
9:32
Speaker 1: this is not his hippie window of music. And that's
9:35
Speaker 1: another interesting thing about the times. It's like Tom was
9:41
Speaker 1: able to manage the changes of the styles of music
9:45
Speaker 1: that happened, still sounding like Tom Petty, but being of
9:50
Speaker 1: the moment as well. So like his earlier music, like
9:54
Speaker 1: he came out first when it was kind of more
9:55
Speaker 1: punk rocky and it had a little bit more of
9:57
Speaker 1: a punk edge. And then that time in music, drum
10:01
Speaker 1: machines were getting popular, so everything on the radio sounded
10:06
Speaker 1: much more like that, even though rarely was it a
10:11
Speaker 1: rock band, but it had that sort of formality. So
10:16
Speaker 1: he was able to morph with health. Do you think
10:19
Speaker 1: he was doing that consciously or is he just so
10:22
Speaker 1: in tune with the kind of zeitgeist that he moved along.
10:25
Speaker 1: I think it was a combination of combination of being
10:29
Speaker 1: in tune and picking the right people to work with
10:33
Speaker 1: at the right time for what was going on. And
10:36
Speaker 1: I don't think he did that consciously. I think he
10:37
Speaker 1: did it based on who he liked. I know. The
10:39
Speaker 1: way he started working with Jeff was, from what I understand,
10:43
Speaker 1: was just sort of a mistake. I think they saw
10:44
Speaker 1: each other in cars driving down the stream, just like, hey,
10:46
Speaker 1: why don't we get together and do some really Yeah?
10:49
Speaker 1: I think so. So now play me something from Wildflowers
10:53
Speaker 1: he did with him, the one that came out. Yeah, okay,
10:56
Speaker 1: so I can, and I want to understand the difference
10:58
Speaker 1: between the Jeff Lynn and the feel Yes, just the
11:01
Speaker 1: production stuff. Do you remember anything specific about about the
11:06
Speaker 1: making of that song. Yeah, I remember I suggested that
11:10
Speaker 1: we try a song using that beat. The song was
11:13
Speaker 1: already written, but I said, let's try it with this beat.
11:16
Speaker 1: And it was sort of inspired by the beat the
11:19
Speaker 1: boom boom boom boom ca, which was inspired by Steve Miller. Oh,
11:26
Speaker 1: Steve Miller. Yeah, Oh that's it makes the feels like,
11:29
Speaker 1: why don't we do it kind of in a Steve
11:31
Speaker 1: Miller kind of a rhythmic vibe. Was he very open
11:36
Speaker 1: to suggestion, absolutely more so than other artists. Not unusual,
11:41
Speaker 1: I mean especially I will say it was the first
11:43
Speaker 1: album we made together, and the nature of my experience
11:48
Speaker 1: with him is the first time anybody works with him,
11:51
Speaker 1: he's on his best behavior. He's the most receptive and
11:55
Speaker 1: willing to do the most work. And then maybe on
11:57
Speaker 1: the fifth album we made together, he may not have
12:00
Speaker 1: been as willing to go that extra distance. I think
12:07
Speaker 1: he liked to impress the people who but I feel
12:10
Speaker 1: like he already did that, so he didn't need to
12:11
Speaker 1: do that anymore. Did you which iteration did you prefer? Early? Early?
12:18
Speaker 1: And I like what not, Not that he was trying
12:21
Speaker 1: to please me, but that he was willing to do
12:23
Speaker 1: whatever it took for it to be as good as
12:24
Speaker 1: it could be. That's always the most fun. Do you
12:27
Speaker 1: consider Wildflowers to be his kind of creative high watermark?
12:33
Speaker 1: It's one of he's had. He's had probably probably three.
12:38
Speaker 1: Damn the Torpedoes would have been the first one, and
12:41
Speaker 1: then the Jeff Lynn and then Wildflowers. I think those
12:46
Speaker 1: are probably the three peak moments. We'll be back with
12:51
Speaker 1: more on Tom Petty's Wildflowers with Rick Rubin after this break.
13:00
Speaker 1: We're back with more on Tom Petty's Wildflowers. Petty and
13:04
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin recorded dozens of songs during the two year
13:07
Speaker 1: sessions for Wildflowers, but only one disc ever came out.
13:11
Speaker 1: There's still an entire disc out there that's never seen
13:14
Speaker 1: the light of day. Rick actually played it for me
13:17
Speaker 1: in the most Rick way ever. He just called it
13:19
Speaker 1: up on his iPhone and it was amazing. But I'm
13:22
Speaker 1: afraid we can't share it with you. You'll just have
13:24
Speaker 1: to wait for its official release. So tell me how
13:28
Speaker 1: it came to be that you had these two records. Well,
13:33
Speaker 1: we recorded over this two year period. We recorded probably
13:38
Speaker 1: twenty sick between twenty six and twenty eight songs, and
13:43
Speaker 1: we didn't really know what was going to be on
13:45
Speaker 1: the album. And then at the end of it, we thought, wow,
13:47
Speaker 1: this is all good. Let's this is This could be
13:50
Speaker 1: a great double album, and we put it together as
13:52
Speaker 1: a double album and we brought it to the record company,
13:56
Speaker 1: and the record company suggested it be a single album,
13:58
Speaker 1: not because they didn't like the double album, but they
14:00
Speaker 1: just said, commercially in the marketplace, having a double album
14:06
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily a great thing to do. And it was
14:08
Speaker 1: their first it was his first album with Warner Brothers.
14:11
Speaker 1: They just wanted what was best. They really wanted what
14:14
Speaker 1: was best for Tom and surprise. You know, Tom historically
14:18
Speaker 1: was very anti anyone saying anything about anything. He's very
14:24
Speaker 1: He did things his way always. It would always fight
14:27
Speaker 1: the power of authority from any direction. He had a
14:31
Speaker 1: fight with MCA for years where they raised the price
14:35
Speaker 1: of music a dollar and he wouldn't put out a
14:38
Speaker 1: record unless they sold his at the old price, and
14:42
Speaker 1: they wouldn't put it out. And I think he went
14:44
Speaker 1: two years without putting out any music because he he
14:47
Speaker 1: wanted it the way he thought was what he thought
14:49
Speaker 1: was right. And he kept his prices ticket prices, Lola,
14:52
Speaker 1: because he wanted people to be able to see the
14:53
Speaker 1: show a lot he had a lot of He cared
14:57
Speaker 1: very much about his audience and and doing what he
15:01
Speaker 1: thought was right by them. I was a little surprised
15:04
Speaker 1: that he decided, but I guess he thought, well, this
15:06
Speaker 1: may be better for the audience, which is why he
15:08
Speaker 1: went along with it. I mean, how do you decide
15:11
Speaker 1: if you have twenty four you come forward with twenty
15:14
Speaker 1: four songs or what have you, how do you decide
15:16
Speaker 1: which ones to drop and which ones to go forward with?
15:18
Speaker 1: Just experimentation. A lot of it was Tom's instinct and
15:22
Speaker 1: some of it was we'd play them in a sequence.
15:26
Speaker 1: We'd come up with a sequence. Each one of us
15:29
Speaker 1: might come up with a sequence that we like and
15:30
Speaker 1: then play it for each other and then say, okay,
15:32
Speaker 1: well this. You know, these three sound really good together,
15:34
Speaker 1: these five sound really good together. And then after hearing
15:38
Speaker 1: these you want this feeling. It doesn't really do that yet,
15:40
Speaker 1: what do we have that could make it feel like that?
15:42
Speaker 1: So kind of looking at the arc of the picture.
15:45
Speaker 1: So there might be like, let's say there are six
15:47
Speaker 1: songs that we'd say, no matter what, these six need
15:50
Speaker 1: to be on it, or these eight, whatever it is,
15:52
Speaker 1: and then the balance of it is more what makes
15:55
Speaker 1: the journey. You wouldn't We wouldn't do that today, would we?
16:00
Speaker 1: If we recorded twenty eight songs with an artist today,
16:03
Speaker 1: we would have the choice of either putting out all
16:04
Speaker 1: twenty eight without thinking about it. Because there's no such
16:06
Speaker 1: thing as a singular double album anymore. We might say
16:10
Speaker 1: in today's world, the nature of the speed of digestion,
16:16
Speaker 1: that people's attention span is there for maybe five or
16:20
Speaker 1: six songs at a time, So maybe it's better to
16:23
Speaker 1: break it up into four projects and put them out
16:28
Speaker 1: every form of five months, six months, depending on what happens.
16:35
Speaker 1: It didn't break you, did it break his heart or
16:37
Speaker 1: break your heart? About these songs that never got heard,
16:40
Speaker 1: I remember feeling a little bad about I loved the album,
16:43
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like what we were putting out wasn't good.
16:47
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought what we put out was. I
16:49
Speaker 1: loved it. I absolutely loved it. This is the thing
16:51
Speaker 1: about musicians versus writers. I've never understood the amount of
16:56
Speaker 1: the wastefulness of the musical process is just compared to writing.
17:00
Speaker 1: If I write a sentence, it will be printed somewhere.
17:04
Speaker 1: I don't weigh sentences like every single thing I've ever
17:08
Speaker 1: written has found the lad of day somewhere, Whereas you
17:11
Speaker 1: guys will leave things on the cutting room floors endless.
17:14
Speaker 1: You have no idea. You have no idea that doesn't
17:18
Speaker 1: drive you. Your screenritter is the same way, where you
17:21
Speaker 1: know you can be a screenwriter of your whole career
17:23
Speaker 1: and nothing ever get made. So the end, there's all
17:26
Speaker 1: this stuff. I'm always fascinated by the relationship of the
17:29
Speaker 1: artist to this unknown It's private work. This lost Tom
17:34
Speaker 1: Petty album is private work. Basically, you and Tom Petty,
17:38
Speaker 1: who's not even with us anymore, and no one else
17:41
Speaker 1: does the guys in the band who all love it,
17:45
Speaker 1: who worked, who labored months over these songs that never
17:51
Speaker 1: got released to get them to where they are. Is
17:54
Speaker 1: there any of those unreleased songs in retrospect that you
17:57
Speaker 1: think we really blew it with this song? No, but
17:59
Speaker 1: they're great. I mean I feel like Wildflowers did exactly
18:02
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to do. People really love it,
18:05
Speaker 1: stood the test of time, and these other songs are
18:08
Speaker 1: When I heard them for the first time, Tom came
18:10
Speaker 1: over and played him for me, probably maybe two years ago,
18:14
Speaker 1: two two and a half years ago, and I was
18:17
Speaker 1: floored by I had like a vague memory of them,
18:22
Speaker 1: but some of them just hit me, like, Wow, what
18:24
Speaker 1: a great song. How did we ever? How did we
18:26
Speaker 1: miss this? So he came by here too, Did you
18:29
Speaker 1: come here in my house or your house? Yeah? With
18:31
Speaker 1: the explicit intent to play the Yeah. He's like, I've
18:34
Speaker 1: been working on the rest of Wildflowers, and I've been
18:38
Speaker 1: fixing some stuff that wasn't done at the end, like
18:40
Speaker 1: a couple of mixes and things, and I want to
18:42
Speaker 1: play it for you. And he came and he played
18:44
Speaker 1: it for me. Did he want to re release it. Yes,
18:47
Speaker 1: he did. The issue was he very much wanted to
18:51
Speaker 1: re release it. He thought it was really important because
18:53
Speaker 1: the legacy of the Wildflowers album loomed large in his
18:57
Speaker 1: career and he knew that the second half of Wildflowers
19:02
Speaker 1: was an important statement. His issue was he didn't want
19:06
Speaker 1: to put it out as a new Tom Petty album
19:08
Speaker 1: because it's not a new Tom Petty album. It was
19:10
Speaker 1: recorded twenty five years ago, and he didn't want to
19:13
Speaker 1: release it as an old catalog album because he didn't
19:17
Speaker 1: he thought it deserved more than being a catalog album.
19:21
Speaker 1: He felt like it was too good to just put
19:24
Speaker 1: out and was sort of looking for the right story
19:28
Speaker 1: where it would have the exposure that it deserved, and
19:31
Speaker 1: he never came up with it. Why couldn't he is
19:34
Speaker 1: a naive question, But why couldn't he just put it
19:37
Speaker 1: as a new Tome Petty album. There's something about the
19:42
Speaker 1: artist's work that has a little bit of a diary
19:48
Speaker 1: like aspect. You know it. The work reflects a time
19:53
Speaker 1: in someone's life, and you'll hear when if I were
19:56
Speaker 1: to play you Tom's last album and then play you
20:01
Speaker 1: Wildflowers Too, or whatever it's called, it's it's very different.
20:06
Speaker 1: So I think that was his thing, was like I
20:09
Speaker 1: have changed as an artist since then. I love that.
20:13
Speaker 1: I think I might have told you this. He told
20:14
Speaker 1: me wildflower scares him because he's not really sure why
20:21
Speaker 1: it's as good as it is. So it has this
20:24
Speaker 1: like haunted feeling for him. What does that mean? He's
20:28
Speaker 1: not like he loves it, but it he It's not
20:34
Speaker 1: like he could turn that on again. He could. He
20:38
Speaker 1: couldn't make wildflowers to today. That was the point. The
20:40
Speaker 1: point was I can't do this now. This was then,
20:44
Speaker 1: and it was where I was then, and it was
20:46
Speaker 1: a prolific period. This is an extension of that moment.
20:52
Speaker 1: Did he mean I can't make something as good as
20:54
Speaker 1: that again? Or just that just that just what that is,
20:58
Speaker 1: what that is, and that scared him? Those were his words.
21:01
Speaker 1: I was surprised. I was surprised when he said it
21:04
Speaker 1: was he as artists go unusually introspective about his own work.
21:10
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say so, but how many artists would say,
21:14
Speaker 1: would listen to something from twenty years ago, play something
21:16
Speaker 1: from twenty years ago and say to you, it scares them.
21:19
Speaker 1: I've never heard anything like that before. It was unusual.
21:22
Speaker 1: But the closest thing I can remember, and it wasn't
21:24
Speaker 1: said to me. I just heard it in an interview
21:27
Speaker 1: was Bob Dylan talking about his early records, saying I
21:31
Speaker 1: didn't write those, like I don't know who wrote those.
21:33
Speaker 1: I couldn't write those. It was like that. It was
21:36
Speaker 1: like something magic happened in that moment, And now looking
21:41
Speaker 1: back on it, it's a little scary to me. We'll
21:45
Speaker 1: be back with more broken record after this break. We're
21:52
Speaker 1: back with more on Tom Petty's Wildflowers with Rick Rubin.
21:56
Speaker 1: Why did you guys not just Reese say I can
22:00
Speaker 1: have two years later? I have no idea. I don't know. Again,
22:04
Speaker 1: it goes to this waste you're so accustomed to, how
22:06
Speaker 1: wasteful the process is. Yeah. The next thing he did
22:09
Speaker 1: was a soundtrack album, and there were a couple of
22:11
Speaker 1: songs on the soundtrack album that were from those sessions.
22:14
Speaker 1: Oh is that the soundtrack? Where? Wait, that's really a
22:17
Speaker 1: really interesting story. It's a yellow album. Somebody comes to
22:21
Speaker 1: him and says, I want to use one of your
22:23
Speaker 1: songs from my movie. Yeah, it's a really small isn't
22:26
Speaker 1: it an Ed Burns movie? Yeah, it's an Ed Burns
22:29
Speaker 1: movie and he says she's the one. She's the one.
22:32
Speaker 1: He's like, I'll write a whole new album about it.
22:35
Speaker 1: It's just kind of insane, active, creative bravado. Yeah, that's
22:39
Speaker 1: where he was in that moment. Yeah, and I think
22:42
Speaker 1: a couple there are a couple of Wildflower songs that
22:47
Speaker 1: weren't on the original Wildflowers that ended up on that
22:52
Speaker 1: hearing that is that? First of all, does that trigger
22:55
Speaker 1: memories of when you guys were working on it? Not
22:58
Speaker 1: on that, but it reminds me of the whole time. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: I can't remember like being in the studio, but it
23:02
Speaker 1: wasn't like, oh, we were recording that song. But I
23:04
Speaker 1: can't remember the feeling of that time. So is so
23:08
Speaker 1: what is tie that song to that period in Tom
23:13
Speaker 1: Petty's career. Well, it has the leftover remnants of the
23:19
Speaker 1: Jeff Lynn song influence, so it's very It really works
23:24
Speaker 1: well lyrically and melodically strong like song power song. We
23:30
Speaker 1: did that one very in a straightforward way, kind of
23:32
Speaker 1: almost Jeff Lenny drum wise, very straight suited, and that
23:38
Speaker 1: we probably played that a bunch of different ways before
23:41
Speaker 1: we decided, oh we like it. This way probably played
23:43
Speaker 1: it more like band style, and then it's like, oh,
23:45
Speaker 1: this lends itself more to the kind of hypnotic locked
23:49
Speaker 1: in sound. It's a more you know, down tempo, moody piece,
23:53
Speaker 1: sort of the sarcastic time I hope you never fall
23:56
Speaker 1: in love with somebody like you? Is a song like
24:00
Speaker 1: that coming out of his personal experience? Is he? It
24:03
Speaker 1: might it might be coming out of his personal experience,
24:05
Speaker 1: or it might be the idea, like he might have
24:08
Speaker 1: had that idea of like I hope you never fall
24:11
Speaker 1: in love with somebody like you, and I should write
24:12
Speaker 1: a song like that. I don't know. He would never
24:15
Speaker 1: say yeah, Oh, he wasn't a He wasn't kind of
24:18
Speaker 1: emotionally confessional in his no no. And I once saw
24:22
Speaker 1: one time he was playing me demos and he would
24:24
Speaker 1: always sit with the guitar in his lap and kind
24:26
Speaker 1: of hunt around while while we were talking. And one
24:30
Speaker 1: time he started playing me a song and he plays
24:35
Speaker 1: this song and it's and sings it first verse, chorus,
24:40
Speaker 1: sings the whole song and uh, and it's great. And
24:44
Speaker 1: I say, wow, that's a great one where that one's
24:47
Speaker 1: when's that one from? He's like, I just that's just now.
24:50
Speaker 1: I said, you mean, I said, you didn't write that
24:55
Speaker 1: before I got here, and he's like, no, that just
24:56
Speaker 1: came out just now. And I said what's it about?
24:59
Speaker 1: And he's like, I have no idea And it was
25:01
Speaker 1: like ornate, intricate lyrics. He channeled it. Did you did
25:06
Speaker 1: you tape it? And like, h so that became a
25:09
Speaker 1: real song. Yeah, absolutely, It's probably a song on wild Flowers.
25:12
Speaker 1: I can't remember which song it was, but I got
25:14
Speaker 1: to see firsthand, and I remember the conversation of what's
25:18
Speaker 1: it about? Because it was like the story seemed really intricate.
25:22
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, that's interesting, where's that? Like? No idea?
25:24
Speaker 1: How much of that did you understand before you met him?
25:28
Speaker 1: Did you understand like, oh, this guy is sort of
25:31
Speaker 1: something special or was a lot of it revealed to
25:33
Speaker 1: you when you started working with him more? When more?
25:36
Speaker 1: When I worked with him, I knew he was really
25:38
Speaker 1: I knew he really was a song craftsman, which which
25:44
Speaker 1: he was, but I didn't realize the the connectedness that
25:50
Speaker 1: he had beyond that. It's like there was an the
25:54
Speaker 1: emotional quality beneath it was very strong. He didn't he
26:00
Speaker 1: never struck me as an emotional person, but in the
26:04
Speaker 1: work it was there. Yeah. How many albums did you
26:08
Speaker 1: do with him? I think we did four or five
26:11
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, but in your mind, the most successful,
26:16
Speaker 1: the best of those was the first. It's my favorite. Yeah,
26:19
Speaker 1: it seems the one that resonated the most with people.
26:22
Speaker 1: And then there was a period after that where after
26:28
Speaker 1: the divorce, he sort of fell into a dark period.
26:33
Speaker 1: And there's some interesting thing that came out of that period,
26:38
Speaker 1: but I don't think he was he was at his peak. Yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: why did you guys stop booking together? I never knew why,
26:47
Speaker 1: but I was told something that he wrote, or something
26:51
Speaker 1: that was written in the autobiography that was done on him.
26:54
Speaker 1: It's not an autobiography, the biography that was done on him.
26:57
Speaker 1: That whatever. The last project we worked on together. At
27:02
Speaker 1: the end of the project, while we were mixing, it
27:07
Speaker 1: was time for me to start my next project, which
27:09
Speaker 1: I think was a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, And
27:11
Speaker 1: I started the next project, and I think he felt
27:13
Speaker 1: like I abandoned him, which I don't think was the case.
27:17
Speaker 1: I think we had already done what we were supposed
27:19
Speaker 1: to do, But he never said that to me. I
27:22
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about that. Yeah, yeah, but you guys
27:24
Speaker 1: remained on good terms. Absolutely. Yeah. Do you think it's
27:28
Speaker 1: a good thing for artists to move from producer to producer?
27:32
Speaker 1: Can it? Can? It can be very productive, especially based
27:36
Speaker 1: on the story I told you earlier of he wanted
27:39
Speaker 1: to impress me in the beginning, So if there was
27:41
Speaker 1: someone knew that he wanted to impress, he would work harder,
27:45
Speaker 1: So that would be a good thing. Yeah, yeah, does.
27:49
Speaker 1: Then again, George Martin did all the Beatles records and
27:51
Speaker 1: they're really good. So it's like it's hard to say, like,
27:54
Speaker 1: no one knows. Yeah, no one knows. No one knows.
27:58
Speaker 1: That's a very rick way our first season, you know.
28:02
Speaker 1: When we began with our first episode of Broken Record
28:04
Speaker 1: earlier this fall, a massive wildfire was threatening both Rick's
28:08
Speaker 1: home and his studio, the historic Shangolaw in Malibu. Many
28:13
Speaker 1: of you have asked about what happened to Shangolow. The
28:16
Speaker 1: answer is, miraculously it survived. The fire burned all around it,
28:21
Speaker 1: but that bit of musical history escaped unscathed. Maybe that's
28:25
Speaker 1: an omen for all of music in the coming year.
28:31
Speaker 1: We'll be back in the spring with new conversations and
28:33
Speaker 1: performances from some of our favorite artists Pentatonics, Questlove, Lawyer
28:38
Speaker 1: McKenna in Nashville, Ezra Canning, E, Vampire Weekend, and many
28:42
Speaker 1: many more. Who knows, we might just drop in a
28:45
Speaker 1: surprise in the meantime. Thank you for listening. Broken Record
28:50
Speaker 1: is produced by Justin Richmond and Jason Gambrell, with help
28:53
Speaker 1: from Bruce Headlam, Mia Lobel, Jaquita, Pascal, Daisy Rosario, Jacob Smith,
28:58
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Jacob Weisberg, and of course el Hefe Rick Rubin.
29:03
Speaker 1: To hear the songs featured in today's episode, check out
29:06
Speaker 1: Broken Record podcast dot com. This show is brought to
29:11
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. I'm maconglat them