Tom Petty thought he was just making another solo album. Instead he ended up performing open-heart surgery on himself, without anaesthesia, and recording the whole procedure. Wildflowers, the 1994 album he believed was his best work, has since become the Rosetta Stone of his career: part confession, part escape hatch, part love letter to the wreckage of his life. He cracked himself open, not to shock, but because he couldn’t hold it in any more.
Between the summer of ’92 and spring ’94, while Petty recorded Wildflowers his 22-year marriage to Jane Benyo was in collapse; he fired Stan Lynch, the only drummer the Heartbreakers had ever known; and he severed ties with MCA, the record company that had shepherded him through a dozen years of hits (and mutual lawsuits). He even shifted course from using Jeff Lynne, the producer who had brought him Grammys, Wilburys and a second act.
