An Ocean of Wildflowers

I spent a hot and tired hour crawling through Sunday afternoon traffic on the 405 today and experienced one of those rare moments of musical transcendence when the world fades away.  Crawling Back To You, one of my favourite tracks from Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album came through my car stereo infused with the power of a truly great live performance. As I listened to Petty, his backing singers and the perfect duo of Mike Campbell’s soaring lead guitar and Benmont Tench’s silvery shimmering piano I felt again that sense of loss that all Petty fans experienced at the time of his tragic death in 2017. His passing left an empty space too large to ever be filled.

When you hear lyrics like these,

‘I’m so tired of being tired
Sure as night will follow day
Most things I worry ‘bout
Never happen anyway’

you just have to sit still and let them sink into you and then look into your own mind. But then, there are just so many Petty lyrics like this. Take this verse from Walls for example, particularly poignant in light of his passing:

‘And some things are over
Some things go on
And part of me you carry
Part of me is gone’

What can one do but absorb the emotional force of these words? They touch the very essence of our human existence with their simplicity.

We’ve been back in California for a month now. We’re moving into Fall season, my favorite time of the year. Pumpkins spill out of shop doorways and one can imagine that all the leaves are brown. All the while, at odd times, I’ve found my thoughts haunted by Petty who has always occupied a particular corner of my heart. He was the bridge between my childhood dreams of America and the day to day reality of California living.

I’ve had occasion to reflect a little more on this recently. On our trip over the Atlantic to London during the summer, I came across Somewhere you Feel Free, a gem of a music documentary about the making of Wildflowers. Released in 2021 it’s a beautiful mix of archive footage of Petty and his musicians and producers working on the songs back in 1994, interviews with Petty himself and conversations with the musicians and producers which were filmed after Petty’s passing. Petty’s character shines so brightly in this film, his simple good humour and tenacious groundedness.

It occured to me that he came to embody the possibility of a life which encompassed human frailty, suffering and heartbreak lived well in this land of escapist dreams and fantasy. The risk in California is that one can run towards the dreams, become lost in the heady ether of the famous names and street signs and fail to observe the tragic reality of the human experience until one is way too far down the road to turn back toward anything resembling a positive destination. In his song writing Petty had the ability to portray the fame or beauty of the place and then starkly undercut it by drawing attention to some element of human suffering.

One only has to listen to Free Fallin’, perhaps the most classically perfect of his songs, to taste this. Consider the final verse:

‘I wanna glide down over Mullholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I’m gonna free fall out into nothin
Gonna leave this world for a while

We have the reference to that famous Los Angeles landmark Mullholland Drive swiftly followed by the crushing despair of the boy suffering the loss of his love- he wishes for oblivion.

My appreciation for this ability of Petty’s was recently taken one stage deeper when I was watching Somewhere you Feel Free and came across an extraordinarily simple song I hadn’t heard before, California. It was one of the tracks that didn’t make it into the final fifteen on the original album. As I listened to the lyrics, I couldn’t quite comprehend that someone else was expressing thoughts, that although unformulated were buried deep within my heart. The magic of song once again revealed.

Here’s the final verse and chorus:

Sundown red skies
Nobody’s been around
Sundown, blue eyes
Kinda like this party town

And California has treated me good
I pray to God that the hills don’t flood
Sometimes you gotta trust yourself
It ain’t like anywhere else
It ain’t like anywhere else

So many points are hit in that final verse. We see the natural beauty of the place and people and the concomitant fact of isolation amidst the endless parties. One remembers Whitney Houston, no longer flavor of the month, dying tragically, alone in her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 2012 while a Grammy party went on four floors above. Petty really strikes gold with the chorus refrain, the notion that in California one can only trust oneself, the place does not lend a helping hand. He reaches into the powerful element of formlessness which we all live amidst here- whether we choose to acknowledge it or run from it. There are no safeguards or cultural handrails for the mind to latch onto, merely the space echoing all around us, through the canyons and to the bottom of the lonesome ocean. Unlike anywhere else.

I’ve always loved the Wildflowers album and I never fail to sail away with the words and music of its eponymous song. With the passing of the years I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the content of the entire album. For anybody who loves Petty then Somewhere You Feel Free is a treat, a window into the making of this sprawling body of work with all of its textures, highs and lows and emotional range.

I think Benmont Tench expresses it far better than I ever could when he says in summing up the album,

The wistfulness, the humor, the sadness, the loss and just everything that he’s saying which is just pretty damn funny’

The documentary itself is unassuming, much like Petty himself. In 2020, a collection of film from 1993-1995 was discovered in his archive and from there came Somewhere You Feel Free. There are so many moving parts to it that one could spend hours discussing them. For me, it was the decision to include new interviews with Rick Rubin, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench that gave the documentary an extraordinary depth and honesty. We are invited to reflect on Petty’s significance both as an artist and a friend by being offered rare insight into his creative process but then just as crucially through the words of those who knew and loved him. When Mike Campbell, interviewed in the Heartbreakers clubhouse, describes the hours the band spent there together and the impossibility of the fact that Petty will never again walk in the door, you feel the sense of unreality and loss alongside him.

There is a great sense of freedom and joy which pervades the entire project. With a new producer, Rick Rubin, Petty was making the album in an organic way with songs growing and developing each day. It is a privilege to watch and see the songs emerging. One that really stands out in my memory is To Find a Friend. You could be watching a sculptor bring forth a statue from stone; you start to see the lines and definition emerging here and there until suddenly the song is completed. Then you can listen to the live version on Wildflowers and All The Rest and appreciate the fluidity of the song’s arrangement and the great, great piano playing. It wasn’t until we were watching Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers last Fall and I heard Aaron Embry that I’ve noticed a piano player who could rival Tench.

And then one can’t discuss a documentary about Wildflowers without talking about the song itself. The vignette with Petty on this topic is magical. As he says, it’s a song for someone you love or wish well and it just arrived with him. No changes or revision necessary. Again I’d definitely recommend the live version and it will be an eternal sorrow that I never heard it in concert.

‘You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worry
You belong somewhere you feel free.’

At the risk of running away with myself I will leave you to discover the remaining delights of the documentary. It has certainly left me with a far deeper appreciation of Petty’s kindness and ability to deal with life’s ups and downs. As he said towards the end of the footage,

‘Everybody’s been knocked about a little bit but you’ve got to keep some kind of faith in yourself. You’ll probably be alright’.