![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Tom-Petty-Guitarist-Musician-2012-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: \u0418\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u041b\u0435\u043f\u043d\u0451\u0432\u0430)<\/p>\n
Wed 18 June 2025 20:00, UK <\/p>\n
There are precious few artists who know when they are performing their last-ever concert. Even when the biggest bands do massive farewell tours around the world to celebrate their legacy, there\u2019s always a chance that they will bring the outfit back together for one more go-around as long as everybody\u2019s happy, healthy, and getting a fat royalty check at the end of the deal. But Tom Petty<\/a> was all about the music first, and up until his final hours, he was willing to give people the kind of music he could be proud of.<\/p>\n Throughout the last few years of his life, Petty was getting grittier than he had been before. Highway Companion was a bit more downtempo than the rest of the albums he made with Jeff Lynne, but once he hit on Mojo, he finally found that inner punk that he had lost all those years ago, eventually settling into a bluesy groove and making songs that could have been played out of a sweaty club circa 1974.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Hypnotic Eye <\/a>wasn\u2019t all that different from what he had done before, Petty always had that soft heart behind everything. No one writes songs as open-hearted as \u2018Free Fallin\u2019 and \u2018Southern Accents\u2019 by accident, and when he hit on the album Wildflowers, he found the perfect balance of rock and roll and acoustic ballads. And for someone who was rock and roll to his core, the title track is the most tender thing he ever wrote.<\/p>\n The entire story of making Petty\u2019s second official solo album sounds like a breeze, but \u2018Wildflowers\u2019 is a far more complicated tune than it lets on. The tone still works as if it were only played on an acoustic guitar, but thanks to Benmont Tench\u2019s brilliant piano work and the subtle percussion in the background, Petty takes this love song in a cinematic direction, almost like you\u2019re seeing a heavenly garden unfold before your eyes.<\/p>\n Which is strange, considering the entire song came to Petty in only a few minutes. Despite being one of the finest pieces of music he ever wrote, Petty remembered the whole thing coming to him in no time, saying<\/a>, \u201cI just took a deep breath and it came out. The whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it. I mean, I just played it into a tape recorder, and I played the whole song, and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song.\u201d<\/p>\n These stories are generally reserved for people like Paul McCartney, who discovered \u2018Yesterday\u2019 after it fell out of the sky, but Petty\u2019s song has an equal amount of power behind it. And when he played it for the final time during his last show in 2017, he hadn\u2019t lost an ounce of that beauty along the way.<\/p>\n The heartland rocker was already planning on reissuing his solo album again at the time, but hearing him sing it at that stage in his life is him reinterpreting it in a completely different way. Petty had always been cagey about who or what the song is about, but given where he was in his life, it\u2019s easy to think that the track was being sung about the family he\u2019d built through this rock and roll life.<\/p>\n His time may have been cut before he even knew it, but there\u2019s a certain magic in hearing him wish his family peace and happiness days before he passed. And seeing how he\u2019s not around to see where his fellow Heartbreakers have gone, let\u2019s hope he\u2019s found that wildflower garden on the other side and playing guitar next to all of his fellow Wilburys<\/a> who have seen the next plane of existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n The Far Out Music Newsletter<\/p>\n All the latest music news from the independant voice of culture.
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