Tom Petty 10: Into The Great Wide Open

As Full Moon Fever was a solo album in name only, Tom Petty’s experience working with Jeff Lynne on that and on two Traveling Wilburys albums obviously led him to think he could bring his new buddy into the studio with the Heartbreakers to write and produce and come out with musical gold. He didn’t realize how crowded those booths could get.

Into The Great Wide Open doesn’t sound enough like a Heartbreakers album to come off all that different from Full Moon Fever, but this could be forgiven if the songs were up to snuff. “Learning To Fly” and “All The Wrong Reasons” are too close to “Free Fallin’” (right down to repeating the same chords throughout) to stand out. The title track commits two big sins: in addition to an ugly star-studded big-budget video that overwhelmed the ugly song, its most clever hook (“a rebel without a clue”) was stolen from Paul Westerberg, who at least had the taste not to use it in a chorus. Then, three tracks later, “All Or Nothin’” repeats the tempo and tone, while using a backwards sequence of the chords.

There are a few bright spots, like the sunny “Kings Highway” (copied three tracks later on “Dark Of The Sun”) and the not-at-all-maudlin “Two Gunslingers”, which rises far above its concept with that catchy break. “Too Good To Be True” is about half of a great song. “You And I Will Meet Again” channels the Byrds through Rubber Soul. “Out In The Cold” is the best rocker, giving Mike Campbell plenty of room to stretch his fingers, but “Makin’ Some Noise” is an unnecessary returning to the “rockin’” songs from his first album. The closer “Built To Last” should get some points for having a unique sound compared to the rest of the album, as throughout, the trademark boxy drum sound the producer insisted on plastering everywhere makes us long for some kind of variety. (Stan Lynch, clearly in the minority here, has never been the gentleman Jim Keltner is, so it’s a wonder Jeff Lynne still has two working legs.)

Into The Great Wide Open was Petty’s last studio album for MCA; now that he was a superstar, he was about to leave them behind for Warner Bros. But his new celebrity status clouded his judgement, both for the production of this album as well as its marketing: while only ten years earlier he wanted to keep record prices down, with this album he consented to have its list price a full dollar above the norm, as befit an artist of his stature. (Then again, he was simply part of the problem. The record business was the only American industry to raise its prices as a result of the ‘90s recession.)

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Into The Great Wide Open (1991)—2