![]() As the jaunty acoustic guitar in his hands filled the room with a capoed, sonorous chime, he opened his mouth and started to sing. So, he hit the big red record button on the tape machine, took a deep breath and began to strum. didn’t have any lyrics written down to guide him, just a simple three-chord progression and some vague visions of the Santa Barbara countryside in all its lush, colorful springtime splendor. I'll be forever grateful that Tom Petty came into my life to teach me that, right when I needed it most.The story of “Wildflowers” is documented in The Ringer as follows: The lesson of "Wildflowers" is that we all belong somewhere we feel free. Yourself, and you'll probably be alright." "Everybody's been knocked around a little bit," Petty reminds us in the clip, "but you've got to keep some faith in ![]() You Feel Free" come from that 1994 interview, and if you listen closely you can hear the rain in the background. But I got to meet Tom Petty and work with an early mentor, Tom Kaniewski, who taught me how music docs are made. It rained so hard the entire time that I never got to see the California sun. But for the most part, the film manages to stay captive to the "Wildflowers'' era, likeĪ time capsule meant to be opened in 2021.īack in 1994, I was a young associate producer at VH1 when I got to work on a documentary about Tom Petty at the time that he was releasing "Wildflowers." The interview shoot was in Los Angeles and that was the first time I'd ever been to California. It was a choice that forced us to work harder to get the story right, because we were limited to just a few recordings. It seemed important that his voice remain in that time and place The feeling of an older man looking back was conspicuous even when you couldn't see his face on-screen. We tried more recent soundbites it always became disjointed. To bring Tom's voice into the film, we chose to only use interviews from the time of "Wildflowers," because when It's slippery, beautifulĪll of the new footage for the documentary was also shot on 16mm film so that we'd never have to feel the hard, steely edge of digital video. As viewers, we get to watch him find his way into a song, and when he gets there it feels like catching a garden snake in a jar. Gets messy, and you can see in the film that Tom isn't always sure of himself. Whereas most major artists these days are only seen in tightly edited and overly polished imagery, here we get a rare, unvarnished view of a master of his craft at work in the creative process. The editor Mari Keiko Gonzalez and I agreed that we wanted this film to have a loose, classic Martyn Atkins, who filmed most of the material,ĭid an amazing job of capturing these events in such a beautifully intimate way, and the camaraderie in the studio is palpable. The footage of Tom Petty making his "Wildflowers" album with Rick Rubin, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Howie Epstein, Steve Ferrone and George Drakoulias is truly a treasure. It was like carrying around a box of sunshine in a dark time. I hung up and danced with joy, and then spent the next eight months with Tom Petty's music in my head, 24 hoursĪ day. She and the film's producer, Peter Afterman, had been talking about me. The phone call came from Adria Petty, who explained that a treasure trove of archival footage of her father, Tom Petty, had been discovered. Was a strange time, and I really didn't know where I belonged. ![]() It broke my heart to leave the city, but it didn't make sense to stay. I had recently left my home in New York City, fleeing the terrifying first wave of the pandemic. In the summer of 2020, I got a call from an old friend that felt like a lifeline. ![]()
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