The Tom Petty song the Heartbreakers hated recording: “Forget it, see you down the road”
No one was going to question the authority of Tom Petty whenever he began to make a record. There are definitely peaks and valleys in his body of work, and even he would have told you when he struck out, but there are still those occasional albums where it feels like he could do no wrong every time he stepped up to the mic. There’s more than just Tom Petty in his band, and the rest of the Heartbreakers gave him an earful when he came up with the song ‘Travelin’.
Even though the group was known for taking a break in the late 1980s while Petty worked on his solo record Full Moon Fever and recorded with The Traveling Wilburys, the heartland rocker never stopped writing. Making a great song came as naturally to him as the air he breathed, so playing an upbeat rock and roll number should have been a piece of cake.
It’s not like the rest of the band weren’t busy, either. Bassist Howie Epstein had worked on an album by John Proine in the meantime, and pianist Benmont Tench would turn in time as a session player working for people like Don Henley. The building blocks were there for a banner year for the Heartbreakers during Into the Great Wide Open, but the sessions weren’t off to the best start on ‘Travelin’.
If anything, this song should have been a slam dunk. Petty had done these kinds of rockabilly tunes in the past, so it wasn’t out of the question for him to throw another one into the mix to get the ball rolling. Compared to the heights he had seen on his own, it was probably hard for the rest of the band to see his new stuff and feel a little bit shortchanged.
When speaking to Paul Zollo, Petty remembered the band couldn’t stand what he had come up with, saying, “I think it was when the second Wilburys album was going on, I told the Heartbreakers I could still make a record with you at the same time. And I remember going to one session. And Mike and I had produced the session we did, a song called ‘Travelin’. They hated it. They hated it, hated it, hated it. That was the only session done. It was like, ‘Forget it, see you down the road. We’ll do it another time”.
Even when they came back on the same page, Jeff Lynne’s presence in the studio wasn’t exactly welcome, either. For a band that was all about playing live in the studio, having a studio-inclined producer known for punching in parts whenever he needed to seem like a bit of a step backwards for them.
For drummer Stan Lynch, this era of the band was far from the most rewarding, telling Runnin’ Down a Dream, “I was kind of bummed that I wasn’t allowed to hang. It was always like, ‘Get in, do your shit, get outta here’. So it wasn’t the best time for me, creatively”. As much as the group had their frustrations, this album marks a bit of a departure between the Petty of old and the new version of him.
Throughout Wildflowers, Petty moved on to make records that were more about raw sonics than anything they were playing off the floor. So, if anything, Travelin’ feels like the final hurrah for the streamlined version of the band before they started to take things in a bit of a different direction.