Into the Great Wide Open

The commercial success of Tom Petty’s solo album Full Moon Fever possibly encouraged him to invite his fellow Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne to coproduce Into the Great Wide Open alongside Petty and Heartbreaker Mike Campbell. Lynne’s years with ELO inform everything he does, and here he tightens and brightens The Heartbreakers' sound until the harmonies are built like brick walls and the playing sounds as “treated” as possible. The group may have thrown The Replacements off their tour, but not before they swiped the “rebel without a clue” line for the title track from the Mats’ Paul Westerberg. That title track, “Learning to Fly,” and “Out in the Cold” gave new material to radio stations, while hardcore fans found “Kings Highway,” “The Dark of the Sun,” “Makin’ Some Noise,” and “All the Wrong Reasons” to be packed with the guitars and melody that made Petty the legendary rocker he’d become.