Into the Great Wide Open

Into the Great Wide Open is the eighth studio album by American rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Released in July 1991, it was the band's last with MCA Records. The album was the second that Petty produced with Jeff Lynne, following the successful Full Moon Fever (1989).

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded the album in Studio C at Rumbo Recorders, which charged a rate of $600 per day. The studio was equipped with a 24-input Trident 80 B console and an Otari MTR90 MkII two-inch, 24-track machine.

"Learning to Fly", the first single from the album, spent six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, tying "The Waiting" (1981) for the band's longest run atop the chart. The album's second single, "Out in the Cold", also topped the Mainstream Rock chart, though for two weeks.

The music video for the title track stars Johnny Depp as "Eddie", who moves to Los Angeles as a teenager to seek rock stardom, along with Gabrielle Anwar, Faye Dunaway, Matt LeBlanc, Terence Trent D'Arby, and Chynna Phillips.

Featured on the album's cover is the (slightly-cropped) painting Autumn Landscape (1921) by Czech artist Jan Matulka. The original is owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The album's first single, "Learning to Fly", was released on June 17, 1991, two weeks prior to the album, and was a substantial hit for Petty. The second single, the title track, was released just over two months after the album's release, and also became one of the band's biggest hits. Both songs were top 10 singles on various charts. The third single, "Out in the Cold", was a minor hit, not achieving the commercial success of the first two. Throughout 1992, four additional singles were released: "Makin' Some Noise", "All Or Nothin'", "Too Good To Be True", and "King's Highway".

Into the Great Wide Open was warmly received by critics. Dave DiMartino, reviewing the album for Entertainment Weekly, called it the closest thing to a "classic" album that Petty and the Heartbreakers had made in 15 years, and a return to the quality of their first two albums. He felt this was likely due to the involvement of Jeff Lynne, and commented that he felt the songs on Into the Great Wide Open are "obviously" better than those on Full Moon Fever, which had also been created in collaboration with Lynne. Rolling Stone critic Parke Puterbaugh said the album features Petty's best lyrics and is like a cross between Full Moon Fever and Damn the Torpedoes (1979), and much better than Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987), the most recent album credited to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic was less impressed, calling the album "pleasant", but not Petty at his best, and saying that it sounds too much like Full Moon Fever. In his Consumer Guide, Robert Christgau gave the album a one-star honorable mention, which indicates a "worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like".

As a tongue-in-cheek reference to the "Hello, CD Listeners" interlude on compact disc releases of Full Moon Fever, on cassette tape releases of this album there is a brief spoken interlude at the end of Side One. In it, Petty instructs cassette listeners how to properly flip over their tape and prepare it for Side Two.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

• Tom Petty – lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitars (acoustic, electric, 12-string), keyboards, percussion
• Mike Campbell – guitars (lead, 12-string, baritone, bass, resonator, slide), keyboards, bouzouki, mandolin, hammer dulcimer, backing vocals on "Learning to Fly"
• Benmont Tench – electric and upright pianos, accordion
• Howie Epstein – harmony and backing vocals, bass
• Stan Lynch – drums, percussion

Additional musicians

• Jeff Lynne – guitars, bass, backing vocals, piano, synthesizer, percussion, sound effects
• Roger McGuinn – backing vocals on "All The Wrong Reasons"
• Richard Tandy – synthesizer on "Two Gunslingers"

Additional personnel

• Jeff Lynne – producer
• Tom Petty – producer
• Mike Campbell – producer
• Richard Dodd – engineer