10 Albums That Fell Apart During Production

As we reached the tail end of the '90s, Tom Petty felt like one of the last survivors of the classic rock scene that actually still had something to say. Coming off of his career renaissance on Wildflowers, he became almost an elder statesmen for the grunge community, loaning his guitars out to Eddie Vedder on occasion and even meeting some heroes of his own when working with Johnny Cash. Once he came up for air though, he found himself dealing with divorce papers, and it all unfolded on Echo.

While not every song on this album is necessarily about his breakup, the record's development was hellish for almost everyone involved, with Tom not taking care of himself, living in a chicken shack in California and being extremely disconnected from the songs he was writing. The rest of the Heartbreakers do their best job at holding everything together on this record, but Tom was the least of their problems when bassist Howie Epstein started to get out of control.

Being hooked on heroin, you can hear the last gasps of that Heartbreakers brotherhood on this record, as Howie does everything he can to hold it together, knowing that he was heading for a brick wall in the next few years. Each Heartbreakers record always tends to have a magical feeling to it, but the tone of these songs feels haunted by all the demons they were facing.