10 Perfect Albums With Dark Backstories

At the start of the '90s, it looked like Tom Petty was ready to enter a new phase in his career. Signing a new deal with Warner Brothers and cutting out MCA entirely, his next album Wildflowers was a real labor of love, being the first solo album that he used most of the Heartbreakers on and coming through with some of his most honest songs in years. That was just window dressing for his personal life though, and all hell broke loose once Petty's marriage started to fall apart.

After cutting ties with his first wife, Petty was lost and you can hear it on Echo, with songs that sound like he's trying to get a read on what just happened. When he wasn't in the studio to record the album, Petty was not taking care of himself, hiding away in a chicken shack and getting hooked on heroin, which left him a shell of what he once was, not willing to write anything when he wasn't with the rest of the Heartbreakers.

Although some album tracks like the title track and Room at the Top give you a glimpse of his turmoil at the time, that's only hiding the real terror, with bassist Howie Epstein falling apart and starting to lose his battle with addiction, which would cost him his life just a few years after the album came out. Echo may hold up as a pretty good Tom Petty album, but while Tom wrote the songs, he wasn't really driving the car in this era of the band.