![]() ![]() He delayed the record and threatened to call it $8.98, the then standard price. When it was proposed that Hard Promises would use what was called ‘superstar pricing’, already successful with Steely Dan’s Gaucho, to gouge an extra dollar out of the fans, Petty took another successful stand. Nicks often claimed she would have gladly left Fleetwood Mac to join The Heartbreakers, if they had only deigned to ask. ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’, a Petty/Campbell co-write from her Bella Donna album, would remain their biggest hit for years. The follow up, Hard Promises, opened with ‘The Waiting’, another smash, and sparked the love affair between the band and Stevie Nicks, who sings on ‘Insider’. With songs like ‘Refugee’, ‘Here Comes My Girl’ and ‘Even The Losers’, it remains the band’s high watermark. If The Clash had stood up to the man like this, and won, we’d have never heard the end of it.ĭamn The Torpedoes proved a huge hit. They returned his publishing and formed a new label, Backstreet Records, just for the band. The record company finally gave in, realising Petty never would. The band played the Lawsuit tour, sporting “Why MCA?” shirts, in order to pay legal bills, and smuggled tapes out of studios to escape the clutches of both the courts and execs. Petty baulked at this lack of control, and went to war, eventually declaring himself bankrupt to get out of his contract. While the band were working on the third album with new producer Jimmy Iovine – who Petty was first alerted to due to his work on Patti Smith’s Easter – ABC Records was sold to MCA, along with the rights to The Heartbreakers. ![]() Among the higlights were ‘I Need To Know’ and ‘Listen To Her Heart’, the latter allegedly directed at Ike Turner for putting moves on Petty’s wife. 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It! carried on where the debut left off, and charted slightly higher. Songs like ‘Breakdown’ and ‘American Girl’ – so Byrdsian that Roger McGuinn once joked he couldn’t remember writing it – are probably blasting out on several US FM stations right now. Back at home another year of hard work finally saw the record get the attention it deserved. ![]() Luckily, the music press in the UK identified them with the new wave just starting to break, so a European tour was a surprise success. Released in November ’76, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers remains one of the great debut albums, but nobody in America thought so at the time. He brought this band to his next session, Cordell nodded his approval, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were born. Petty, being no eejit, knew a good thing when he heard it, and persuaded them all to throw in behind him. Tench was devastated, but arranged a session to record his own songs with old friends Ron Blair and Stan Lynch, asking Petty and Campbell to help out. Petty decided that, realistically, Mudcrutch were over – although he did cajole Campbell to stay on. In time-honoured fashion, however, he really only wanted the singer. The band auditioned, and Cordell offered them a home on his Shelter record label. Hearing that they had yet to actually sign anything, he invited the band to drop into his studio in Tulsa. As they got ready to return west, Denny Cordell, famed producer to The Moody Blues and Joe Cocker, got in touch. Petty confidently persuaded Tench’s father, a circuit court judge, to allow his son to quit college to pursue the dream. London Records bit, and sent him back home to get the band. He made the trip from his native Florida to LA to hawk a reel-to-reel tape around the record companies. They added Benmont Tench on keyboards, and Petty would marvel all his life at his good fortune in finding these two virtuosi. While auditioning a drummer, he found guitarist Mike Campbell in a back room, who was attracted to the songwriting Petty already had future hits like ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ on the boil. ![]() Once time was served in school bands, he formed the fabulously named Mudcrutch. The Beatles arrived when he was 13, and his path was set. His uncle took him to the set of an Elvis movie, and the thunderstruck 10-year-old immediately traded his Wham-O slingshot for a stack of 45s. And he had The Heartbreakers, America’s greatest rock and roll band outside of E-Street. Indeed, there have been scant few artists who could transfigure R&B, pop, country and poetry into pure joy like Petty. I’m more inclined to think that the death of someone like Bowie, Prince, Merle Haggard, and now Tom Petty, cuts so deeply because no art form touches us in the same way that music does. Thus, when someone in the rock pantheon dies, we are reminded of the death of an actual parent, or shockingly prepared for one. In a recent Guardian article, Michael Hann argued that celebrity deaths affect us so, because the generations since the ’50s have really been co-parented by popular culture. ![]()
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