Tom Petty was the right kind of cliché. And oh, how it hurts to write “was.” The classic rock icon who died Monday at 66 was the embodiment of the term….
Tom Petty was the right kind of cliché.
And oh, how it hurts to write “was.”
The classic rock icon who died Monday at 66 was the embodiment of the term. “Classic,” because he made essential music that stands the test of time, and “rock,” because while many stars say it’s all about the music, to Petty it really was. He battled the record industry time and again on behalf of fans — putting his own bottom line, and in some cases his entire career, at risk.
On the timelessness of Petty’s catalog, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder put it best: “The first time you hear a new Tom Petty song, it sounds like a classic song,” Vedder says in Peter Bogdanovich’s epic documentary on the Heartbreakers, “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”
Indeed, the deceptive simplicity of Petty’s hits obscures just how hollow the music world would be without them. The Roger McGuinn-meets-the-Ramones melodic energy of “You Wreck Me,” “Kings Road,” “Rebels” and “Jammin’ Me” and the bluesy tease of songs like “Breakdown” quite simply had to exist.
Then there’s the niche Petty made for himself, the sweet-and-sour jangling of “American Girl,” “I Won’t Back Down” and “The Waiting.” And the genre-defying brilliance of his best song: “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”
Even albums he didn’t much like himself were great. His 1999 “Echo” was a melancholy wandering through Petty’s post-divorce psyche.
Intensely private about his personal life, Petty thinks the record rates low. But it’s strikingly beautiful and haunting at times — as in “Room at the Top,” where he croons: “I got a room at the top of the world tonight / I can see everything tonight / I got a room where everyone can have a drink and forget those things that went wrong in their life. .. I got a room at the top of the world tonight and I ain’t comin’ down.”
But while Petty’s privacy made him misjudge some of his own tunes, it gets at the core of his greatness: It was always all about the music. And fans were the big winners.
In 1978, Petty was already putting out hits, but his record label was sold to a larger company and Petty protested his band’s contract. His complaints went ignored so he and the band financed their next album by themselves and declared bankruptcy to get out of their contract. The label relented and renegotiated.
It was a win for artists, and fired up Petty to make 1979’s smash “Damn the Torpedoes!” The band never looked back.
Then in 1981, Petty found out the Heartbreakers’ next record was going to be sold for $9.98 each, a buck more than the prevailing price. The label was seeking to up its profits on Petty’s popularity, and the rest of the industry was sure to follow.
Petty wouldn’t have it. “If we don’t take a stand, one of these days records are going to be $20,” he said at the time.
Petty wouldn’t back down; the suits did. Another victory for the fans over the fat-cats.
Petty never lost that edge. In the late ’80s, he was in the studio with Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds fame). One of the songs McGuinn’s label had written for McGuinn was, in Petty’s opinion, “terrible.” Petty thought it was too “commercial,” and that McGuinn was being pressured into singing a song he didn’t write and didn’t like because the label smelled a radio single.
This, Petty told the label’s representative in the room, pointing to McGuinn, “is the man that sang ‘Turn, Turn, Turn.’ Let’s go get him a f — ing song.”
As usual, the label relented. The song was dropped. “The A&R guy . .. I don’t think he understood the depth of the artist he was working with,” Petty tells Bogdanovich on “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”
Most of all, Petty had an abiding suspicion of the mothlike hangers-on always flittering around the flame of a rock star. He complained of the misery such people brought into the band’s life when all they wanted to do was play music.
In 1985’s “Dogs on the Run,” he sings: “She said honey ain’t it funny how a crowd gathers around anyone living life without a net? And how they’ll beg you for the answer / But it won’t ever be enough, there’s no way you could ever tell ’em it’s just dogs on the run.”
Tom Petty was never about Tom Petty to Tom Petty. And that’s what made him indispensable.
Sadly, he’s got a room at the top of the world tonight. And he ain’t comin’ down.
