Tom Petty

A figure of exemplary morality, anchored to traditional values of honesty, integrity, and loyalty, Tom Petty expressed in his music his troubled coexistence with a society that desecrates these values every day through television, cinema, and Wall Street. Petty always seemed mature, even when he was barely in his twenties.

The last great working-class rocker, Petty built impeccable formal structures to express that rugged nostalgia, one of the most cherished sentiments of the American people.

Raised in Gainesville, in the swamps of Florida, deep in the South, Petty cut his teeth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under the tutelage of veteran Leon Russell, before settling in Hollywood in 1974 and forming the Heartbreakers.

For his first album, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (Shelter, 1976), released while new wave was in full swing, the guitarist and singer drew on the full tradition of rock. All ten songs were composed by Petty, yet they could easily be mistaken for period pieces. His strength was not innovation but preservation, not genius but good taste. Rejecting the anarchic punk sweeping England, the intellectual hysteria of New York’s new wave, and the dehumanized sounds rampant in electronic cabarets, Petty memorized the history of rock and, like a seasoned entertainer, recycled many of its stereotypes: the Byrds' ballads in American Girl, Who-style anthems in Rocking Around and Anything That’s Rock And Roll, and Rolling Stones-esque slow tunes in Breakdown and Strangered In The Rain.

Petty’s truest vocation as a guitarist emerges in tracks like Luna and Fooled Again, where he sketches a darker, less pristine atmosphere, infused with a psychedelic curse tinged with languid despair. The group’s first guitarist was Mike Campbell.

Tom Petty makes full use of clichés with proven audience appeal: the nasal lament a` la McGuinn/Dylan, the chiming Byrds-style guitars, and tales of broken, lonely anti-heroes—but he does so with sincerity, in tune with his personal psychological struggles, which on one hand manifest in uncontrollable idealistic and populist impulses (see his legal battles to lower the price of his records) and on the other plunge him into a kind of quiet despair.

His next album, You're Gonna Get It (Shelter, 1978), stays in line with the crystalline style of its predecessor, though it is more eclectic and electric. Dominating the sound is still well-mannered, pleasant, and relaxing rock—a concentration of "good times" music that does not aim to revolutionize the concept of music, but simply to offer intelligent variations on familiar themes: still seductive Byrds influences in When The Time Comes, Magnolia, Listen To Her Heart; and breathtaking rock and roll in Too Much Ain’t Enough and I Need To Know (the most explosive of his entire career).

Petty’s strengths and limitations are summed up in that "moderate" musical intelligence, which allowed him to craft small gems without the need for upheavals or avant-garde discoveries.

By now a chart-topping star thanks to his meticulous sound, which stands in stark contrast to the avant-garde, Tom Petty reached the peak of his personal revival with his third album, Damn The Torpedoes (Backstreet, 1979), which even hit number one on the sales charts. On one hand, his taste shows a maturation that relentlessly smooths out every trace of hysteria, expressed with more complete and polished manners, and a clear sympathy for the compromise first hinted at in Luna; on the other, his style—exquisitely elegant—has become a classic, to the point that it no longer makes sense to consider Petty a child of the 1960s, as he has become the de facto ultimate representative of that generation.
The rock and roll of Century City, the melodramatic ballad Refugee, the epileptic boogie of What Are You Doing In My Life, and the poignant folk-rock of Even The Losers frame the two masterpieces of the record: the dreamy, Dylan-esque serenade-monologue Here Comes My Girl and the delicate, nostalgic country ballad Louisiana Rain, worthy tributes to “broken hearts.”

Entering the 1980s, Petty had a following, popularity, and reputation second only to Springsteen.

Yet Hard Promises (MCA, 1981) marks a step backward: having abandoned the passionate drive of his early albums, Petty opts for a seductive embellishment of the more conventional jingle-jangle (The Waiting), the languid serenade (Letting You Go), and the more polished AOR (A Woman In Love), unleashing the grit of old only in A Thing About You and Kings Road.

The Byrds/Stones duality had dragged on for too long, and Petty ends up relegated to being an epigone of himself.

Meanwhile, Stevie Nicks had a hit with his Stop Draggin’ My Heart.

If Long After Dark (MCA, 1982) brought him back to the forefront of mainstream American rock with the poignant hits One Story Town and Change Of Heart, Petty remained the poet of poignant ballads such as Straight To Darkness and You Got Lucky.

Southern Accents (MCA, 1985) is a sequence of dramatic monologues portraying a young working-class man whose rebellious spirit combines traditional Southern pride with a wild streak of self-destruction. With tones almost “Faulknerian,” Petty delivers an intense and atmospheric portrait of the New South, from the anthem-like Rebels to the baroque ballad Don’t Come Around Here No More, from It Ain’t Nothing To Me to the long, melancholic title track.

Successes were not lacking, even when his creative vein seemed to dry up. Indeed, his popularity continued to rise, aided by his alliance with Dylan, whose nasal singing style and folk-blues-rock arrangements Petty had long emulated. The apocalyptic and cynical Jamming Me from Let Me Up (MCA, 1987) brought him back to the charts once again.

In 1987, his house was burned down by a vandal.

Petty regained his best form with Full Moon Fever (MCA, 1989), an album rich with stories and moods imbued with his usual fatalistic charm. His epics of the defeated—the proud proclamation of I Won’t Back Down and the martial war dance of Love Is A Long Road—continued to captivate America. The mournful elegies Free Fallin’ and A Face In The Crowd, which solemnly chart the moral path of countless provincial “losers” and “loners,” are balanced by the playful nursery-rhyme charm of Yer So Bad (one of the most memorable melodies of his career) and the fiery boogie of Runnin’ Down A Dream (one of his most energetic rock-and-roll tracks).

His lyrics remained a model of American poetic storytelling: long journeys across the prairie, shattered dreams, dangerous women, and domestic tragedies. Petty had become the greatest in this genre inherited from Dylan and Springsteen—a living emblem of the proletariat, a living anthology of archetypal middle-class stories. The crystalline, clean sound (thanks also to producer Jeff Lynne) further highlights Petty’s dramatic narratives.

This album established him more firmly than even his first three perfect albums had managed to do.

The next album, Into The Great Wide Open (MCA, 1991), marked the return of the Heartbreakers and shone with the characteristic honesty of Tom Petty, but it is not among his best works. Songs like Learning To Fly and Built To Last are technically flawless, yet they lack heart—an even greater issue for Two Gunslingers and Into the Great Wide Open. The solo album Wildflowers (Warner Bros, 1994), without the Heartbreakers, is even a double album (rumor has it that dozens of songs remained unreleased). Production shifted from Jeff Lynne to Rick Rubin, who abandoned synthetic accompaniments in favor of “organic” instruments—slightly archaic sounds like the mellotron and harmonium—perhaps evoking the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Petty may indulge a little too much in the introspective tones of his songwriting. Throughout the album, listeners are mostly waiting for Petty to sound like Petty (as in You Wreck Me). It is an album steeped in the bitterness of middle age, evident in songs like You Don’t Know How It Feels and Don’t Fade On Me.

The sound of She's The One (Warner Bros, 1996), a soundtrack for a film, returns to the lean and radiant origins of Petty’s first two albums, with the Heartbreakers in excellent form. The songs highlight the duality first glimpsed on Full Moon Fever: on one side, the pop craftsman in Walls, skillfully combining jingle-jangle guitars with a surf organ, also delivering the catchy California and the hypnotic, dreamy Hung Up And Overdue (featuring piano rhythm, accordion, cello, and flute counterpoints, with a touch of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour); on the other side, the minstrel of acoustic ballads in Angel Dream and the long, funereal Supernatural Radio.

Tom Petty the rocker is confined to the lesser Climb That Hill, marred by Neil Young’s neurosis, and the delightfully sinister Zero From Outer Space, with rattling boogie rhythms and a Dylan-like harmonica.

The sleak production prevails over contents and vibrations, leaving Room At The Top as the only open-heart confession to overcome the stereotyped revivalist sound of the collection. Petty sounds like a modern juke-box in a renovated Florida joint.

Like its predecessor, Highway Companion (Warner Bros, 2006) lacked good songs (Saving Grace being the most charming) and did not compensate for that deficit with a valid concept or a rich sonic palette (despite the arrangements by the Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne).

Tom Petty regrouped the Heartbreakers for the stale ballads of The Last DJ (2002), that at best contains a decent Dylan imitation (Have Love Will Travel) and a catchy folk-rock ditty (You and Me).

Petty then reformed his first band, Mudcrutch, with guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh as well as the Heartbreakers' keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell. Mudcrutch (Reprise, 2008) is unadulterated nostalgia rock.

The four-disc set Live Anthology (Reprise, 2009) collects live recordings from 1978-2007.

Mojo (Reprise, 2010) was Petty's most relaxed album yet, almost a tribute to the Eagles' mellow country-rock of the 1970s, to J.J. Cale's laid-back roots -rock (Good Enough, Running Man's Bible) with the occasional nod to blues-jazz fusion of the 1960s (First Flash Of Freedom).

Tom Petty regrouped the Heartbreakers one last time for Hypnotic Eye (2014), a better album than the previous Heartbreakers albums. The roaring American Dream Plan B falls somewhere between Neil Young's Crazy Horse and the Rolling Stones. The charging Forgotten Man weds Bo Diddley's voodoo rhythm and Thirteenth Floor Elevators's acid savagery. The swamp boogie Burnt Out Town and especially the catchy U Get Me High may make it to Petty's canon, but the seven-minute bluesy meditation Shadow People goes nowhere.

Tom Petty died in 2017 at the age of 66.

Mike Campbell, the pillar of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, recorded Wreckless Abandon (2020) with the Dirty Knobs, a band that he had formed 15 years earlier with singer Jason Sinay, bassist Lance Morrison and drummer Matt Laug.