Remembering Tom Petty

We forget it now, but when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers first started recording, it wasn’t clear exactly what genre they represented. (Such things mattered back then.) It’s obvious now that the Heartbreakers are a typical American heartland rock band, though undoubtedly lot better than most. But at the time, with crazy stuff happening with the Ramones, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and punk rock and then New Wave, Petty & Co. were looped in as some species of this last power-pop division. And that, in turn, was treated with some wariness by the radio gatekeepers of the time.

The group’s first, self-titled album came out in 1976, and it sat around for more than a year with little industry notice. But while no one was looking, its songs were sinking into the country’s collective rock consciousness. It took nearly 18 months for the song “Breakdown” to creep into the American Top 40.

To No. 40, for one week.

Still, it was clear that Tom Petty — who died today at 66, of cardiac arrest — had done what a real star needs to do: deliver the goods on his first album. “Breakdown” had a primal feel, built on a deceptively lazy guitar line and — apparent on any listen today, but somehow difficult to discern back then — a blistering vocal performance. Petty had also done something else: written an even better and more lasting song in “American Girl.” (More on that in a minute.)

Petty grew up, as his fans know, in Florida — his Southernness is a step removed from the Deep South. His paternal grandfather married a Native American cook and may have had to skedaddle from Georgia and wound up in Florida. Petty has said that most of his relatives are dark-skinned and dark-haired, and he’s the only fair-haired one.

When he was 11, his uncle had a bit part in an Elvis Presley movie being filmed in Ocala. (This was the deservedly forgotten Follow That Dream.) His aunt took him to the set. Petty later recalled that Presley came over and nodded to him. He was an immediate convert, and started singing as a kid, with what turned out to be a lifelong love for rockabilly records; he said that he never wanted to be anything other than a musician.

He was a “tender, emotional kid,” as he put it, and bedeviled by a father who had little use for such a son. “He was a hard man, hard to be around,” Petty told journalist Paul Zollo. “He was really hard on me. He wanted me to be a lot more macho than I was.”

Petty knew he wanted to be a music star, but didn’t know how to do it. Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan showed him how. He would have been 13 at the time. He started growing his hair long, and tried to write songs. He found a band to play in. This aggregation, called the Sundowners, learned four songs, which they played, and then played again, at a high-school dance. A local college kid said they could play his frat — if they learned more songs. They played there, and then a Moose lodge, and then Petty was a professional musician, at 14.

As time went on, his hair and dress grew wilder; for Florida, in the early and mid-1960s, this wasn’t normal. His dad’s displeasure grew to beatings.

By the 1970s, he had a band called Mudcrutch, which actually toured. Mudcrutch had a guy named Tom Leadon, who was the brother of Bernie Leadon, later of the Eagles. (Don Felder, also a future Eagle, was in Gainesville around the same time.) There was also guitarist Mike Campbell, and keyboardist Benmont Tench, who would both move forward with Petty into the Heartbreakers.

By the time the Heartbreakers tried to get a recording contract, Petty was 26 and a ten-year veteran of the business. His influences were Presley, the Beatles, and the Stones, true, but also Dylan, the Byrds (some would say too much so!), Aerosmith, and everything in between.

The band went to L.A. and started calling record companies, literally using a list of names and phone numbers Petty had happened to find in a phone booth. (He grasped that it was a sign that a lot of bands were looking for a label.) They actually found all sorts of interest, came to an agreement with London Records, and went back to Florida to pack up and move to L.A. Then they got a call from Leon Russell’s label, Shelter, in Oklahoma — would they stop by Tulsa on the drive out to L.A.?

They did and met producer Denny Cordell, who had displayed great sonic talent on classic ’60s work by Procol Harum (including “A Whiter Shade of Pale”) and Joe Cocker (including Cocker’s innovative take on “With a Little Help From My Friends”). They canceled their London offer and decided to work with Cordell.

The band got some notice in the U.K., but America wasn’t interested. Finally, a New Wave station in L.A., the mighty KROQ, began to play the album.

The Heartbreakers’ second album was basically done before the first one broke. You’re Gonna Get It had a couple of power-pop tunes that got some airplay, but didn’t really go anywhere. Then Petty met up with Jimmy Iovine, who can certainly claim to have given the artist something. Damn the Torpedoes burst out of the radio.