The 1967 album that typified what’s best about rock, according to Tom Petty
Despite having arrived in the middle of the 1970s with a style that felt as though it was trying to usher in a new era of rock and roll, Tom Petty was never exactly trying to rewrite the rulebook on how rock music should be made.
His brand of heartland rock was something he, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger seemed to be the main proponents of, and they were taking an approach to rock and roll that seemed to be more socially conscious than large amounts of what had come before it. The ethos of heartland rock had seemingly been brewing for some time, but it wasn’t until these prominent figures began to establish themselves on the scene that it began to form as something distinct.
That being said, it’s not as though they were without precedent, as there were plenty of elements of rock music that had come from the great artists of the 1960s, and even before, that were directly influencing what this new breed of artists were proffering.
What this triumvirate were doing wasn’t a million miles away from the work of The Rolling Stones, certainly not far from Bob Dylan in his more rock-adjacent work, and of course, like many acts, bore some resemblance to The Beatles, who arguably changed the very notion of what rock and roll could sound like in the eyes of people who had grown up listening to the trailblazers of the 1950s.
It’s no secret that Petty was a huge fan of The Beatles, especially given that he would end up working alongside George Harrison, making up two-fifths of the Traveling Wilburys when they came together in the late ‘80s, and like many others, being influenced by the Liverpool group was almost unavoidable for a considerable period after their dissolution.
Petty didn’t exactly adopt a perspective that prohibited influences from other areas of music from being important influences, but he did acknowledge that there was something about rock and roll and its advent that was able to bring together people from disparate backgrounds and allow them to unite in a mutual appreciation of an art form.
In a 2009 interview with Mojo, Petty argued that rock music had a power within it that transcended the actual work being presented. “So much of the greatness of rock was that it was a shared experience,” he explained, before making another nod to The Beatles, and the album he perceived as their masterwork.
“When Sgt Pepper was released, everyone knew what you were talking about because you all bought it and heard it,” he continued. “It was something we all experienced together, and that was lovely. Youth in those days really felt united, that we had a power and could change things through being unified.”
Undoubtedly, The Beatles changed rock music and united the world with a style that felt immediately accessible and easy to latch onto, and even if Petty’s music didn’t always resemble it from a musical angle, he certainly did his best to match it in terms of its unifying qualities, which is perhaps one of the greatest qualities you could ask for as an artist.
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