The one album that made Tom Petty shudder: “I still cringe”
No artist is safe from a few embarrassing moments. As much as they like to present themselves as the embodiment of cool, no one hasn’t had promo shots that make them squirm in their seat a little bit. And for as casual and laid-back as Tom Petty could be, he knew some eras of his career could have been handled a lot better.
But even though he has made mistakes, Petty was never the kind to apologise for standing up for himself. Whereas most artists take what they can get from the industry and let the suits of the world dictate what they’re supposed to do, the heartland rocker wasn’t about to roll over. He knew his music meant more than that, and whether that was going to another record company or fighting for the right to get his songs back, he would make sure that no one took advantage of him for the wrong reasons.
Beyond his own music, though, Petty would stand up for his fans above everyone else. They were the entire reason he was on that stage, and even if he had openly mocked some of his songs as cheap in the press, fans were the ones that made those into iconic pieces of work, especially when they started singing back every line to songs like ‘Refugee’ and ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’.
So when the label felt that they could raise the price of Petty’s albums because he was famous, he wasn’t about to let them go through with it. Hard Promises was a record he was proud of, but there was no reason to crank up the price so that a bunch of money-hungry people at the label could get a bigger slice of the royalties. And for a record this personal, Petty didn’t see it as a marketing ploy, either.
In terms of tone, Hard Promises is the yang to Damn the Torpedoes’s yin in lots of ways. Whereas Petty’s breakout album was a long victory lap after winning his legal battles, many songs on the follow-up feel a lot different, like the dark story in ‘Something Big’ or the unrequited love in ‘Insider’. So when the album finally went out, Petty said that the presentation could have used some work.
Even a near-decade after the fact, Petty felt that the cover artwork for Hard Promises was one of the worst parts about the album, saying, “You know what was the worst thing about the whole Hard Promises ordeal? We spent so much time fighting about the price that we didn’t realise it was a real boring album cover. Since then, I’ve always been real particular about the album covers. I still cringe when I see Hard Promises.”
Considering the content on the record, Petty’s not that far off the mark, either. There are a lot of bold and exciting moments on the album, but even if Damn the Torpedoes was simply a picture of Petty holding onto Mike Campbell’s Rickenbacker guitar, the sight of him looking confused in a record store isn’t doing much to sell anyone on the songs underneath everything.
While Petty’s album artwork has never been as iconic as other rock legends like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, it’s saying something when even he knows he could have done better than this. It’s not exactly hard to screw up a Tom Petty album cover since his face is on most of them, but apparently, if the art department seemingly only has a few minutes to throw something together, they can find a way of making a profile shot look terrible.
