The album Tom Petty thought he didn’t record correctly: “We couldn’t even play in a groove”
Not all musicians can claim to get it right all the time. For every rock classic they can spit out, there are often a few that either don’t hit the mark like they’re supposed to or don’t get the recognition they deserve until further down the line. Although Tom Petty may have gotten a massive amount of attention from the moment he started, even he could admit when an album wasn’t measuring up to his usual standards.
Then again, getting any Tom Petty record into decent shape would always be a nightmare. Always looking to push the envelope whenever they got into the studio, Petty was known to work for hours trying to get the right sound for every instrument, including firing drummer Stan Lynch midway through the recording of Damn the Torpedoes.
Before the band had properly congealed, though, Petty was still a struggling songwriter, fresh out of his previous group, Mudcrutch, and looking to make a name for himself as a solo artist. Bringing back his old bandmates Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell, the roots of the Heartbreakers were already taking shape, culminating in them making their breakthrough debut album in 1976.
Although the album did not make that much of a splash in America at first, it resonated in England in no time, with fans loving the breakthrough singles like ‘American Girl’ and ‘Anything That’s Rock and Roll’. While the band may have been lumped into the same category as new wave acts around the time, like Elvis Costello and Blondie, Petty wanted to prove that he was his own rock and roll entity on the follow-up.
Working with producer Denny Cordell, You’re Gonna Get It featured the Heartbreakers working with much more anger when they entered the studio. Compared to the chiming sounds and Byrds-like harmonies of their debut, songs like ‘I Need To Know’ and ‘Too Much Ain’t Enough’ brought out the intense side of the band, sounding closer to the punk outfits they were competing with.
While the album set up Petty for one of his first major American hits, ‘Listen to Her Heart’, he admitted to not liking the final product as much as he had thought. When combing through his back catalogue, Petty remembered that the entire recording process wasn’t his liking, thinking every song lacked something compared to their live show.
After speaking to Rolling Stone after the fact, Petty remembered how frustrated he was then, saying, “That album just wasn’t done the way we should’ve done it. It was like this incredible apathy invaded the band; we were trying to keep up fronts with each other. By the time we started to work on the third album, we couldn’t even play in a groove.”
Looking to shake things up for their next outing, Cordell would be let go in favour of producer Jimmy Iovine, who had recently worked on Born to Run with Bruce Springsteen. After Petty showed him the beginnings of tracks like ‘Here Comes My Girl’ and ‘Refugee’, Iovine knew the album would be something greater than a standard rock and roll record.
After years of hard work, Damn the Torpedoes became one of the biggest successes of Petty’s career, putting him on the same level as Roger McGuinn and Mick Jagger that came before him. You’re Gonna Get It may not have been what Petty wanted to hear from his band, but sometimes it takes a fair bit of mistakes to turn into brilliance later.
