The artist Tom Petty thought he could never follow live: “This is heavy for me”
Tom Petty was never afraid of any crowd whenever he went out on that stage.
He may not have been as captivating a performer as a band like Kiss or Queen, but the minute the lights went down at a Heartbreakers show, everyone knew they were in for something special. But for someone who never backed down from any kind of gig, he did admit that some of his opening bands left him shaking every once in a while.
Then again, Petty had a complicated relationship with the idea of an opening band. He had spent years slaving away trying to build a name for himself, but instead of spending his life cutting his teeth as an opener, there came a point where he realised that he didn’t need that kind of attention. He was going to be the headliner wherever he was, but he was always looking for new blood as well.
And despite being a fan of every legacy rock act that he ran into, Petty did have a habit of being slightly ahead of the curve in many respects. He was a huge fan of people like Beck when they were on the rise, and despite being one of the biggest acts in the world, getting an underground group like The Replacements on one of his biggest tours showed he still cared about the rough-and-tumble rockers out there.
But for all the great moments that he had on his own, no one’s really prepared for when their heroes become openers. A band like Cheap Trick may have single-handedly helped invent genres like power pop, but the idea of them opening for a band like Green Day was probably going to be a headtrip for someone like Billie Joe Armstrong who had spent years listening to tunes like ‘Dream Police’.
And while Petty always approached working with George Harrison and Bob Dylan as if he were hanging out with his friends, something felt different with Stephen Stills. The creative dynamo had already been working in his backyard when he was coming up in Gainesville jamming with a handful of Eagles before he left for Los Angeles, so when Crosby, Stills and Nash opened for the Heartbreakers, Petty was practically looking at a musical older brother.
It’s not like Stills didn’t come to play, either, with Petty recalling, “This is heavy for me. I walked out and watched a little from the side of the stage, and they were really good that night, really hitting it, and the place was going crazy. I got nervous, thinking to myself, ‘God, I can’t follow that. I can’t possibly follow that.’ So I go to my dressing room and pull myself together. Then the door opens and it’s Stephen and he wants to rap. And that just makes me more nervous.”
But even if Stills could play circles around Petty, the heartland rocker did have to worry about a thing with his songs. He could make some of the greatest singalongs that the world had ever known, and even if he did nothing but play chords for the entirety of ‘Free Fallin’, there’s a good chance that the crowd could have done half of his job for him by the time he started.
If anything, the fact that Petty could still headline over Crosby, Stills, and Nash only spoke to the kind of song power that he had. ‘Ohio’ and ‘Teach Your Children’ will forever be immortalised in rock history, but as Eddie Vedder is wont to say whenever one of Petty’s songs comes on, every listener can remember the feeling in their gut when they heard him the first time.
