The band that made Tom Petty give up opening shows: “We’re never opening shows again”
Being an opening act is essentially a rite of passage for any emerging band. While a few fans might come specifically to see you, earning credibility in rock and roll often means enduring uninspired crowds and dodging the occasional beer can thrown your way. Tom Petty was all too familiar with the awkwardness of being an opener, and after the Heartbreakers opened for the Doobie Brothers, he vowed it would be the last time they’d ever open for anyone.
Because, as ingrained in rock and roll as he is now, many people forget what an oddity Petty was when he debuted. There were still plenty of rock fans eager to hear any heavy tune onstage, but Petty’s flavour of rock catered a lot more to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones than it did to heavy-hitters like Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith at the time.
Even when the stadium rock acts faded, Petty’s debut album was almost in danger of being classified as a new wave album as well. He had the look of a punk rocker and may have not suffered fools gladly, but there was no mistaking him for any spiky-haired transplant. He was a real rocker, but that meant going along with what was considered “rock” back in the day.
While many people don’t see that much of a difference between The Doobie Brothers and Tom Petty’s audiences these days, this wasn’t the kid that would one day write ‘Free Fallin’. No, Petty still had a fire in his belly and rock and roll in his veins, and he wasn’t about to let the future yacht rock ambassadors tear the place to shreds while he watched people nurse a few beers in the crowd.
When talking about paying his dues to Rolling Stone, Petty remembered that one Doobie Brothers gig was where he decided enough was enough, saying, “[That] was particularly bad. You had to take what you were given as far as the stage room and monitors. I was so pissed. We played and went back to the hotel. I called a meeting and said, ‘We’re never opening again. We’re just going to play for people who came to see us.”
Definitely a bold move, but Petty couldn’t have picked a better time to call his shot. Within a few months, tracks like ‘Listen to Her Heart’ would be gaining traction on the radio, leading to them eventually making their magnum opus Damn the Torpedoes, with landmark hits like ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and ‘Refugee’.
That probably wasn’t even the worst horror story, with one bill suggesting that the Heartbreakers opened for Kiss. As carefree as Petty’s music can be at times, putting his band in front of the same audience who worships a fire-breathing demon of rock and roll was probably about as fun as it sounds.
That didn’t mean that Petty wasn’t diplomatic when choosing his own openers. Whenever he went on tour, he spotlighted more underrated acts like The Jayhawks and The Replacements. Maybe it was a case of him following his muse, or maybe Petty wanted to give underground bands the right kind of exposure that he had to do without.
