The rock pioneer Tom Petty thought everybody underrated: “Considering how important he is”
Not every beloved artist aims to rival The Beatles’ legendary status.
Despite artists’ earnest efforts to break into the industry, factors like the absence of a hit single or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can consign them to obscurity, often through no fault of their own. While Tom Petty found great success and became one of the biggest names in rock and roll, he believed that Carl Perkins deserved far more recognition than he ultimately received.
When looking at Petty’s biggest influences, he seemed to be born almost ten years too late. Although he came up in the same rock scenes that birthed the punk movement and the latter half of psychedelia, Petty was drawn to the kind of rock and roll that went back before The Beatles even started, loving the sounds of Elvis Presley before The Beatles even crossed the pond.
Even though Perkins had already been engrained in the rock scene as a guitar player, his time as a hitmaker seemed all too fleeting. After securing the chance to showcase himself on various TV shows, much of the glory seemed to be taken off his name when his song ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ became one of Elvis Presley’s biggest hits.
Turning in time as a guitar player for most of his career, Perkins seemed to be the kind of musician that only the most hardcore of guitarists would know. For all of the big names that had come after him, though, Perkins was having shine being put on his name, from George Harrison adopting his first name while The Beatles were touring Hamburg to Paul McCartney asking him to sit in with him on the song ‘Get It’ from Tug of War.
The Beatles released ‘Honey Don’t’, ‘Matchbox’ and ‘Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby’, which is more than any other artist whose songs they chose to perform. Harrison was such a fan of the rockabilly pioneer that when they were touring in Hamburg, he would tell everyone his name was Carl, not George.
“He said, ‘If it hadn’t have been for your daddy, I never would have picked up a guitar,’” says Stan Perkins, once again looking back to his father’s funeral. He spoke to George Harrison on the day, who confessed it was his father who was the reason he decided to learn how to play in the first place.
For all of the effort that rock stars were putting in to make Perkins one of the glorified pioneers of rock, Petty still thought that he was cast to the side all too often, telling Rolling Stone, “Considering how important he is to rock history, many people don’t know about him…he didn’t get the breaks he deserved; hard luck seemed to follow him around. He had a terrible car crash on the way to The Ed Sullivan Show when ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was breaking really big. Elvis ended up covering the song and took a lot of the glory there”.
That didn’t stop Petty from giving Perkins a boost whenever he could as well. Outside of inviting him to play with The Heartbreakers on various occasions, Petty would feature Perkins on record as well, turning in a fiery performance of the rockabilly romp ‘Cabin Down Below’ from his album Wildflowers.
According to those working at the session, Petty admitted to being absolutely starstruck, with studio manager Shivaun O’Brien remembering in Sound City, “They get done, and [Petty] throws his hands down on the table and just says, ‘It’s Carl fucking Perkins, can you believe it?”. Then again, Perkins’s spirit could be felt before the band had even plugged him in at the session.
From the first few chords they ever put together, the chemistry between Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell was indebted to what Perkins had done, having that signature hiccup in how they performed. Perkins may still be looked at as an also-ran when compared to Little Richard and Elvis Presley, but for an entire generation of guitar players, he’s one of the quietest legends to have walked the Earth.
