The guitarist Tom petty said could “play the shit out of the blues”
For a guy who came to prominence at the same time as punk and had his first major hit in America in 1979, there was something very classic rock about Tom Petty. The moment he traded in his Flying V for shades and a Rickenbacker, he fit right in with the rock establishment that many of his generation of hitmakers were trying to kick against. Put it this way, Bruce Springsteen famously bristled against being called ‘The Next Bob Dylan’. Petty, on the other hand, formed a band with him.
In 1988, Petty lived out the dream of any boomer worth their salt. He formed The Travelling Wilbury’s and suddenly found himself sitting in and writing songs with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and a man who would become a great friend of his, George Harrison.
Their story goes back to 14 years previously, when Petty was the frontman of southern rock no-hopers Mudcrutch. He was house-sitting for Leon Russell, whose palatial abode contained an expansive studio that Harrison, along with Ringo Starr, visited when they were in town. A star-struck Petty, himself a Beatles die-hard, tried not to fan out on the spot.
By the time they met again, Petty was a dyed-in-the-wool generational rock star who’d had more than a few encounters with fans of his own. He knew how to handle himself now and, while he almost certainly didn’t feel like it, knew to treat the man who’d become Nelson Wilbury as an equal. Talking to Paul Zollo in his book Conversations With Tom Petty, he shared a particularly touching anecdote of their first meeting. He said, “We instantly became very close. And I remember him saying to me, ‘You know I’m not going to let you out of my life now’.”
Besides making hits and travelling the world in the Wilbury’s, Harrison and Petty got to see sides of each other very few people got to see. The best example of this comes from another part of Zollo’s book, where he talks about jam sessions the two of them shared. “it was just the two of us there, and it was really late at night. And he started playing electric guitar, and he started playing the blues. And he just played the shit out of the blues. And I had never heard him do that.” Which is true, for all of Harrison’s virtuosity, he’s more associated with twelve string chiming than six string shredding.
Where was he hiding this skill and for what reason? Petty asked Harrison the same question, and as Petty puts it, he said “Oh, that’s Eric’s thing! He said something like, ‘It didn’t occur to me that when Eric (Clapton) came out with that kind of thing that everybody would leap on it and try to do it. I always looked at it as really Eric’s kind of thing.’” It speaks to Harrison’s humble nature that he would see it that way, and to the nature of Petty and Harrison’s friendship. That these two men, famous in a way that most people can barely comprehend, can still find a way of opening up to each other.
One more thing, to make it doubly heartwarming? This all happened the day before Christmas Eve, and on the day itself, Harrison brought Olivia and Dhani over to Petty’s house to spend Christmas Eve together. A tradition that they’d continue, whenever possible, for the rest of their days.
