How The Beatles inspired a Tom Petty classic
The late Tom Petty was never afraid to share how The Beatles influenced his career. They were one of the early catalysts in his musical career thanks to their debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, and decades later, Petty was still borrowing from the Fab Four’s playbook.
After his introduction to the group, they became an all-encompassing fascination in his life, providing the singer with never-ending inspiration. Soon after seeing them on television, Petty used his limited finances to buy Meet The Beatles, which was everything he hoped for and more. The album provided him with a musical foundation, and although his tastes developed, The Beatles stayed with him until he drew his final breath.
Of the prized album, he once said to Music Radar: “[At school] you either had a copy of Meet The Beatles or you didn’t, and if you didn’t it was like something was wrong with you. Come to think of it, that was the first time an LP was a significant thing. Up till then people only bought singles. But with Meet the Beatles, that was a record you really wanted to listen to – both sides of it.”
In the same interview, Petty also discussed the immediate impact of seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, comparing the pivotal moment to seeing in colour for the first time. “Most magic is a trick, an illusion. But [when The Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show], this was real. Man oh man, was it real. I think the whole world was watching that night. It certainly felt that way – you just knew it, sitting in your living room, that everything around you was changing. It was like going from black-and-white to colour. Really.”
From that moment, The Beatles were a regular reference point in the studio and during a particular point during the making of his debut album Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. While recording ‘Breakdown’, Petty’s band became unstuck trying to find a drum sound which suited the song until they looked to the Fab Four for inspiration.
Petty later explained to Performing Songwriter: “I wrote it on a break from recording at the Shelter Studio in Hollywood. I think we took a break because we had recorded everything we had and I made up ‘Breakdown.’ I wrote it on the piano. I still have that piano. I bought it (laughs). Many years later, it’s sitting in my living room.”
He continued: “I wrote it very quickly. It’s a very short song. I played it to them, and they really dug it, and we made the record. I think we got the drumbeat from a Beatles record, ‘All I Got To Do.’ We just varied it. That was the idea, to have that kind of broken rhythm on the highhat.”
While they didn’t plagiarise the beat from With The Beatles’ ‘All I Got To Do’, it provided them with a clear direction to follow with ‘Breakdown’ and was the final piece of the puzzle they needed before the song reached a stage of completion. Although you can’t hear the Fab Four in the track, their influence is buried deep within the soul of Petty’s creation.
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