How The Traveling Wilburys almost broke up the Heartbreakers: “They were pissed off”
The dynamic of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers wasn’t always that hard to figure out.
Like Bruce Springsteen with the E Street Band and Neil Young with Crazy Horse, there’s no reason to think that anyone was going to take over for the frontman slot when the guy’s name is literally on every single marquee. Petty was the one who called the shots, but he did have those few moments when he forgot about his musical family along the way when working on his own records.
Then again, the idea of splitting up the band was never really an option for the heartland rocker. He never thought of himself as a solo star when he first started, and even when working on some of his greatest songs, a lot of them came from the rest of the band working off of him. Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell are core pieces of the band, whether the rest of the world knew it or not, but the Traveling Wilburys were going to be far too tempting for Petty to ever turn down.
He had already gone through the headache of Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), and after getting the call from George Harrison to come and jam with Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison, Petty was practically at rock and roll summer camp. He could do whatever he wanted and watch some of the biggest artists in the world write alongside him, but where did that leave the rest of the band?
After all, Campbell was Petty’s right-hand man whenever working on his records, but when Petty found himself away from the Heartbreakers for years and years at a time, it wasn’t exactly a thrill for the Heartbreakers to hear about how the Wilburys were going to be making another record after Orbison passed away. And with Full Moon Fever becoming Petty’s first solo record to climb the charts, Into the Great Wide Open didn’t give them nearly the same time to experiment.
They were used to sounding like a raw band, so when Petty was introduced to Rick Rubin beginning on Wildflowers, he remembered getting the rest of the band in as a sort-of apology for being away for so long, saying, “Before the record came out, Stan [Lynch] went all over town telling people that the album sucked, that what I was doing was terrible. I think the Heartbreakers were insecure because I did Full Moon Fever and then went into the Traveling Wilburys. They were pissed off.”
But there was a casualty along the way when it came to Lynch. He didn’t like the kind of material that Petty was writing anymore, and he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his time playing tunes he didn’t like when he could start collaborating with people like Don Henley on some of his albums. He had his own strengths, but it’s not like the band were playing second fiddle to Petty anymore.
And if you look at the way that the Heartbreakers reacted to Harrison’s passing, it’s not like they held a grudge for that long. Their version of ‘I Need You’ was one of the best moments of The Concert for George, and the fact that they were cool enough to eventually bring out Jeff Lynne and do their own rendition of ‘Handle With Care’ was proof that everything had become water under the bridge.
They were clearly a much more seasoned band by this point, and even if Petty had to go through a little bit of a wilderness period without his friends, it was better for him to find out the kind of artist that he wanted to be along the way. He knew that he could make the best music that he could at this point, and now that the Heartbreakers were by his side, they could stretch out their songs into dramatic masterpieces like ‘It’s Good to Be King’.
