‘I Won’t Back Down’: The harrowing arson attack behind a Tom Petty classic
Some of the best music is said to come from artists enduring periods of pain and suffering, and their trials and tribulations can lead to them creating masterpieces. That’s not to say that extreme positive emotions can’t produce great art either, and it also doesn’t mean that you have to experience traumatising hardships in order to be at the top of your game, but it sometimes transpires that the most affecting work is born from a grief-stricken episode. Tom Petty, while having written several albums without experiencing this sort of pain, would unfortunately experience this when he came to write his first solo record.
He’d had an exceptional run alongside his band, The Heartbreakers, since the end of the 1970s, but in 1987, he decided that he’d get to work on a solo record without the backing of his full band. Inspired by Bruce Springsteen, who had also taken a sabbatical from his E Street Band a few years prior, Petty thought it might get the creative juices flowing again if he focused on putting together an album without external input, forcing him to be the driving force behind a release.
However, while he thought it might be a refreshing experience, it ended up being one of the hardest records he would ever have to make. While 1989’s Full Moon Fever is now one of his most celebrated releases, it wasn’t able to come together without him going through one of the most troublesome episodes of his life, with one incident in particular inspiring lots of material on the record.
Earlier in 1987, Petty’s home in California was burned down in a malicious arson attack while he was still trapped inside with his family and housekeeper. While everyone managed to get out unscathed, the house was destroyed in the blaze, and Petty and his family were forced to move between rented homes and hotels for several months, causing a huge amount of turmoil from this upheaval. Petty was, of course, grateful to be unharmed, but the emotional distress caused by the situation left him in a fragile state.
Due to constantly having to move around, Petty found himself driving regularly between residences. During this period on the road, he wrote a number of the songs that ended up on Full Moon Fever, with the themes of fire and the trauma he was experiencing informing the songs he was writing at the time. It ended up carrying a much darker tone than the majority of his previous releases, but there was one song in particular that he used as a means of overcoming the strife that he was going through.
‘I Won’t Back Down’ is perhaps the most defiant song on the record, where Petty is standing up to fight the demons he has been plagued by since the event of the fire, asserting in the lyrics that he won’t be defeated. Lines such as “you can stand me up at the Gates of Hell” and “I got just one life in a world that keeps on pushin’ me around, but I’ll stand my ground” are Petty’s way of reassuring himself that things will be alright if he has enough courage to prevent the horrific events from standing in his way, and he said that he found writing the song to be a therapeutic process.
While the arsonist was never apprehended for their actions, Petty was clearly able to make it through the other side of this haunting event, and with this song and others on his classic solo debut, he was able to find himself at his best once again, against all odds.
