The musician who made Tom Petty walk out on his audience: “It made me so mad”
For someone like Tom Petty, working with Bob Dylan was like standing next to a giant.
Anyone could play it cool around him in passing, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that the heartland rocker was practically looking at a piece of American history when Dylan first asked him and the Heartbreakers to perform with him for a series of shows in the 1980s. But there were always some opportunities for things to go sideways as well, and Petty had no time for people slipping up, either.
Then again, Petty never felt as starstruck around Dylan as many of us would. He knew he had a job to do as a member of Dylan’s backing band, and no matter how many times the band might be quivering in their boots, there was always room for them to ask the songwriting genius some questions about where the song would be going. They were never ones to argue with Dylan, but they could easily fight amongst each other.
Despite being one of the biggest bands in the world, there was already a lot of tension between the band members going into the tour. They had already gone through one of the biggest headaches of their career in Southern Accents, but while it did result in a great record, Stan Lynch was slowly turning into a problem. He already had a history of clashing with Petty at times, but drum machines being added to songs like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ probably didn’t help much.
While it was expected for everyone to be on their best behaviour, there were a few times Lynch started to suck up to the boss now and again. After the band became furious at Lynch’s decision to leave practice early to go see Sammy Davis Jr, what could have been a disaster turned into a big win when Dylan asked to join Lynch and left the rest of the band in the rehearsal space to pick things up later.
That did ultimately lead to a few hiccups playing live when Dylan didn’t think the band sounded right, but the real problems didn’t have to do with the songs at all. Petty and Lynch’s relationship was breaking down, and after one wrong move during one of the shows, Petty remembered slamming the guitar down in the middle of his set and not wanting to go back out onstage with the group.
When talking about the gig later, Petty remembered being absolutely livid at Lynch, saying, “I don’t even know what it was about anymore. I looked at him for some reason, and he took his drumsticks in one hand and just shot me the bird. I don’t know what it was, but something about it made me so mad. I went into a rage, just pushed my guitar off, walked from the stage, shut myself in the dressing room.”
While Petty was able to collect himself and make it through the rest of the tour, it’s not that he was going to kiss and make up with Lynch. The Dylan tour eventually went well, but after one lacklustre Heartbreakers album and eventually working with the Traveling Wilburys, it was clear that Petty wanted to break away from the band for a little bit, which ultimately led to Lynch being fired after not working on the Wildflowers sessions.
Each one of the Heartbreakers felt like they had entered another league the minute that they finished the Dylan tour, but that didn’t mean everyone had the same experience. They had started off that tour as students learning from a master, but when they musically grew up, some of those old friendships slowly drifted apart.
