“Too hard”: The one album Tom Petty thought was incomplete
No record is finished until it’s pried out of every artist’s hands. Even though many musicians can look back on certain albums from the moment they nailed them, others feel a touch incomplete compared to all of the celebrated records in their catalogue. Although Tom Petty never really had a bad record in him throughout his time with the Heartbreakers, he felt that there was one album that failed to meet expectations.
When Petty reached the 1980s, though, he was still as big as ever. Despite not being the most MTV-friendly band in the world, Petty was more than willing to play the game and make outlandish videos, even making an intro film for the song ‘You Got Lucky’ where they play futuristic cowboys.
Although the subsequent album, Long After Dark, was still great, Petty knew he could have done better. He had been treading water for a while, and now that he had bassist Howie Epstein fully integrated into the group, he figured that now was as good a time as any for him to spread his wings and make a double record.
He had always teased the idea of making something more ambitious, but the album Southern Accents was meant to celebrate his southern heritage, with tunes like ‘Rebels’ and the title track tying everything together. Once the band reconvened in the studio, though, their choice to take a break in between was the worst thing they could have done.
Now, with everyone nursing drug habits, Petty was forced to spend countless weeks on songs that should have easily taken a few hours. While that frustration culminated in Petty losing his hand during production, the end result threw the conceptual double record idea out the window, instead favouring mainstream material like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ and the soulful tune ‘Make It Better’.
Petty was still proud to have come out on the other side, but he regretted that people never got to hear the record he heard in his head, saying, “It seems we’ve tried too hard to make albums. Southern Accents and Long After Dark were very difficult projects, and though I like them, I think they’re pretty uneven records. Southern Accents has some good songs on it, like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More.’ is probably the best thing we’ve ever done, but as a complete album, it’s not quite there.”
Then again, if Petty had kept going with the concept album idea, chances are it would have been too bloated. And if ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ had to come out as part of the record, how would someone understand why sitars were being used on a tune about the American South?
That’s not to say that some of the forgotten songs haven’t come to light. The tune ‘Trailer’ was eventually cut by Petty’s side project, Mudcrutch, on their final album, 2. It’s not what Petty had in mind for his future, but sometimes people need to sacrifice their dreams if it means getting a better result.
