The one singer Tom Petty would have joined without question: “You have to play”
Tom Petty was always more than just another rock and roll star to most people.
To every single rock and roll legend, the heartland rocker was like the little brother that most of them never had, and whether he was performing with Bob Dylan or helping Johnny Cash realise some of his later works, Petty was happy to keep the spirit of American music alive in pretty much everything that he did. But even if the Heartbreakers would always be like family to him, he felt that there were some musicians that he would have joined without even thinking twice about it back in the day.
At the same time, Petty wasn’t going to leave some of his favourite musicians behind when he first made it big. His original band, Mudcrutch, had pretty much died right after their first album flopped, and while his label still wanted to use him as a songwriter, Petty didn’t like the idea of having a solo band. He wanted to feel like he was part of a group the same way The Byrds were, and when he found some of his former bandmates putting together The Heartbreakers, he knew that they had what it took to be his group.
And when listening to some of their best material, the Heartbreakers brought more out of Petty than anyone else. They could tell him when they thought a song was crap and that he needed to try again later, and considering how much power they had onstage, they told the stories Petty wanted to tell that needed that extra power, whether that was the beauty of ‘Southern Accents’ or the reckless abandon of ‘You Wreck Me’.
But there was already a wilderness period when Petty decided to join the Traveling Wilburys. He had already been friends with everyone in the band, and since Bob Dylan was already friendly with the Heartbreakers, it wasn’t hard to see where Petty fit into the equation. Jeff Lynne may have stayed on with Petty to work on his next few solo albums, but Petty was also interested in seeing where George Harrison was going to go after the band decided to go their separate ways.
The quiet Beatle was always the most enigmatic superstar in the world, and he was never going to make any record unless he felt like he had some genuine faith in it. So while the Wilburys went kaput, Harrison ended up sitting out most of the 1990s before eventually putting out his posthumous album Brainwashed in 2002. But if Harrison wanted to put a band together, Petty said that the Heartbreakers would always be on hand.
Petty had his own personal problems throughout the 1990s, but when asked about the possibility of Harrison going back out on tour, the Heartland rocker was willing to offer up the Heartbreakers’ services without question, saying, “Sure. He loved the Heartbreakers, especially Mike. He told me once that Ry Cooder and Mike were the best slide players: ‘They’re my heroes with slide guitar.’ But I said, ‘You have to play lead guitar. People would be very disappointed if you didn’t.’”
While no one got to see what that kind of band would have looked like, the Concert for George did give us a slight glimpse of what that could have been. Petty did a fantastic job playing his rendition of ‘I Need You’, and since the band tore through the Wilburys’ ‘Handle With Care’ flawlessly, there’s a good chance that Harrison would have liked the idea of playing a few shows under the right circumstances.
It’s only fantasy at this point, but here’s hoping that somewhere in the ether, Petty and Harrison are strumming their guitars like two brothers whenever they perform. They both weren’t going to go out on tour if neither of them wanted to, but there’s no doubt that it would have been a lot of fun if the stars aligned in just the right way.
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