The only Tom Petty song not sung by Tom Petty
By the mid-1990s, Tom Petty had reached the kind of career renaissance that most artists his age only dream of. Although he had been a fixture of rock and roll history for the past two decades, his work with Rick Rubin on Wildflowers introduced him to a completely different demographic, with fans of alternative music relating to his organic approach to rock and roll. While Petty may have been working on top form while on the road, his home life was slowly falling apart.
In the background of the Wildflowers sessions, Petty was gradually breaking up with his wife and had started to withdraw into himself. While the band could contribute more stunning material to the soundtrack for the movie She’s the One, Petty would show fans his dark pages on the album Echo.
Informed by the fallout of his marriage, Petty would admit that he was distant throughout most of the album, recalling in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “I wrote the songs, but I wasn’t driving the car.” Although Petty would continue to steer The Heartbreakers throughout most of the album, guitarist Mike Campbell would speak up on the track ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’.
Since the days of Damn the Torpedoes, Campbell had always been Petty’s right-hand man, collaborating with him on his first solo outing, Full Moon Fever, and coming up with the basis for songs like ‘Refugee’ and ‘Here Comes My Girl’. Though Campbell tended to let his guitar do the talking for him, ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’ was the only time on a Heartbreakers album that Campbell would step behind the microphone.
Though Campbell’s tone of voice is remarkably similar to Petty’s in his higher register, the frontman is practically invisible on the track, only contributing the lines “I’m a lover, lover, lover” for the song’s chorus when co-writing the tune. While Campbell may not have been comfortable taking on the frontman role, the vocal chops came in handy when putting the group Mudcrutch back together.
Being the first group that Campbell, Petty, and Benmont Tench were in before forming the Heartbreakers, the trio reformed their old band with former members Randall Marsh and Tom Leadon for two albums in the 2000s, featuring every member taking a turn behind the mic including Campbell lending his vocal skills to ‘Victim of Circumstance’ off the group’s second outing.
Even though ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’ may have been a great first attempt for Campbell, it only affirmed the maligned studio sessions that brought it to fruition. When not working on the album, Petty was staying in an abandoned chick shack, trying to put together the pieces of himself still tangled up in his marriage. Although Petty made it to the studio, the real tragedy of this era was losing bassist Howie Epstein to drugs.
Having been a heroin addict for years, Epstein was beginning to crack up, not even showing up to the photo shoot for the album cover because of how messed up he was. After countless attempts to clean up, Epstein lost his battle with his demons, passing away while the rest of the band were working on the album The Last DJ. Campbell’s vocal debut might have been a breath of fresh air for fans, but it only illustrated the sound of the band becoming more fractured.
