The show Tom Petty was scared to death to play: “I was really nervous”
Tom Petty was never someone to be trifled with, no matter what decade you found him. As much as he seemed like a gentle soul playing songs like ‘Free Fallin’’, he never suffered fools gladly, and he would gladly go to war with anyone that he thought was jerking him around. Petty didn’t scare easy, but when it came time to pay tribute to George Harrison, you could have knocked him down with a feather.
Then again, any musician working would have given their left arm to perform at the Concert for George. Harrison was responsible for some of the greatest Beatles songs ever written, and even if he had that quiet demeanour whenever he played, he always spoke volumes whenever he did open his mouth.
If anything, the fact that Petty was nervous is actually kind of strange, considering how close he was to Harrison. Throughout his time as a Traveling Wilbury, Petty seemed to look to Harrison as an older brother figure half the time, occasionally visiting him at Friar Park and writing the odd song like ‘Cheer Down’.
When it came time to put on the concert, Petty said that he was petrified to move a muscle, telling Paul Zollo, “I was scared to death at that show. I was really nervous. Something like that had quite a heavy lineup of people on it. And we wanted to be really good, and we hadn’t had much rehearsal. We’d only played those songs a few times. We wanted to shine, and fortunately, we got away with it.”
Granted, Petty might be drastically underselling himself here. While it’s no tall order to pay tribute to someone like Harrison with Beatles songs, his version of ‘I Need You’ might actually measure up to the original off of Help!. Petty’s heartland drawl fits surprisingly well with Harrison’s cadence, and those stabs from Mike Campbell are actually very tasteful in keeping with the original’s wah-wah delayed guitar.
Regardless of how they played that night, the entire event felt more like a celebration of Harrison’s music than trying to play the best version of the piece they could. Outside of Petty’s songs, the highlight of the evening has to be Paul McCartney, who delivered a poignant version of ‘Something’ on the ukulele.
As it turned out, Petty’s fearless way of taking on Harrison’s songs couldn’t have come at a better time. Just a little later, he would induct Harrison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and would be given the guitar solo of a lifetime when Prince absolutely demolished ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
Considering everyone else on that stage, one would wonder if they would want to play music again after seeing something like that, but Petty had already been through that emotional ringer. He had to say goodbye to a friend and perform the song of a lifetime once so one god-level guitar solo wouldn’t get in the way of him carrying on the tradition of incredible rock and roll.
