The song that made Benmont Tench recognise Tom Petty’s genius: “Incredibly underrated”
It’s not always easy to spot genius out in the wild. As much as the best of the best tend to show themselves the minute they arrive on the scene, the potential for greatness is usually where labels hit a few blind spots, hence why Decca Records made the boneheaded decision to pass on The Beatles. Before Tom Petty even had the Heartbreakers as a band, though, Benmont Tench knew he was in the presence of greatness when he heard ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’.
When Petty first started breaking into his native Gainsville scene, he was one of the few committing the cardinal sin of actually playing original songs. This was the age when covers dominated most of the touring circuit, so if you weren’t playing the hits of the day, there was a good chance that no one would hire you.
That didn’t stop them from playing fast and loose with the rules in the band Mudcrutch, with drummer Randall Marsh recalling in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “Promoters would say ‘We want our Top 40’, so we would play songs we liked and say it was a number one hit. Or we’d play one of our own songs and say, ‘That was by Santana.’”
Granted, not every piece Petty wrote back then was a winner. ‘Depot Street’ was a decent piece of reggae-inspired rock but wasn’t going to set the world on fire, and while ‘Got My Mind Made Up’ had a decent groove, it took a few rewrites from Bob Dylan to actually whip it into decent shape decades later.
Once Tench heard ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’, though, he realised that Petty had something no one else did, telling Classic Albums, “I’ve always thought he was incredibly underrated as a songwriter. I’ve always felt that he’s taken for granted. When we had Mudcrutch and he showed up for rehearsal with ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’, I was like ‘what?’. Because remember this was me, I think I was 20, and he’s probably 22 or 23. That’s pretty wild that your friend that helped you bury a dead cat in your yard say, ‘Well, I wrote this.’”
Considering how many songs Petty had written before, ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ was the perfect example of doing a lot with a little bit of harmony. There are only four chords that go throughout the verse and chorus most of the time, and yet Petty dances up and down the scale throughout the whole thing, practically turning it into a soul-infused rock and roll piece.
Despite knocking out Tench right from the start, the track didn’t get its due until well after Mudcrutch ended. Even though it wasn’t in the running for Damn the Torpedoes, Petty managed to put it on the album at the last minute after Jimmy Iovine insisted on making it a hit. Then again, this song was just one pit stop on the road to even bigger things.
By the time Petty started writing ballads like ‘Southern Accents’, he had matured into the kind of national treasure that could go to bat with people like Bob Dylan. Even when working on simplistic songs, Petty made you see the full picture of every piece while only giving you a handful of details to work out. It doesn’t seem that hard to do when you look at the lyric sheet, but making such a complicated story out of just a few verses is still one of the hardest things in the world.
