“I’d go crazy”: the 1964 song Tom Petty hailed as a giant step forward for rock and roll
Watershed moments in rock and roll history don’t come much more impactful than the British invasion. From the moment that The Beatles stepped off that plane at JFK Airport in 1964, the musical landscape of the States was changed indefinitely, spawning a litany of homegrown talent, including one of the nation’s most beloved songwriters, Tom Petty.
Although Petty’s early beginnings in Florida were about as far away from the grey drizzle of England, through the transatlantic airwaves, he was able to soak up all the rock rebellion emanating from across the ocean. Like virtually every other musician who grew up in the 1960s, The Beatles were a life-changing revelation for Petty, who routinely cited their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show as the moment he knew he wanted to be in a band.
While retrospective accounts of the British invasion invariably and inevitably place The Beatles at their centre, the Merseyside heroes weren’t the only ones to be revolutionising rock on both sides of the Atlantic. Although they don’t boast a reputation nearly as enduring or lauded as the Fab Four, for instance, The Dave Clark Five were key figures within that invasion period back in the 1960s, and they were a particular favourite of Petty’s.
In their native England, The DC5 didn’t have quite the same commercial power as the Fabs, even if they did manage to knock ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ off the number-one spot, with their defining track ‘Glad All Over’.
When they eventually made it over to the United States, though, the group were afforded a degree of attention and hysteria that, at points, rivalled Beatlemania. According to Tom Petty, too, their raw rock and roll power might have eclipsed the Fab Four.
During a chat with Rolling Stone back in 2010, the songwriter plucked out their top-20 hit ‘Any Way You Want It’ as one of his favourite anthems of the Invasion period. “They were badass,” he declared, “This song sounds like a runaway train, with that sax honking down low. That was a big step, to blow the echo out that heavy. I’d go crazy every time I heard it.”
By the standards of 1964, that track was among the heaviest, rawest forms of rock and roll rebellion around, eclipsed only by the likes of The Kinks and ‘You Really Got Me’. Even still, that Dave Clark anthem became a key cornerstone of the garage rock realm that was blossoming in the wake of the British invasion, in turn inspiring legions of young kids across America to pick up an instrument and join a band.
With that in mind, it is no surprise that the song became such an integral aspect of Petty’s adolescent inspiration. The Dave Clark Five might have hailed from thousands of miles away, across the ocean, but in their rock and roll anarchy, he found something that resonated with him in the uneventful surroundings of Gainesville, Florida.
There is little doubt that, without the inspiration of the British invasion, Tom Petty might never have pursued the musical dreams he was destined to fulfil, and so the “badass” stylings of ‘Any Way You Want It’, as well as fueling his childhood listening habits, also changed the course of his existence forevermore.
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