The 10 best Tom Petty deep cuts
Tom Petty has always provided the soundtrack of the heartland. Whereas most artists of his time were getting in tune with punk and new wave, Petty was proud to strap on his guitar and play the music he grew up loving, writing rock tunes in the same vein as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Between songs like ‘Free Fallin’ and ‘Refugee’, just as many classics tend to get overlooked.
For as long as Petty had gone during his lifetime, he never considered any of his songs to be filler. Even if a track had a great guitar solo, it didn’t matter if the tune at the centre didn’t hold up, and each of his songs was about giving fans their money’s worth outside of a cheap record with a guitar on it.
Although there are many songs to choose from in Petty’s prime in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, he and the Heartbreakers always set their sights on something bigger beyond the horizon. Across later albums like Wildflowers and Highway Companion, Petty gave a clinic on how to age gracefully as a rocker, from tales of redemption to advice that he might have given his younger self if given a chance.
Throughout every facet of his career, Petty never pulled any punches, standing up for what he believed in on every song and always singing something from the heart rather than forcing the material. Not every one of these stories has a happy ending, but sounds of heartland rock always had a bittersweet edge.
Tom Petty’s 10 best deep cuts”
10. ‘Waiting For Tonight’ – Anthology: Through The Years
Tom Petty had more great songs than he knew what to do with in his prime. Even when he was lost in the woods trying to find material, some of the discarded tracks became staples for other artists like Don Henley and Stevie Nicks. When he was firmly settling into his first solo album, one of the greatest tunes of his career wound up on the cutting room floor.
Framed as a typical goodnight song, ‘Waiting For Tonight’ is everything one could ask for in a classic heartland rock song, with a cascading rhythm guitar from Mike Campbell and backing vocals by the members of The Bangles. Although the song went off without a hitch, it had to be shelved for the Anthology CD when they couldn’t find space on the final record.
When looking back on that time, Petty said he considered the song a missed opportunity, thinking the tune would have worked wonders if it had been placed as the final track on the album. Since ‘Zombie Zoo’ is the worst tune on the final version of Full Moon Fever, substituting this track into the final mix might be the perfect Tom Petty album.
9. ‘The Best of Everything’ – Southern Accents
The sounds of the sessions for Southern Accents doesn’t feel like much fun at all. After taking a break from the road, The Heartbreakers were in bad shape and struggling to get on the same page through their intended double album. After pairing it down to a single release, Petty searched in his soul and dug out one of the most reflective breakup tunes of his career.
Taking on the tone of an old drifter, Petty wonders where one of his old flames is these days, wondering if she ever amounted to anything once they moved out of their nowhere town. Even though there is some emotional trembling in his voice, he seems to be content that whatever came between them was for the best and that he needed to move on with his life to become the rock star he is today.
No matter how many times he might want to go back, Petty feels fulfilled in this song, wishing his former lover peace wherever she is and hoping that she found whatever she was looking for later down the line. There’s a good chance Petty not even recognise this girl if he saw her walking down the street, but he’d probably relive the heartache over and over again if it meant keeping the life he has today.
8. ‘Too Much Ain’t Enough’ – You’re Gonna Get It
The Tom Petty of old sounded like he had an axe to grind on every one of his tracks. Even though he wasn’t looking to join the punk crowd, Petty’s insistence on doing whatever he wanted made him fit in with the ne’er-do-wells who populated the charts like Johnny Rotten and Joey Ramone. Petty may have gotten there with a few familiar chords in his hands, but ‘Too Much Ain’t Enough’ was the first tune that felt like it could have been made by a punk outfit.
Written as a typical diss song towards a nagging girlfriend, Petty sings through gnashed teeth throughout the tune, played in an open tuning that sounds furious from his six-string guitar. While Mike Campbell wasn’t the most intense guitar player at the best of times, his leads on this track are ferocious, as if he unlocked the key to fellow guitarists like Jimmy Page and are studying that ramshackle style note for note.
Just like many punk songs of old, this effort doesn’t waste a second of time either, banging away at the riff for all it’s worth and closing up shop before the listener even has time to know what hit them. Even though Petty looked down upon some of the punk bands coming up, he still understood the medium just fine.
7. ‘Fault Lines’ – Hypnotic Eye
No one would blame Tom Petty if he decided to hang things up in his old age. Every artist gets to the point where they’ve said all they needed to say, and it would have been graceful if Petty decided to retire in the early 2000s. There’s no rest for the true rockers, though, and Petty still sounded ready for war when Hypnotic Eye was released.
Although songs like ‘American Dream Plan B’ were mining the same kind of bluesy swagger from his album Mojo, ‘Fault Lines’ is something different for Petty, bringing some hard rock into his delivery with a furious guitar line and sassy vocal delivery throughout the verses. Even in the bridge, Campbell arpeggiating a truly demented chord desensitises the listener before dropping back into the main riff for the song.
Even after years of rock and roll excesses, Petty is looking to clean house, talking about the cracks in the foundation that have run through his life and choosing whether to live with them or wear them like a badge of honour. The same reflective Tom Petty is still present in this song, but just like his famous tune, he’s nowhere near ready to back down.
6. ‘Echo’ – Echo
The album Echo occupies a weird space in Tom Petty’s catalogue. After riding the high of one of his late career triumphs, Petty split from his wife and was not taking it well, retreating to a chicken shack and hardly speaking to anyone outside the studio. While most of the songs were self-admittedly on autopilot, according to Petty, the title track allows him to wallow in his sadness.
For six minutes, Petty lays all his cards on the table about the aftermath of his marriage, talking about how he sees his wife as a danger but also not being able to imagine life without her. Even after he’s cut ties with her, the echo of her voice and the situation continues to ring in his ears, almost like a ghost reminding him of what he had taken for granted.
As the song reaches its final verse, Petty almost stops singing entirely, adopting a sort-of spoken word cadence to his voice as he talks about his lover’s poison coming in liquid and trying to keep his cool even though he’s holding himself together by threads. Echo is Petty’s most conflicted record from a writing perspective, but he could always rely on his songs as a safe space, to tell the truth.
5. ‘All The Wrong Reasons’ – Into the Great Wide Open
In the early ‘90s, Petty was still riding the high of what he got into on Full Moon Fever. After working hard on a product that everyone could be happy with, Petty had the idea to do it all over again, bringing ELO’s Jeff Lynne behind the producer’s chair on the next proper Heartbreakers album. Though the results were just as explosive, one of the tunes served as a spiritual sequel to one of his greatest hits.
Humorously titled ‘Re-Fallin’ by his bandmates, ‘All The Wrong Reasons’ contains the same chord sequence and shout-along chorus as Petty’s hit ‘Free Fallin’, only with a more morbid edge this time. After telling a story of a young boy breaking young girls’ hearts, this version of the tune is a tale of doomed romance, as two lovers try to defy the odds and move out of their nowhere town, demanding not to be like their parents.
By the end of the tune, their search for fame and attention gets the better of them, with the lives they built together going up for sale in the heart of America and having to fork over their dreams to big business. Petty is the ultimate example of what can happen when someone dreams big, but ‘All The Wrong Reasons’ is a cautionary tale of what happens when someone flies too close to the sun.
4. ‘Southern Accents’ – Southern Accents
Some of the best rockers of all time know how to deliver a ballad. Anyone can make songs about partying all night long, but some of the greatest songwriters of the modern age know how to tone things down and move the listener with just a basic song structure. And while Southern Accents was full of bells and whistles, the title track sounds like Petty extrapolated a piece of his soul for his audience to see.
Looking to paint a picture of the American south on this album, this could be the unintentional anthem for the region, where Petty remembers all of the simple pleasures of life in his native Florida, like looking over the orange groves to make sure they don’t freeze in the winter. Although Petty wanted nothing to do with that life, he looks back on those jobs with a certain level of respect during a time when the magical pieces of his childhood got left by the wayside.
The real tearjerking moment comes towards the end of the song, where he starts to imagine his younger years, seeing his mother standing there next to him and watching her kneeling down by the window and praying that he will be OK. Given how far he had come and what he had done for his town and his fellow rockers, Petty’s mother would have surely been proud to see how far her son had come.
3. ‘Something Big’ – Hard Promises
There was always an alternate side to Tom Petty beyond just the tales of escape. Although ‘Even the Losers’ and ‘Refugee’ served as the soundtrack to millions of road trips for young Americans, Petty had a sinister edge to him that he only reserved for hidden album tracks like ‘Luna’ on his debut record. Though most of them got chalked up to Petty finding his sound, ‘Something Big’ switches gears from heartland rock to southern gothic folktale.
Hard Promises always was a dark record, but this tune is where all of the macabre aspects of Petty’s songs come to a head, setting the scene as a grim western where some greedy souls take what they want no matter the cost. Although one of Petty’s characters makes it to the edge of town, his rough past catches up to him, murdering him in his motel room and leaving him a casualty of the world of organised crime.
Even as the song plays out, the police investigating the scene can’t find it in their hearts to have pity for the man, thinking that he was some fool in way over his head who thought he could cheat his way through the dark side of the south. Petty’s music had never been that far away from country music, but ‘Something Big’ is the dark folk tale that seems more in line with Johnny Cash than anything rock and roll.
2. ‘Square One’ – Highway Companion
After getting topical in his older years, Petty had plans to pair himself down for Highway Companion. Though the album was a solo record in name, most of The Heartbreakers end up playing on the final product, which Petty described as a simplistic acoustic record. Although songs like ‘Big Weekend’ and ‘Saving Grace’ are given a huge boost from Benmont Tench and Ron Blair, ‘Square One’ is the purest song that Petty had written since his glory years.
As he delicately strums his guitar, Petty is reflective on the years of mileage he’s put on his guitar, taking inventory of the mistakes he’s made and the strides that he put himself through to get to where he is. Although Petty sounds tired across the track, he never once sounds out of gas, looking to keep pushing himself at every turn while still being proud of what got him to the point where he actually feels happy.
Mike Campbell’s guitar solo matches Petty’s emotion note for note, sounding a bit lazy and rough around the edges but almost sounding like it’s crying for all the years that they can never live again. It took a long time for Petty to find some place of rest, but all of those blood, sweat and tears were worth it if meant getting to have a life of ease with his family.
1. ‘To Find a Friend’ – Wildflowers
If there’s any one muse that Tom Petty had in his life, it’s his relationship with the song. He may have considered artists like The Beatles or Bob Dylan some of the best in their craft, but the best inspiration comes from sitting with a guitar and finding a complex story appear out of thin air. It might not be the easiest thing to do, but when Petty harnesses it, he is as good as any fiction writer.
Although Wildflowers had some decent hits for Petty, it is ‘To Find a Friend’ that many consider to be one of the most complete songs he has ever written, talking about a man who leaves his wife after a long time and ran off to see what the rest of the world has to offer. It might have seemed like a good idea, but the audience is treated to how vicious the world can be, as his wife’s boyfriend takes over the house and the protagonist moves to a new town and finds a new bar to haunt when out of work.
All while trying to find some companion, Petty just looks at the days passing by like paper in the wind, watching everything change around this man and never being able to find some human connection. Although Petty wasn’t one for preachiness, there’s almost a message in there for how one should treat their friends because it’s just as easy to lose some of the most important people in life. Then again, Petty’s way of writing is open. Even if it’s not to someone’s taste, this is the kind of standard that most other artists should be striving for when they pick up a guitar.
