“I didn’t see the point”: The album Tom Petty never wanted to release
No artist should ever have to release any of their albums at gunpoint. As much as they might think that a certain idea isn’t coming together, forcing someone to make a record is like asking a painter with no inspiration to someone find an idea and paint a picture from scratch. Although Tom Petty had earned the right to call his own shots when working with the Heartbreakers, he admitted that there was no good reason why one particular record needed to be put out by the record company.
But the heartland rocker having a problem with his record company wasn’t anything new, either. Throughout his time in the spotlight, Petty was heavily critical of any label that ended up sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, whether that meant suing them for ownership of his songs, demanding that the prices of his records don’t get out of the reach of his fans, or sending them the same album again when they thought Full Moon Fever wasn’t good enough.
Any kid with this much conviction would have probably been laughed out of the room back in the day, but the more you think about it, he was right about many of the problems he talked about. Many labels are still as money-hungry as ever, and when looking at the issues that he discussed on a record like The Last DJ, it’s not like those faceless pop stars have suddenly gone away, either.
Petty did know how to cower to his label in certain areas, though, and the band’s Greatest Hits album was the one time where he seemed to compromise in the right way. He may not have seen the point in putting out a new song for the album, but given the fact that he had one of his biggest hits out of the deal in ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’, it’s not like it hurt the quality of the record that much.
When it came to random compilation albums, though, Anthology: Through the Years never sat well with Petty. He had already given fans what they had asked for by releasing the box set Playback in 1995, so what was the point in releasing a record that was nothing but a condensed version of that?
Since a lot of the material on the record came from his studio albums, Petty thought that making this album made absolutely no sense, saying, “With that Anthology album, I didn’t see the point in that record. But we were under a contract where we had to deliver. So what we did was pick our favourites. As many of them as we could get in. Because they insisted on having all the hits. But, since it was a double CD, we were allowed to pick more songs.”
While the album does have a few more interesting pieces of Heartbreakers history, like ‘Two Gunslingers’ and the rock and roll tune ‘Hometown Blues’, the real deep cuts are the reason why fans bought it, including songs like ‘Waiting for Tonight’ from Playback or one of the band’s best B-sides, ‘Surrender’.
So, even though it’s better to start with the mainline studio albums when it comes to Petty’s music, this is still a welcome alternative for those who don’t know where to start. You still have all the hits, but if you appreciate what the deep cuts have to offer, you’re in for a treasure trove in the back catalogue.
