The artist Tom Petty said changed how he played music: “He opened avenues”
Anyone who’s been around as long as Tom Petty knows a thing or two about what makes a rock and roll band jump. Despite being one of the most laid-back people in the music business, his control over the Heartbreakers was only rivalled by Bruce Springsteen’s leadership over the E Street Band, with them being able to stop on a dime the minute that he needed silence. But as all too many bar bands find out, that’s something that’s taught rather than something everyone is born with.
Throughout his career, Petty tried as hard as he could to make sure that every single set felt like it was second nature. There may have been a level of spontaneity and danger whenever they took the stage in the pre-Damn the Torpedoes days, but listening back to what they did during their run at the Fillmore in the 1990s, Petty could have easily taken a song in any direction and still make it out well, as evidenced by performing the song ‘Girl on LSD’ during various stops on tour.
No one in their right mind would have thought that Petty would be able to take off like that with Mudcrutch, but the real testing grounds were him working with his fellow Wilbury, Bob Dylan. Dylan may have been one of the most consistent musicians when it came to touring, but looking through some of his greatest shows with the Heartbreakers, it normally came from a lot of unscripted moments.
As anyone who’s seen his discography knows, Dylan has never been content to stay in one place for too long, and that includes his live setlist as well. Any other musician would have gladly played ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ or ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ to their fans for ages, but the troubadour would do whatever he could to mess with the formula, whether that was deciding to play it in a different time signature or moving the song up a few keys.
It was a trial by fire job for anyone associated with Dylan, but Petty was grateful to him for making them better musicians, saying, “We were hot when we hooked up with Bob. Then, he opened up avenues we hadn’t explored before. We became more confident and relaxed behind him, and the new album was made when we were still in that state of mind.”
But the real eye-opener came when they started working on the next album, Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), which isn’t often thought of among the best Petty albums out there. But considering a lot of the songs were played off the floor and only ran through once during the sessions, it’s insane to think that the band were in sync with each other, and that they could figure out where the song was going as they were playing it.
And those tricks had to have come in handy once Petty started working with the Traveling Wilburys. The entire operation had to be done in only a few days so Dylan could start his tour, thus being able to not only write songs like ‘Last Nite’ but also play off other living legends went from an impossible task to feeling like a walk in the park once he got his bearings.
There might be a lot of times when the Heartbreakers could have turned into an absolute trainwreck, but what Dylan did for the band was about more than getting the songs down. It taught all of them that even when they have their own songs down to a science, they were never too old to learn some new tricks.
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