“He gave us a whole different way”: The artist Tom Petty was forever in debt to
No artist can build their entire sonic foundation out of nothing. It takes a small army for any band to get off the ground in the first place, and some of the biggest names in music have reached those heights by listening to everything their record collection had to teach them. While there’s a slim chance that anyone could thank some of their inspirations personally, Tom Petty led the kind of charmed life that any classic rock fan would have killed to have lived during his musical prime.
Before he even reached the top of the charts, though, Petty was already living the way that many rock stars were supposed to. There were far too many artists jumping on the bandwagons of punk, new wave, prog, and disco at the time ‘American Girl’ came out, but when Petty opened his mouth, you could tell that he had studied under some of the best in the industry, having the guitar chime of The Byrds, the electricity of Mick Jagger, and the harmonies left over from The Beatles’ prime.
That would have been enough to get him on the good side of many rock fans, but no one expected the rest of the rock hierarchy to be paying attention. Outside of being best friends with George Harrison towards the end of the Beatle’s life, Petty was also friendly with Roger McGuinn, had worked on some comeback records for Del Shannon, and even managed to write a handful of tunes with the help of Leon Russell before he even got a record deal. But for any songwriter, learning with Bob Dylan was something different.
Throughout his career, Dylan set the template for everything a writer was supposed to be. Not every album he released was a masterpiece from cover to cover by any stretch, but with every era that he found himself in, he always continued to do whatever he wanted, whether that was turning to making gospel records or working with Petty and fellow rock legends on the Traveling Wilburys albums.
“We worked with him in 1986, backing him up, and we’re just forever in his debt. He gave us a whole different way to open the music up.”
Tom Petty
Before the supergroup had even formed, though, Petty got a firsthand education when the Heartbreakers served as Dylan’s backing band in the 1980s. Dylan was only beginning his return to the live stage, but Petty was the one who needed to be on his toes, especially when the frontman would decide to switch things up by playing in a different key or adding more verses no one was ready for.
Although that kind of behaviour normally would make musicians want to pull their hair out, Petty only had Dylan to thank for making the Heartbreakers the band they were later on, saying, “We worked with him in 1986, backing him up, and we’re just forever in his debt. He gave us a whole different way to open the music up. He gave us a lot more confidence on stage, too. Some of the things were really bold, too. We’d have to play stuff we’d just learned. He went for the feel of things. It made us want to be a bit bolder on stage, maybe improvise more.”
And while Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) doesn’t exactly reflect the best era of the Heartbreakers, it does serve as a great reminder of what they had been through. Many of the tracks on the record are first takes, and since the band were listening to them for the first time in the studio, the fact that they could sound this compact as a unit is a superhuman level of musical communication.
Then again, that’s always how Dylan thought about music. Many people are in it because they have something to say or because they want fame and attention, but when a real musician starts performing, they could practically blackout in the middle of a tune and manage to find their way around the bandstand.
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