The classic song Tom Petty wrote about “the pressures of the music business”
It was a constant struggle for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to break into the mainstream. The band had scored two top 40 hits in 1977, one with ‘Breakdown’ in the US and the other with ‘American Girl’ in the UK, but those songs only peaked at number 40. The band’s first two albums, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and You’re Gonna Get It, were only moderate chart success.
After the release of their sophomore album, Petty’s contract was reassigned to MCA Records after his initial label ABC Records was absorbed into MCA. Petty fought the change, even declaring bankruptcy in order to avoid the label. He would eventually sign a new contract with the MCA subsidiary Backstreet Records, but the stress from the court case eventually inspired the hard-hitting single ‘Refugee’.
“This was a reaction to the pressures of the music business,” Petty later said of ‘Regufee’. “I wound up in a huge row with the record company when ABC Records tried to sell our contract to MCA Records without us knowing about it, despite a clause in our contract that said they didn’t have the right to do that.”
“I was so angry with the whole system that I think that had a lot to do with the tone of the Damn the Torpedoes album,” he added. “I was in this defiant mood. I wasn’t so conscious of it then, but I can look back and see what was happening. I find that’s true a lot. It takes some time usually before you fully understand what’s going on in a song – or maybe what led up to it.”
After the record label fight, The Heartbreakers entered Sound City Studios with producer Jimmy Iovine to begin recording Damn the Torpedoes. ‘Refugee’ became one of the most contentious tracks on the record, with multiple takes burning out the band members and taking their toll on the song’s co-writer, guitarist Mike Campbell.
“That was a hard record to make,” Campbell told SongFacts in 2003. “It was a 4-track that I made at my house. Tom wrote over the music as it was, no changes, but it took us forever to actually cut the track. We just had a hard time getting the feel right. We must have recorded that 100 times. I remember being so frustrated with it one day that – I think this is the only time I ever did this – I just left the studio and went out of town for two days. I just couldn’t take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
The sweat and toil involved in making both ‘Refugee’ and Damn the Torpedoes would eventually pay off. Damn the Torpedoes peaked at number two on the Billboard album chart, solidifying Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as a legitimate mainstream force. ‘Refugee’ peaked at number 15 on the singles chart, giving the band a legitimate hit.
”When we were at the studio mixing it, I remember this one girl who was working in reception, she came in and heard the mix and she said, ‘That’s a hit, that’s a hit,’ and we looked at each other and said, ‘Maybe it is.’ You don’t always know,” Campbell explained. “Sometimes you think certain things are surefire and people just don’t latch on to them and other things they do. You know when it’s good or not, but you don’t always know if it’s a hit. A hit record a lot of times is more than just the song, it’s the timing, the climate you put it out in, what people are listening to and what they’re expecting to hear and if it touches a nerve at a certain time.”
Check out ‘Refugee’ down below.
