The musician Tom Petty couldn’t understand being compared to: “That one’s always fascinated me”
No one should go out of their way to not listen to certain styles of music. There’s merit in every genre, and even if it’s not for you, there’s bound to be something there that will resonate on a deeper level if you know where to look. But for Tom Petty, ignoring some artists was strictly practical.
When Petty first started, though, he seemed to be at war with many parts of the music industry. While he held onto music like a life raft throughout most of his early years, he felt that there was no need for him to be shoehorned into the same conversations that wanted to talk up everyone like Sex Pistols to Elvis Costello as the next big thing in rock. He was simple rock and roll, and he wouldn’t be roped into any kind of trend.
Even if he didn’t know it, though, Petty seemed to be the forefather of what would become heartland rock. There had been rustic rockers that took on the mantle before him, like Bob Seger, but with Petty’s tales of small-town America and how well he painted a picture of the American South on many of his songs, he felt like the perfect friend that every blue-collar worker had known at least once in their life.
But Petty was far from the only one playing up his everyman status in the mainstream. He was repping for the sunshine of California in many of his songs, but across the country, Bruce Springsteen was doing the exact same thing, only this time with a musical wrecking ball behind him. No matter how much the Heartbreakers could make some noise, the E Street Band hit like a battering ram when albums like Born to Run first came out. And yet Petty made sure not to pay too much attention to ‘The Boss’s orders.
Even though he understood why Springsteen sold records, Petty felt that it was better for him to keep his distance, saying, “I don’t think we sound even vaguely like Bruce Springsteen. I don’t think we sound like that at all. That one’s always fascinated me. I’ve never really heard a Bruce Springsteen record. I know Bruce and I admire what he does, but I never really heard a whole album of his. When I hear his records, it’s always bells and saxophones. We’re more of a guitar group.”
And even when Petty did go big, it sounded completely different from what Springsteen had been doing. A lot of the drama behind Springsteen’s music comes back to the organ or Roy Bittan and the saxophone of Clarence Clemons, but when Petty came out with albums like Southern Accents, he was using horns in a much different way when working on ballads like ‘The Best of Everything’.
That might also be because he and Springsteen saw things in two different lights. As much as both of them admired acts like The Beatles, Petty seemed more ingrained in that world of experimentation on his later albums. ‘The Boss’ could experiment as well, but his record collection led to him approaching things from a different perspective, taking the drama of Phil Spector’s recordings and marrying them with James Brown’s sense of raw performance.
So while Petty deserves credit for opening a new lane for heartland rockers compared to Springsteen’s model, both of them feel like kindred spirits in a way. They are two sides of the same musical coin, but despite their differences, they both value the importance of finding that one great song that neither of their heroes has come across yet.
