“I felt weird”: the musicians Tom Petty said he could never work with
Tom Petty didn’t get into the rock and roll business to be another solo artist.
As much as everyone knew his face from the moment that ‘Refugee’ and ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ became massive hits, he always emphasised that the Heartbreakers needed to be as much a part of his sound as the E Street Band was to Bruce Springsteen and Crazy Horse was to Neil Young. And while Petty did eventually have a few solo records under his belt, he felt that there were some musicians who didn’t really click with him when he first started putting together his masterpieces on his own.
Because if he had it his way, Mudcrutch would have still been playing gigs and slogging it out trying to get a record deal. His original band had all been friends for years before they moved out to California, but when Petty got word that the record company was interested in him and not the band, it was time for him to make a decision. He could either bet on himself or stay true to his friends, and while he eventually decided to fold Mudcrutch, he knew that he couldn’t leave Mike Campbell behind.
The lead guitarist was the co-captain on a lot of Petty’s best tunes, and he wasn’t about to let someone with that many great riffs get away. But since he had lost Benmont Tench in the lurch, he felt that there was something missing whenever he started writing his own songs. He was already cutting his teeth working with people like Leon Russell behind the scenes, but even when he started rubbing elbows with George Harrison before he had a hit, he didn’t feel confident in getting a bunch of hired guns behind him.
Then again, it’s not like Petty was working with a bunch of fly-by-night musicians or anything. He had landed on Al Kooper fresh out of Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Jim Keltner was one of the best session drummers in California at the time, but no matter how many times he tried to turn some of his tunes into hits with them, he wasn’t going to be completely comfortable until he had the right band behind him.
While Petty meant no disrespect to Keltner or Kooper, he felt that he needed a badass rock and roll band behind him like he did with his old group, saying, “Al Kooper, Jim Keltner — great players. But I felt weird, like ‘This ain’t what I wanna do. This could be anything. I want to be in a band.’ With the Heartbreakers, the idea was, ‘We’re going to keep it to five people, and whatever they can do, we’ll make something out of it.’ I didn’t want eighteen people up there. I wanted a small group. And that\s the way we did it. I don’t know any other way.”
And when he heard the rest of the Heartbreakers after coming down to one of their rehearsals, Petty knew that he had found his guys. Stan Lynch and Ron Blair may have eventually found their way out of the band once they hit it big, but even on those first records, you can hear them bringing a certain kind of swagger to their music that you wouldn’t have had if you threw in a bunch of session guys.
That doesn’t mean that Petty couldn’t find some time to return the favour with his industry friends. Keltner would still be a fixture in the band’s history, and when you look at the credits on some of their records, he was the one who brought ‘Refugee’ to life with his shaker part and eventually found his way to jamming with Petty when he became a member of the Traveling Wilburys later on.
Petty had already got more than a few big breaks throughout his career before he even had a record out, but if he was going to become a professional musician, he wanted to do things on his own terms. His records could have been pristine had they had the right people on them, but part of the appeal of a great rock and roll band was that things were supposed to sound a little bit imperfect.
