“It’s all phoney”: The one genre that meant nothing to Tom Petty
Not every rock and roller has to be in love with every subgenre that falls under that umbrella. After all, the entire mentality behind punk rock was to stomp out many progressive rock outfits, so it’s not like members of The Clash were showering people like Emerson, Lake and Palmer with praise every time they were questioned about them. Although Tom Petty was always a straight-ahead rock and roller in every sense of the word, he was more than willing to express his distaste for certain sides of the industry he didn’t like.
Because if there’s one thing that Petty hated more than anything, it’s someone being inauthentic. For him, rock and roll meant making music that came from the heart, and if that meant stomping out the suits that helped finance some of the biggest artists in the world, that’s what he was going to do if his integrity got compromised.
While Petty had already kicked up some dirt and became a problem for industry types thanks to him suing his own record label, he wasn’t going to roll over once he got what he wanted. Even when working with a legend like Roger McGuinn, Petty was absolutely cutthroat about his idols, even chewing out one of the A&R men sitting in on the session when he insisted that the Byrds frontman make something more in line with Top 40 music.
But by the time Petty landed in the era of MTV, the corporate side of rock and roll had changed a few times. He had spent his entire life trying to be the person who got major traction on the radio, so things were going to get a bit more complicated when the biggest radio station in the world also happened to care about what you looked like. While Petty was an innovator at first, it didn’t take long before people started abusing the practice.
And nowhere was that more evident than in the world of hair metal. Although there was some genuine talent that fell under that banner like Van Halen, the majority of hair metal acts were far more interested in getting their made-up mugs on MTV and thought about their music 15% of the time, to the point where a bunch of hairspray models could have easily passed for musicians in videos and no one would have been able to tell the difference.
“hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It’s just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it’s sort of become like professional wrestling.”
tom petty
Some fans were none the wiser, but Petty knew exactly what he was seeing when the movement started gaining traction, saying, “Rock ‘n’ roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the roll and called it rock, which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It’s just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it’s sort of become like professional wrestling. The fans know it’s phoney, but they don’t care.”
Then again, fans didn’t put up with phoniness for much longer once the 1990s kicked in. The entire grunge movement practically did for rock and roll what weed killer does for someone’s back garden, and by the time bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana started lighting up the charts, no one had to worry about the most photogenic rockstars teasing their hair up and playing blistering solos.
Although Petty had graduated to a rocker of yesteryear at that point, it’s not like he wasn’t accepted by the mainstream, either. Real recognises real, and no matter how many times that people may have complained about people living in the past, Petty’s later projects like Wildflowers proved that he was still as much of a cultural force as he was when he put out Damn the Torpedoes.
