The one singer Tom Petty called a rock and roll angel: “We were speechless”
Rock and roll always meant more to Tom Petty from the first moment he played guitar.
Whereas many people looked at The Beatles as a fun band that they could dance to when they saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show, the heartland rocker saw those Liverpool lads having fun as his higher calling. He didn’t fit into the normal nine-to-five jobs, but even if he could do something like the Fab Four, some of the biggest names in music history would forever be outside of his reach.
Then again, it’s not like Petty ever stopped being a fan once he became famous. He didn’t want the spotlight in the same way that most other people did, and while he did appreciate seeing the success of tunes like ‘Free Fallin’, he was more interested in writing that next great song than worrying about whether or not he would go down in history with people like Chuck Berry or Little Richard.
Because, as far as he could tell, what he was doing was cheap compared to the other geniuses of rock and roll. He didn’t come into the genre thinking that he was making anything too groundbreaking, but his muse directed him to all the right places from the minute he started, whether it was the Byrds-like worship of ‘American Girl’ or turning ‘Breakdown’ into one of the moodiest songs of the late 1970s. That could have only happened with the Heartbreakers, but the best artists could level someone with their raw presence.
After all, Petty knew that he was looking at greatness when he saw Jimi Hendrix tear up the stage or Mick Jagger showing off his frontman chops, but there was always a special place in his heart for Elvis Presley. There had been other rock and roll stars before him, but there’s hardly anyone who could emulate his swagger. Everything from his dancing to his signature vibrato put him one notch above everyone else, and when Petty saw him in person, he felt like he was watching a walking miracle.
Other artists are able to turn off their star power once they get off the stage, but Petty remembered ‘The King’ walking out of his trailer looking like a higher being when he visited the set of Follow That Dream, saying, “He stepped out radiant as an angel. He seemed to glow and walk above the ground. It was like nothing I’d ever seen in my life. At 50 yards, we were stunned by what this guy looked like. And he came walking right towards us. We were speechless.”
Then again, you’d be hard-pressed to get a word in around Presley around that time. He was the epitome of a superstar, but even if he seemed larger than life, that didn’t stop Petty from doing everything he could to get anywhere close to what he did. And if he couldn’t do some of his wild dance moves onstage, the least he could do was grab a guitar of his own and start writing a few songs that suited his voice.
But whereas Presley used his guitar as a prop half the time he played, Petty wanted to make sure everything he said meant something. He didn’t become friends with Bob Dylan by accident, and when listening to some of his greatest tunes, it was always about romanticising the life of a rock and roll star, whether it was going back to the simple pleasures that he loved back in Gainesville or using music as his emotional life raft when he was going through his divorce on Wildflowers.
Presley might not have been long for this world by the time that Petty put Mudcrutch together, but the impact he left was about being more than an entertainer. His music showed every kid like Petty what they could do if they had the right drive in them, so by the time heartland rock took over the world, he and the rest of the Heartbreakers were only following the dream that Presley had only suggested.
