The only song Tom Petty wanted another shot at: “I could have sung it better”
He isn’t as often heralded as some of his contemporaries, but Tom Petty deserves all the same acclaim as artists like Bruce Springsteen, Roy Orbison and George Harrison. He was a prolific force in rock music for decades, and his catalogue of songs highlights not only a gifted writer but a superb vocalist.
By the end of the 1970s, Tom Petty had already sculpted a beautiful portrait of small-town America. Since his debut release, his work with The Heartbreakers brought some of the most down-to-earth music modern rock had to offer, peaking with songs like ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and ‘Refugee’. With the ‘80s in full swing, Petty wanted to get more ambitious on his album Southern Accents.
Approached like a pseudo-concept album, Petty wanted to tell the story of the American south, complete with some of the most dramatic pieces of his career. Although the songwriting might have gone well, the band’s break from the road left them with a few bad habits to deal with in the studio.
Becoming overly fond of cocaine, most of the sessions ground to a halt, with some of the best songs never fully coming together in the studio. While Petty eventually salvaged what was left of the album with the help of producer Jimmy Iovine, one of the central songs still gave him problems.
Opening up the album, ‘Rebels’ is the classic tale of a young man on the wrong side of the tracks, being picked up half-drunk and blaming all of his problems on his heritage as a rebel. Although Petty is at his songwriting best, he recalled that he would have loved the opportunity to have another crack at it.
Given how messed up he was, Petty went on to say that he wasn’t a fan of the version that got released, detailing in Conversations with Tom Petty, “I still think it could have been better. I don’t think the vocal’s good on it. I could have sung it better. I think it’s kind of blurry and garbled. I think I could have enunciated it better”.
Getting the song right would not be easy, especially when Petty was out of commission with an in-studio injury. After hearing how good the demo to the song sounded, he hit the wall in a fit of frustration, reducing his hand to powder due to the force of it. Although Petty would fully recover, it wasn’t enough to save the double album vision.
After throwing out the concept, Iovine convinced him to pair it down to a great single album, consisting of several odes to the South like the title track as well as interesting detours like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, featuring a guest appearance by Eurythmics mastermind Dave Stewart. However, some of the final product also featured subpar songs, with Petty calling ‘Make It Better’ one of the worst songs he ever made.
Despite all of the headaches that went into making the record, Petty has come to respect all of the effort that went into creating Southern Accents, noting that he was prouder of the record that it became than the one he heard in his head. Then again, even the roadies have had their fill of one of the best tracks, as Petty recalls, “My roadies, Bugs, we’d be driving along. And he said, ‘I can’t listen to that record. I still can’t listen to ‘Rebels’ because it reminds me of night after night after night and how frustrating it was’”.
A concept album about the South of America is, by all accounts, a fantastic idea. While the album does struggle to contain the three songs Petty wrote with the Eurythmics within the concept, the rest of the record has a welcomed gentle hum that is both warm and glowing. Petty uses his often overlooked lyrical jousting to cleverly deliver a message we don’t get to hear so often: the South is a nice place to be, and that’s a message that sometimes needs to be heard.
