“It was a long project”: Tom Petty never wanted to remake ‘Southern Accents’
Musicians tend to see their craft as an ever-evolving project. While it’s easy to get the right songs in a decent order for a successful record, having an album that tells a story is another matter entirely whenever someone tries to make their true masterpieces. Although Tom Petty didn’t think much about the textures of his records when he started, he thought he never wanted to make this record again when he started to go over things with a fine-toothed comb.
Going through his early records, though, Petty was the epitome of a garage rocker by heartland rock standards. He still idolised acts like The Rolling Stones and The Animals, but listening to his debut and especially to You’re Gonna Get It, the charm comes from hearing everyone in the band in one room playing off each other, whether that’s the ambience on a track like ‘Breakdown’ or hearing them kick up the energy of The Rolling Stones a few notches on ‘Too Much Ain’t Enough’.
Once Jimmy Iovine was brought into the picture on Damn the Torpedoes, though, the rules of the studio had started to change. Petty wanted to create a massive hit, and that meant dealing with performances that sounded right from top to bottom, which usually meant testing everyone’s sanity when it came time to hit the red light on the studio floor.
Although that kind of pressure and a lawsuit could have made anyone else cynical, Petty wasn’t done working with Iovine. Throughout Hard Promises and Long After Dark, you can hear them exploring new sounds and trying out new technology like synthesisers, but Petty didn’t want to be locked into trend-chasing. He wanted to tell stories with his songs, and Southern Accents was his first opportunity to run wild.
It’s not like the work doesn’t show, either. Despite not being a double album as Petty had planned, tunes like ‘Rebels’ and the title track have the best production he ever had in the 1980s, complete with horn parts and some of the finest vocal performances that he ever gave. There were still a few hangers-on in the studio, though, and with a lot of cocaine moving around, Petty said that he had no desire to make that kind of record again.
Despite a tune like ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ becoming an MTV staple, Petty felt the band didn’t gel as well when session musicians were brought in for the horn parts, saying, “We didn’t want a band that had session players – when you hear us, you know it’s Stan [Lynch] playing the drums. I stuck to that but it grew out of everyone playing for different sessions and stuff. It was just having some more people around for more input. It was a long project, and I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I did it.”
Then again, given how many people worked on his later projects, Petty could probably afford to take a few more chances with some non-Heartbreakers. Outside of working with the Traveling Wilburys, Full Moon Fever benefited from having Jeff Lynne to bounce ideas off of, and looking at his masterpiece, Wildflowers, having Ringo Starr sit in on ‘To Find a Friend’ or having Michael Kamen add his beautiful orchestrations were a step above anything he had done before.
But it’s hard to really separate Petty from his bandmates, either. As much as he might have been the face of the group throughout their tenure, it’s hard to think of the sound of the band without having people like Benmont Tench or Mike Campbell there in the background as well.
