The romance that “scarred” Tom Petty’s brain
Music is always the best cure for a broken heart. Even though nothing will help ease the pain that much when someone walks out of your life, any great song can provide the perfect comfort the same way that a good friend does when you’re breaking down. Most artists have made it their job to help capture that kind of emotion on tape, but it’s not easy to write songs on that type of heartache if you haven’t gone through a fair share of it yourself, and Tom Petty knew that feeling all too well.
Throughout his career, though, Petty always seemed to be unstoppable whenever he made his greatest tunes. For someone that grew up at a time when punk was the biggest thing in the world, the heartland rocker was proud to be playing rock and roll, and listening through to everything from ‘Listen to Her Heart’ to ‘Refugee’, he wanted to make sure that everyone knew not to turn their backs on him.
His attitude was definitely punk, but he had a soft heart at the core of it all. Some of his biggest influences, like The Byrds and The Beatles, were no strangers to heartbreak songs, but when he first started cutting his teeth writing songs, he was also coming off one of his first major breakups. And if he couldn’t let out his pain the right way, he knew that he could at least get a few good tunes out of the deal.
When talking about his salad days, Petty remembered having to cut ties with an old flame that seriously messed with his head, saying, “She let me know it was just for that night, and it scarred my brain all over again. In a matter of hours, I’d let myself believe another story, the one I’d wanted to believe for a long time. I only saw her a few times after that. But finally she took me into a room at someone’s place and said, ‘You keep trying, but you and me isn’t going to happen.’”
Far too many people have had the same story that Petty had, but from that grief came ‘Even the Losers’. Although the title wasn’t solidified until the minute Petty was tracking the song, it’s easy to hear a lot of that angst in the tune. This woman had clearly done a number on him, but whereas the song itself is a lot of fun, it does have a little bit of attitude behind it as well, even Petty joking that it couldn’t have been that easy for her to forget about him after just one night, either.
But this might not have been the only time a song like this happened. A few albums before, the song ‘The Wild One Forever’ seems to have the same story behind it, but this time it’s a lot sadder. ‘Even the Losers’ starts off morose before sounding like the most optimistic song in the world, but since Petty had more time to spread out, his first attempt actually makes someone feel that time, almost like listening to the song through a haze as he’s describing those magical hours he had with his other half.
It wasn’t going to be easy to write songs like these, but it did come in handy for when Petty had his heart broken a few times over. Wildflowers was already a signal that things were going wrong, but when listening to Echo, Petty seemed to be preparing for this moment by writing ‘Even the Losers’, eventually channelling all his pain into singing about his divorce and the fallout of watching bassist Howie Epstein fall apart from drugs.
Rock and roll might be known as the most care-free genre in the world, but it’s songs like this that prove why it’s necessary for people to process their emotions. Sometimes problems can’t be solved with a sing-along pop song, but if someone has the right idea, their songs can serve as a companion to help someone through the harder moments in their lives.
