The song Tom Petty claims was stolen from him: “He never even really asked me”
It’s a dog-eat-dog world when it comes to songwriting most of the time. As much as people might love the idea of their favourite artists getting along well together, there’s just as much animosity between artists who want to try their best to make something better than anyone else on the charts. It’s one thing to be battling with every other rock band in the world, but Tom Petty got into trouble when he managed to have the song ‘Ways to Be Wicked’ stolen right from under his nose.
Before Petty had even started working with the Heartbreakers, though, he had already amassed a gigantic stockpile of classic songs. Nothing could catch fire, but no one writes a song as good as ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and isn’t expected to go the distance once they have a huge band behind them.
Considering his musical upbringing, Petty knew he had to keep on the ball whenever he wrote songs. The engine never stops for most songwriters, and usually, that means putting your all into it every single day to try to come up with at least something that could go on an album.
In fact, Petty was put in his place by former producer Denny Cordell, with Ron Blair recalling in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “Tom was working on a song, and it wasn’t coming together. Denny said, ‘What else you got?’ and Tom looked down and was like, ‘That was it’. And then Denny, in a nice way, kind of read him the riot act, saying, ‘Look, son, you got to have songs when you come in the studio’. At that point, I think his songwriting rate doubled”.
Once Petty started working with Jimmy Iovine, the New York producer was greeted with a treasure trove of music for Damn the Torpedoes. Although no one could crank out songs like ‘Here Comes My Girl’ and ‘Refugee’ like Petty could, ‘Ways to Be Wicked’ could’ve been a great song had Iovine not got to it first.
When speaking with Paul Zollo, Petty remembered Iovine taking the song and giving it to another band before he could finish it, saying, “That was the one that Jimmy stole. He took it to Lone Justice and gave it to them. We couldn’t really get a hold of it. But Jimmy took whatever attempt we made and gave it to Lone Justice. He never even really asked me. I found out later.”
Listening to the Lone Justice of the song certainly isn’t bad, but it does have a bit too much Heartbreakers fairy dust still sprinkled in it. While the version that the Heartbreakers made does exist on the compilation Playback, it feels like something that they could have fleshed out for an album like Southern Accents had they decided to turn it into a double record.
Granted, Petty did get a bit of payback once Iovine got to work on Stevie Nicks’s solo records. When working on the basis of what would become ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, Petty rewrote the lyrics for Nicks, took producer Dave Stewart and turned the tune into one of his own classics. It’s certainly not the most accommodating thing to do, but all’s fair in the Wild West atmosphere of songwriting.
