The Tom Petty lyric his label insisted on changing: “First of all, it’s anti-cocaine”
Rock and roll has never been about playing by the rules. The head honchos of the music industry might like to keep a squeaky-clean image for most of their artists, but when it comes to the rebellious brand of rock stars, every rule laid in front of them is meant to be broken or at least tweaked a little bit to fit whatever they’re doing. Tom Petty may have been happy to play traditional rock and roll, but he was not going to relent when it came time to pick the single ‘Listen to Her Heart’.
Behind the scenes, though, Petty was almost always on the firing line at his label for one reason or another. He may have had a slightly commercial sound that the label liked working with, but seeing him go to war with his higher-ups on Damn the Torpedoes and then fight to keep the price of his album down didn’t exactly make him the kind of golden child most would expect.
What he did have was hits…lots of them. A lot of bands might try to take their label to task for ripping them off or do the best they can to preserve their craft, but it’s much easier to do that once you actually have the public behind you than when you’re a kid without a pot to piss in.
And even with songs like ‘American Girl’, Petty still dragged his feet at the beginning of his career. The sales might have been pouring in from England for his debut album, but many American press tours saw him playing to half-empty houses and being on some of the weirdest opening gigs ever.
Despite the novelty of seeing someone like Tom Petty open up for Kiss and Rush, things started swinging his way with You’re Gonna Get It. It might have been a bit rough around the edges, but ‘Listen to Her Heart’ was everything a hit was supposed to be, having a great guitar hook and a melody slightly reminiscent of The Byrds.
The label may have been happy to have a hit…they just didn’t think that one line suited them. Given that AM radio was still one of the most family-friendly formats, hearing an opening line about a man taking Petty’s girlfriend away with money and cocaine wasn’t going to go over well with the grandmas of the world.
Petty said that he was pissed off that they would even suggest the idea of changing the line, telling Rolling Stone, “I mean, first of all, it’s anti-cocaine. I don’t even like the stuff. And second, what’s champagne going for these days? Two bucks a bottle?”. Putting his foot down may have been the greatest choice he could have made, leading to the band’s first taste of momentum on the charts in 1978.
It’s one thing to get offended at one word, but using ‘champagne’ would have completely derailed the entire track. Outside of not rolling off the tongue as well, whoever is trying to woo someone else’s girl with a single bottle of champagne is going to need to seriously reconsider the odds of it actually working and the odds of getting thrown on their ass afterwards.
It turned out that the rock world had less of a stick up their ass than the label did, marking the first time that Petty actually shared the same chart positions as new wave acts at the time, like Elvis Costello. Rock and roll may have been slowly changing, but we were about to be introduced to the sounds of the heartland.
