Why Tom Petty called Elvis “the American Dream”
Tom Petty always acted as one of the quieter men in rock and roll. While others would employ a flash sense of fashion or a desire to hog the spotlight as a way of grabbing the attention, column inches and record sales, Petty preferred to let his music do the talking. Using a robust sense of songwriting, coupled with a searing talent both with the pen and his guitar, Petty became one of the rock and roll world’s most desired acts through grit, determination and guile. It was a sensibility that infused with his admiration for Elvis Presley.
It’s hard to quantify the impact of Elvis Presley on a generation of Americans when he first burst onto the radio and sang rock and roll from a whole new perspective. Elvis is rightly known as one of the principal founders of the genre and through his interpretations of classic songs, and his own songwriting capabilities, he began a musical revolution, the waves of which can still be found lapping at the shorelines of every country across the globe.
There is little very to add to the legacy of Elvis that hasn’t been covered in a plethora of biopics, biographies and profiles. The King has been crowned time and time again. However, his place in the pantheon of rock and roll royalty is so definite that it is sometimes easy to forget the singer’s humble beginnings. Creating music may now be a legitimate career path offered to vivacious kids in school, in the 1950s, there were no such opportunities afforded to working-class children. In truth, Elvis would have to grind his way to the top, something another American hero, Tom Petty, recognised as part of the performer’s attraction.
In 2014, Petty sat down with CBC and discussed his early love of Elvis. The hip-shaking musician ignited a fire in his belly and pointed his focus toward becoming a singer. In one moment, one song, Elvis would change the direction of his life forever: “Elvis was before The Beatles,” Petty explained. “My picture of Elvis was the American dream. Elvis was a kid from the south who had broken all the rules, he had become his own man, and looked like he did whatever he wanted, whether adults liked it or not,” he said amid wry laughter.
The determination of the singer to make his own luck, fight against the disparaging comments and refusal to let him perform in front of a camera is what set Elvis apart from the rest. He would not be stopped by society, and Petty saw that as the realisation of the American Dream he had been so neatly sold throughout his childhood.
“That was kind of the picture I had, but that didn’t look like something you could be for me. To be Elvis? Nobody has ever pulled that off, you’d have to be Elvis. You’d have to look like that for one thing, and orchestras would have to come out of the shrubbery and onto the beach. That just doesn’t happen, but, The Beatles looked like something that could be done to me,” he added.
While Elvis may have been the American dream personified, it would take a band from Liverpool to truly kick start Tom Petty’s ascension to America’s most loved rocker.
Watch Tom Petty confirm his love of Elvis Presley below.
