Tom Petty’s favourite new wave bands: “I can’t get ’em out of my head”
Tom Petty debuted at a very confusing time for rock and roll. Although the heavy hitters of the early 1970s were all still making great records, the punk movement ended up taking a lot of the attention away from corporate rock in favour of something that was a lot more down to Earth. Petty wasn’t a punk, but he did at least have a healthy respect from what he was hearing out of the new wave scene.
After all, the ethos of punk was about stripping things down to what rock was supposed to be. The entire aura of a band like Led Zeppelin, for example, was becoming far too overblown to seem attainable anymore, so it made more sense to relate to someone like John Lydon or Joe Strummer than Jimmy Page at that point.
It’s not like Petty didn’t have a little punk edge. Sure, he always claimed that some of his biggest influences came from the glory days of rock and roll, like Elvis Presley and The Beatles, but there’s still an edge to how he handled the music business, like going to war with his record label and even pulling a knife out in the middle of a business meeting to get his point across.
While Petty didn’t have much time for acts like Sex Pistols, he did see some new blood on the scene, recalling, “I don’t really get into anyone’s trip these days. I kinda go by the tracks on a record or the shows that I’ve seen. I saw Nick Lowe, and I was real impressed by that. And I think Elvis Costello is fantastic. And the Cars; I’ve heard two songs by them, and I can’t get ’em out of my head. And David Johansen. He was out on the road with us, and I liked him a lot.”
Despite each act sounding like Petty is picking out records at random, there is one common thread that links them all together. Instead of getting into the genre to make some noise or experiment with sounds, artists like Ric Ocasek of The Cars or Elvis Costello always approached their music from a singer-songwriter’s perspective, usually adding the zany elements of their sound well after the fact.
There are even bits and pieces of certain bands that crop up in Petty’s sound every now and again. Even though he said that he didn’t like using synthesisers on albums like Long After Dark, hearing those primitive keyboard stabs on a piece like ‘You Got Lucky’ probably wouldn’t have happened if not for a song like ‘Just What I Needed’ becoming such a massive hit beforehand.
Still, Petty always claimed to be slightly outside that creative bubble, saying in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “I guess we had to be a part of the new wave because we weren’t part of the wave. I don’t know, I just don’t like joining anybody’s club. So we didn’t join know clubs. We’re our own [thing].”
That’s just because Petty’s brand of heartland rock didn’t have a proper name yet, with fellow artists like Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp helping link that homegrown sound together. As much as he may have tried to work around the trends of new wave music, Petty would always be in his own genre, and if it happened to sound like someone else every now and then, then so be it.
