The issue Tom Petty had with ‘Damn the Torpedoes’: “We went too far”
Some of the biggest records only look that way in retrospect. While no one will argue that The Velvet Underground is one of the most influential rock bands in history, there’s a good chance that people would have laughed at you if you had that same opinion when their debut album came out. Time can be kind to some of the greatest artists in the world, but Tom Petty felt that his magnum opus, Damn the Torpedoes, didn’t hit people the same way it did in the late 1970s.
Then again, Petty was driven much more than any other artist could ever be when he was making his third outing. After trying his hand at becoming a rock and roll star on his last two albums, he was now up against the world and his label now that he had a lawsuit around his neck when his higher-ups tried to steal his songs.
It wasn’t anything to get bothered about, though. Petty was doing his best work, and he knew that ‘Refugee’ and ‘Here Comes My Girl’ were going to be striking the moment they hit the radio waves. They just needed the right drum sound, and not even Jimmy Iovine could make them sound good.
Known for producing artists like John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, Iovine had been known for getting the most out of every instrument, which didn’t always align with how Stan Lynch played. In Runnin’ Down a Dream, Lynch remembered how cutthroat he could be, saying, “[Engineer] Shelly [Yakus] took me drum shopping, saying, ‘Your sound is punk ass because your drums are punk ass’. And Jimmy was like, ‘Get the drum tracks and get out of my way’”.
Since the band wanted to get as much done as possible from top to bottom in one take, pressure was always going to be placed on Lynch to get the right take. Despite having a zany period when Petty fired Lynch from the band for a few weeks, it wasn’t until he returned that everything fell into place.
Looking back on the drum tracks, Petty said that the drum sound was a little bit dated, telling Sound and Vision, “We got really ambitious with Damn the Torpedoes. It’s funny because that record changed the way drums were recorded, and it’s odd because we didn’t like it. [laughs] We went too far. I liked the record, but that drum sound really only worked when that record came out”.
Despite Petty finally being satisfied at the time, it’s easy to see what he’s talking about. Make no mistake, the drums still sound fantastic when pounding out tracks like ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ and ‘Century City’, but the sound often feels a bit too muddy in the mix, leading to a few moments where they start to fade into the background a little bit too much.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s look at a later Petty song, ‘You Wreck Me’. Compared to the lush sounds of his early years, this rocker feels like you’re hearing everyone play in the room, with the drums, in particular, having a strong presence without ever really having to do a lot of work. Petty may have given the drums a supersonic sheen back in the day, but by the time he reached the back half of his career, it was about making something that was much more organic.
