What Tom Petty called the “real tragedy of The Heartbreakers”
The journey Tom Petty took to become one of the biggest rock stars in the world was never going to be easy. Even though he may have managed his chemistry with The Heartbreakers down to a science when cutting the band’s final records, Petty was always running into stumbling blocks along the way, all stemming from his need to fight any injustice that comes in the music business. While The Heartbreakers always returned from hard times, Petty saw this incident as one of the group’s low points.
Coming out of the 1990s, most would swear that Petty was in for one of the most enormous successes of his life. After working with the Traveling Wilburys and having a superstar producer in Jeff Lynne, the turn to rustic production with Rick Rubin on Wildflowers would catapult him back into the limelight, with tracks like ‘You Wreck Me’ and ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’ becoming late-career hits for him.
Although the firing of drummer Stan Lynch marred the background of the album, something else was looming large over the group in the back half of the decade. Having gone through a divorce while making Wildflowers, Petty was in rough shape when putting together the following album, Echo. Instead of the optimistic attitude that permeates most of his work, Petty began writing songs from a more wounded place, turning in tracks like ‘Room at the Top’ and the title track sounding like a broken man.
Petty was going through emotional hell, but bassist Howie Epstein was slowly deteriorating before their eyes. Although Epstein was known as one of the best sonic forces in the group since he joined in the 1980s, things began to go wrong when he got involved with heroin during the making of Southern Accents.
While it had been kept under control for the majority of the sessions, Epstein had begun to crack up during Echo, not even showing up to shoot the final cover for the album. Petty had initially considered firing Epstein for his own good, but nothing was going to stop him from falling prey to his addictions.
Petty would later say that he should have spoken up about Epstein’s vices, telling Runnin’ Down a Dream, “In hindsight, we probably should have been more vocal about it. But I just thought that it was his business. I mean, as long as he was doing his gig, I don’t think I should be the one to tell him how to live his life.”
While the album was fraught with internal tension at Epstein’s expense, Tench would say that he was never slipping during recording, saying, “It never affected the music. If you listen to a song like, ‘Swingin’, the hook is the backing vocals singing ‘Do-o-o-o-own’ And that’s not Tom, that’s Howie.” Though the album was finished, Epstein’s final appearance with the band would be their induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, eventually passing away in the early 2000s.
While Petty would welcome back original bassist Ron Blair to the band for the album The Last DJ, he always considered the loss of Epstein the most significant blow to the group, explaining, “That’s the real tragedy of the Heartbreakers, losing him. He was just this beautiful man that got caught up in a trap”.
