When Tom Petty pulled a knife during a record label meeting
Every musician’s worst enemy in music tends to be the business itself. As much as artists might like to make music for anyone who will hear them, it usually takes a bunch of red tape to break through to their fans, from contractual obligations to being flown around the world to play one obscure show after another. While Tom Petty had always dealt with his fair share of problems with his record label, things began to change when he brought weapons into business meetings.
Before Petty had even signed to a label with the Heartbreakers, he had already been jerked around more than his peers. After becoming one of the leading figures of the heartland rock movement in his native Gainsville, Petty’s first band, Mudcrutch, would get a record deal only for the band to drop them after a handful of singles flopped.
Liking the way that Petty wrote songs, the label preferred keeping him on as a solo star. Rather than cower to what the higher-ups wanted, Petty decided to get a completely different band behind him, bringing back Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from Mudcrutchand rounding out the lineup with Ron Blair on bass and Stan Lynch on drums.
While the band’s debut would find its first success in Europe, it would be the release of their third album, Damn the Torpedoes, that everything depended upon. After gaining momentum, Petty thought that he was on the verge of his greatest work, only to be slapped with a loophole in his contract, which claimed that his label owned the copyright to his songs.
Declaring bankruptcy to fight the case, Petty would do everything he could to keep his new songs out of the reach of his record label, going so far as to hide the tapes when they weren’t working in the studio. When Petty finally arrived at the various meetings, he let them know he wasn’t messing around from the very beginning.
As Petty’s manager Tony Dimitriades recalled in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “He made them believe that he didn’t give a shit. And he didn’t tell me he was doing this, but he had a pen knife, and he took it out during the meeting and just started cleaning his nails. He just told me that he wanted something to do. [The label] probably thought, ‘This is just some punk kid’”.
Even though Petty could have been putting up a front for the suits, he claimed that he was never going to back down to anyone, explaining, “One guy told me, ‘Look kid, you’re going to make your records, and you’re going to shut up’. I looked at him, and I said, ‘I’ll sell you fucking peanuts before I give you any of my songs’”.
Although the settlement seemed like a David vs. Goliath style battle, Petty came out on top, getting the right to play his music and earn back his royalties on his own label, Backstreet Records. Then again, that didn’t stop him from wanting to move over to new pastures later, finally liberating himself from MCA Records to move over to Warner Bros.
While many artists can only dream of having their royalties back in their hands, Petty was never going to cower to any of the industry types. This was about creative life or death, and Petty would have rather gone down swinging than see his songs stolen from under his nose.
