Why Tom Petty briefly hated Pink Floyd
Tom Petty never apologised for his love of all things rock and roll. He always knew that he was going to make his living playing a guitar, and even if he never made it to the same heights that he had with the the Heartbreakers, he would have most likely spent his spare time strumming away on the weekends playing the same kind of Byrds tunes that he grew up loving. But if there was one thing that turned him off more than anything when he first started writing his own tunes, it was overindulgent rock stars.
Then again, every single rock and roll band has tried overindulging themselves at least a little bit. It’s easy to see when things get out of hand when looking at what happened to bands like Guns N’ Roses in the 1990s, but even for someone who saw the biggest highs that any rockstar could reach, Petty never let that self-righteous importance show whenever he made one of his records.
From working with Traveling Wilburys to freeing himself from the Heartbreakers, there was never a second when Petty felt like he was phoning it in or making something inauthentic. If that were to happen, his fans were bound to call him out on it, and from day one, Petty knew that there was never any time to waste when the tape was rolling. But compared to every other 1970s act, Petty was shaking his head, looking at what prog acts like Pink Floyd were doing.
There was nothing wrong with reaching out for new influences, but Petty lived up to his last name when Floyd beat them to the number-one spot with The Wall, saying, “I love Pink Floyd, but I hated them that year.” It might have been incredibly trite, but if you look at the headaches that Petty had to go through to make his record, it’s completely understandable why he would be so pissed off.
He had to fight tooth and nail to even get the record out, and when his label decided to take all of his songwriting royalties away from him, he wasn’t going to budge until he got them back. That’s not to say that Pink Floyd didn’t have their fair share of hardship making their rock masterpiece, but whereas they had been one of the biggest bands going at the time, the heartland rocker was still looking for a gigantic smash, and he knew that he wasn’t going to sleep until it was done right.
But of all the prog bands going on at the time, Pink Floyd seemed to be one of the few people that Petty gave his approval to. There had already been bands like King Crimson and Rush making the rounds on the touring circuit, but Petty was never into that kind of writing. He loved sticking to the traditional verse-chorus structure, and going on long drawn-out jams weren’t even his cup of tea when they came to his neck of the woods.
He may have been a thankful Floridian for the first years of his life, but listening to the Allman Brothers Band didn’t exactly make him want to get up and jam. They had their place in rock and roll, but his heart was in the pop music he heard out of California, and when he became LA’s adopted son in later years, he made sure he made the kind of rustic take on what someone like Brian Wilson may have done.
So even if The Wall was one of the best things Pink Floyd ever put out, it was always going to have a slight asterisk next to it compared to what Petty was doing. Roger Waters was fighting for his artistic vision, but when someone is fighting for their right to be an artist, it’s easy to see why they would be a bit hungrier to reach number one.
