Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers Retrospective

by Jason Warburg


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The ditches lining the great highway of rock and roll are littered with the wreckage of bands that tried to buck the wrong trend at the wrong time, and strewn with debris from groups who almost made it, only to bust apart on the cusp of success.  Not many bands can say they passed through both of these gauntlets, came out stronger and ended up one of the most-admired acts of their era.  But then, if Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers have ever stood for anything, it's the idea that the more you doubt them, the stronger they get.

Petty, guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboard player Benmont Tench arrived in LA from Gainesville, Florida in 1975 with their band Mudcrutch and lasted a matter of months before it all fell apart.  The one salvageable piece of that wreck on the highway was the solo contract Shelter Records offered Petty.  But once in the studio he couldn't find a group of musicians he jelled with -- at least, until he ran into Campbell and Tench again and met the two fellow Floridians they had fallen in with, bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch.  

Thirty-two years later, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers stand as one of the most important rock bands of their time, a group that dared to be neo-traditionalist at a time when punk ruled, that rose from the ashes of failure to become one of the top-selling bands in the land.

That -- and a steady stream of rock and roll classics from "Breakdown"and "Listen To Her Heart" and "Refugee" to "The Waiting" and "Free Fallin'" and "Saving Grace" -- was more than enough to convince us it was high time we featured Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers as the Daily Vault's Artist Of The Month for September 2008.

 The first two albums from Petty and band established them as big admirers of both the Byrds and the Rolling Stones -- full of jangly swagger, you might say -- but in a concession to the times their image initially had a punk edge to it, putting Petty in a leather jacket for the cover of their self-titled debut and posing the band in blue light like a gang of musical toughs waiting in the alley for 1978's You're Gonna Get It!

The group's big breakthrough came with 1979's Damn The Torpedoes, which featured a string of memorable singles and made the band into a national phenomenon.  Hard Promises opened the 80s on a triumphant note before the band succumbed to a fallow period that ended when Petty made his first (nominal) solo album, 1989's dynamic Full Moon Fever.  Another string of hit singles from that stellar disc ("Free Fallin'," "I Won't Back Down," "Runnin' Down A Dream) put TP back on top, and the band's follow-up Into The Great Wide Open and subsequent Greatest Hits album were both strong sellers.

Three band albums, two solo discs and one induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later, Tom Petty remains one of rock and roll's most recognizable voices and the Heartbreakers remain one of the most admired backing bands in rock history, its members having done session work for enough musical luminaries to fill the Hollywood Bowl.

This September the Daily Vault will celebrate Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with 19 reviews covering their entire band and solo catalogue -- plus a few extras -- in a retrospective that will start Thursday, September 4 and run every weekday through Tuesday, September 30. Most of these reviews will be appearing on the Vault for the first time.

Founded in January 1997, the Daily Vault has featured more than 5,500 reviews of more than 2,600 artists covering almost the entire musical spectrum, written by a volunteer staff from around the world. Previous Artist Of The Month retrospectives have spotlighted the work of artists from Tori Amos to Frank Zappa, including the Beatles, David Bowie, Garth Brooks, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Metallica, Pearl Jam and many others. Themed retrospectives have included punk, hip-hop, classic soul, classic jazz, Broadway musicals and Christian Contemporary Music.


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