Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

In the 1970s Tom Petty came up with a distillate of FM radio Sixties rock, chiming Byrds guitars, Rolling Stones rhythms, and a slurred version of Bob Dylan/Roger McGuinn vocals. First penning tales of outcasts and long-suffering lovers, he broadened his thematic range to encompass musings on his Southern heritage and to propagate a very American individualism. The Heartbreakers evolved into a classic rock & roll band, and Petty's invitation in the 1980s to join Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne in the side-project supergroup the Traveling Wilburys confirmed his stature as one of rock and roll's greats.

Petty, the son of a Florida insurance salesman, quit high school at 17 to join one of the state's top bands, Mudcrutch, with future Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. In the early 1970s they sent Petty to L.A. to seek a record contract; Denny Cordell's Shelter Records (co-owned with Leon Russell) delivered.

The group disbanded soon after moving to L.A., and while Cordell offered to record Petty solo, nothing happened until 1975, when Petty heard a demo that Campbell and Tench were working on with Ron Blair and Stan Lynch. The quintet became the Heartbreakers, inherited Petty's Shelter contract, and released a self-titled debut in 1976. At first it sold poorly.

Then the Heartbreakers toured England, opening for Nils Lofgren. Within weeks, they were headlining and the album was on the British charts. ABC then rereleased "Breakdown" in the U.S., and the single cracked the Top 40 nearly a year after its initial release. Another song, the very Byrdsy "American Girl," was recorded by ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn. The band's second album boasted the singles "Listen to Her Heart" (Number 59, 1978) and "I Need to Know" (Number41, 1978).

Just as the Heartbreakers' career was taking off, a legal battle arose when Petty tried to renegotiate his contract after MCA bought ABC; by mid-1979 he'd filed for bankruptcy. After nine months of litigation, Petty signed to Backstreet Records, a new MCA affiliate. His triumphant return, the now-classic Damn the Torpedoes, hit Number Two, selling over 2.5 million copies, and established Petty as a star. And his singles placed higher: "Don't Do Me Like That" (Number Ten, 1979) and "Refugee" (Number 15, 1980).

In 1981 Petty again got into another record-company hassle by challenging MCA's intention to issue Hard Promises with a $9.98 list price. After he threatened to withhold the LP - or entitle it $8.98 and organize fan protest letters — the album came out at $8.98 and went on to platinum status, with the Number 19 hit "The Waiting."

Petty had a Number Three 1981 hit in "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," a duet with Stevie Nicks off her solo Bella Donna, on which the Heartbreakers also appeared. Also in 1981, he produced Del Shannon's comeback, Drop Down and Get Me. In 1982 "You Got Lucky" (Number 20) from Long After Dark, reiterated the veteran strengths of the Heartbreakers, but with Ron Blair departing, they underwent the novelty of a personnel change (ex–John Hiatt sideman Howie Epstein joined on bass). Three years in the making, Southern Accents was hard going; frustrated during its mixing, Petty punched a wall and broke his left hand. The album, coproduced by Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, found Petty achieving a new lyrical maturity and, with "Don't Come Around Here No More," scoring a Number 13 hit.

In 1986, right before Petty and the Heartbreakers embarked upon a world tour with Dylan, Petty's house burned down (arson was suspected). His wife and two daughters escaped, but most of his belongings were destroyed. Nineteen eighty-seven's Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) hit Number 20 and was certified gold, a relatively disappointing showing in view of the group's 1980s success. Respite came with the 1988 release of the Traveling Wilburys debut; working with former ELO founder/guitarist and fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne, Petty released the masterful solo album Full Moon Fever. Its "Free Fallin'"(Number 7, 1989) gave him a revitalizing hit.

With most of the Heartbreakers playing on Fever, Petty retained band loyalty, and it paid off on Into the Great Wide Open, a fine collection coproduced with Lynne. In the interim Petty had released a second Wilburys album (1990's Volume 3), and his band had begun establishing themselves as sidemen, with Campbell working on Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl, cowriting Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" and, with Lynch, contributing to Henley's The End of the Innocence. Meanwhile, Tench worked with such acts as U2 and Elvis Costello, and Epstein produced his girlfriend Carlene Carter's 1990 LP I Fell in Love.

Petty's record-business controversies continued, however, with the surprise 1992 revelation that he had signed a secret $20 million, six-album deal with Warner Bros. in 1989. Reportedly he had kept the contract secret to avoid the ire of MCA, to which he owed two more albums at the time. In an unrelated dispute, in 1993 he was vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court when they let stand a lower court's finding that Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream" did not infringe the copyright to an earlier piece written by songwriter/plaintiff Martin Allen Fine. A year after a Number Five Greatest Hits album in 1993, drummer Stan Lynch, who had been working as a songwriter and/or producer with the re-formed Eagles, Leonard Cohen, Don Henley, and the Mavericks, departed the band. Petty returned in 1994 with a second solo album, Wildflowers, which, again, featured most of the Heartbreakers. That year also saw the release of a Petty tribute album, You Got Lucky.

In 1996 Petty and the Heartbreakers reunited and recorded songs for Ed Burns' film She's the One; they also served as "backup band" on Johnny Cash's Unchained. That year, Petty and his wife ended their two-decade-long marriage, an event that purportedly added to the darker tone of 1999's masterful Echo (Number 10). In 1997 Petty appeared in Kevin Costner's film The Postman, but by 1999, his emphasis was squarely on music. In typical Petty fashion, Echo's first single, "Free Girl Now," was offered on the MP3 format, which Internet users could download free (for two days, before his label requested that he remove it); the band also refused to increase ticket prices for the Echo tour.

In 2002, the group released The Last DJ (Number Nine), in which Petty vented about the state of the music industry, most notably in the semi-controversial title track, which some stations refused to play. The album was one of the least successful of Petty's career, failing to sell more than 500,000 copies. The next year, former Heartbreakers bassist Epstein died of a heroin overdose, and Petty would remain largely out of view until 2006, when he released the Lynne-produced Highway Companion (Number Four); the album opened with "Saving Grace" (Number 100), a back-to-basics number containing multiple uses of the word "baby," a staple of all great Petty tracks. A 30th-anniversary tour with the Heartbreakers followed, as did a four-hour documentary from director Peter Bogdanovich, Runnin' Down A Dream.

In 2008, Petty and the Heartbreakers performed at the Super Bowl halftime show and announced another U.S. tour. Petty also reformed Mudcrutch for a brief tour and a self-titled debut album.