Five Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers deep cuts you need to know
SEPTEMBER 19TH 2023 | by EMMA SCHOORS
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Tom Petty and Tom Leadon were hot property in the Florida rock scene when they formed Gainesville-based Mudcrutch. In 1974, Petty convinced his bandmates to uproot their lives in order to secure a record deal in Los Angeles, but when Leon Russell’s Shelter Records took them on for a single and it failed to further them to nationwide notoriety, they knew a rebirth was in order.
Petty would solidify his band once more as guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist Ron Blair, and drummer Stan Lynch, and get to work on their self-titled debut soon after Mudcrutch’s disbandment. Their logo, a Gibson Flying V piercing the middle of a heart, represented the newly-formed Heartbreakers mantra. They wrote biting, romantic hits you could play thirty times in a row and never tire of. “Listen To Her Heart” and “The Waiting” mended emotional depth with style, in an era where having one often meant sacrificing the other.
“The secret, really,” Petty said in a 1994 interview with American Songwriter, “the most important thing, is… Have a good time. Don’t take it too seriously. You’ve got to take it seriously enough that it happens, but don’t let anything throw you. You can’t be thrown by something breaking, or this or that. You’ve got to remember that they all came to see you, they like you, and all they want to do is see you and hear you play some songs.”
The Heartbreakers rekindled rock by steering it back towards soul and simplicity, but select tracks have since whittled in popularity. Here’s our list of five forgotten Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs you simply need to know.
5. The Dark Of The Sun (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991)
“We were being a little moody at the time,” Petty joked in a 1993 documentary of the recording of Into The Great Wide Open. “We all played on it. We were never there all at the same time.” The follow up to 1987’s Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough was produced by Petty, guitarist Mike Campbell, and Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne, who also provided instrumental work. Lead single “Learning To Fly” spent six weeks at the top of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, but “The Dark Of The Sun” shares in its structural integrity.
4. Nightwatchman (Hard Promises, 1981)
“Nightwatchman” is Hard Promises at its grooviest, penned about Petty’s then security guard: "That's what I used to say to the guy: 'You know, if somebody comes here, are you gonna shoot them?' 'Cause he had a gun," he said in Paul Zollo’s Conversations With Tom Petty. "I'd ask him, 'Would you get into a firefight with somebody here? For what we're paying you?' And he'd say [in a low voice], 'Well, you know, it's my job, you know, I take my job seriously.' ... It seemed like overkill to me."
3. Shadow Of A Doubt (A Complex Kid) (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979)
“We very rarely rehearse the tunes before recording them. ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ I wrote one night and recorded it the next morning,” Petty said. In the thick of a bitter legal battle with MCA, Damn The Torpedoes was intended to be a collection of “love songs, not lawsuit songs.” “They get you pinned in a corner, and the last thing you can do to keep your sanity is write songs. If there’s one thing I know about music theory, it’s that if you don’t believe the singer, you won’t believe the song.”
2. The Wild One, Forever (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976)
“I think with that chorus, we were trying to make it sound like the Rascals,” Petty said of “The Wild One, Forever,” written about a one night stand dead on arrival. In a 1976 interview about their debut record, Petty shared: “It’s like value for dollar. I mean, if you’ve ever mowed a lawn to get money to buy a record, and you get home and there’s one track and the rest is bullshit, then you’re pissed off. This record, people will be able to play for more than a month. (...) It’s ten good songs. Not all the same kind of songs, but they all arrive.”
1. No Second Thoughts (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978)
Laid softly in the heart of You’re Gonna Get It!, “No Second Thoughts” tells the 12-string tale of casting evil down and driving for the line, because “there’s nothing to be lost.” The “I Need To Know” B-side opens with the sound of a tape machine kickstarting, as if signifying an abrupt new beginning. As one journalist wrote for 100favealbums.net, “It’s not the type of track that reaches out and grabs you. It’s more the type that quietly burrows deep inside you.”
Check out Spotify’s official “This is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers” playlist below.