Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream

This programme contains some strong language

(audience cheering)

(cheering continues)

(cheering intensifies)

(drumsticks tapping)

("You Wreck Me" intro playing)

# Tonight we ride

# Right or wrong

# Tonight we sail

# On a radio song

# Rescue me

# Should I go down

# If I stay too long

# In trouble town

Audience: # Oh...

Audience: # yeah...

# You wreck me, baby

# Yeah, you break me in two

# But you move me, honey

# Yes, you do... #

Eddie Vedder: the first time you hear a new Tom Petty song,

it sounds like, you know, a classic song.

# Well, if I don't win

# Well, I'm gonna break even... #

Dave Grohl: Well, I've always

sort of considered them an institution, you know.

They're one of those bands that just have to be.

They just have to be.

# If I stay too long

Audience: # Oh... #

Audience: # Yeah... #

Stevie Nicks: I think I started

to become aware of Tom Petty around 1977.

1978-- big fan of Tom Petty.

If Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had said,

"Leave Fleetwood Mac and come and join us,"

I would probably have joined

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

(guitar instrumental break)

Rick Rubin: It's like a lost art, what they do-- great players,

great band interaction,

great songwriting, and it shows

when you go to see their concert, and, you know,

it'll be two and a half hours,

and you could sing along with every song.

It's... it's mind-numbing how many great songs they have.

Jackson Browne: it's really the essence

of rock and roll, which is about

freedom and rebellion.

It's about doing what you want to do

and pursuing your dreams,

and, and, oh, you know,

it's about all the most important stuff.

It's about speaking the truth.

Jimmy Iovine: he is a world-class songwriter,

one of the great songwriters

in the rock era.

George Harrison: it's just the sound that he makes and the attitude he has.

You know, his records are so good and unusual,

usually, like, from a lyrical point of view.

Jeff Lynne: It's quite amazing that the Heartbreakers

have just kept going,

and the fact that they're getting

bigger and bigger as well

is quite a remarkable thing after 30 years.

It's just, I don't think anybody else

has ever been in that position.

Johnny Depp: it was smart, you know,

even if you didn't know it at the time.

It was... It was smart... music.

He sort of defies

any kind of category, really.

It's just Tom Petty.

# I'll be the boy

# In the corduroy pants

# You'll be the girl

# At the high school dance

# You'll run with me

# Wherever I go

# And just play down

# Whatever you know

Audience: # Oh...

Audience: # Yeah...

# You wreck me, baby

# Yeah, you break me in two

# But you move me, honey

# Yes, you do. #

(applause and cheering)

# Headed back down south... #

I was born in Gainesville, Florida, USA.

It was a little town in the '50s.

So I was born in 1950.

There was a very southern contingent there.

There's kind of a... a farming element,

and then there's the university,

so you had this mix of people.

You could run across just about any kind of person there.

And I remember it fondly, growing up.

It was just big enough that, you know, it had

two movie theaters, which was great.

You know, I liked westerns.

I was just obsessed with westerns.

# I wish I was an apple...#

That's a good one.

# Hangin' in a tree

# And every time my sweetheart passed

# She'd take a bite of me. #

Petty: I always liked the idea of the guitar,

because cowboys played the guitar.

Elvis Presley: # Keep a-movin, a-move along

# Keep a-movin, a-move along

Petty: I must have been ten or 11 years old.

My aunt came over and said,

"Elvis Presley is making a movie,

"and your uncle's working on the picture,

"and I... I thought maybe you'd like to go down one day

and watch the filming, see Elvis."

Elvis: # I gotta follow that dream... #

Petty: The streets were just packed with hundreds of people.

Elvis appeared like,

you know, a vision.

He didn't look like anything I'd ever seen.

You know, I'm just... dumbstruck.

And my uncle said to him, "Elvis,

this is my family, this is my nephew, da-da-da,"

and Elvis kind of went, "yeah," you know,

and moved on, you know.

I went home a changed man.

Elvis: # When your heart gets restless... #

Petty: When I hit the street the next day,

I was trying to find some Elvis Presley records.

Elvis: # You ain't nothin' but a hound dog... #

Petty: The music just hypnotized me.

And I played these records

to the point my parents began to worry

that something was wrong with me.

Hey, you guys, there's that

rock and roll cowboy I told you about.

("Teddy Bear" intro playing)

# Oh, baby, let me... #

Petty: On a visual level, I thought rock and roll

was twice as cool because these guys played guitars.

The hook was in really deep.

I'm in about the fifth grade,

and I'm playing 1950s records,

and it's all I want to talk about.

Even the other kids thought it was weird.

I didn't have the faintest dream of being a musician

or anything like that.

I just loved to listen to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!

Let's bring 'em out.

(deafening cheering)

Petty: and when I was 13,

the Beatles came, and in those few minutes

when they hit The Ed Sullivan show,

it all became clear, you know.

This... This is what I'm going to do.

This is how you do it.

# Close your eyes and I'll kiss you

# Tomorrow, I'll miss you

# Remember, I'll always be true... #

Petty: Within 24 hours,

everything had changed.

# All my lovin'

# I will send to you... #

(The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" playing)

# Girl, you really got me goin'

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doin'

Petty: The more hardcore of us started to grow our hair long

Instantly--

I want a guitar.

My dad,

one of the nicer things he did for me

was he threw down 35 bucks, bought me an electric guitar,

because I just wouldn't shut up about it.

# I don't want you washin' my clothes

# I don't want you

# To keep my home

# I don't want 'cause I'm sad and blue

# I just want to make love to you, baby... #

He was more obsessed with rock and roll

than anyone I had ever met.

He wasn't into

a lot of other things except maybe girls, you know.

I wanted a group.

I set about scouring the neighbourhoods

for anybody that owned instruments,

that could play instruments,

and we just struck gold.

I will never forget it.

We went to my house.

We all plugged into the same amplifier,

found something we all knew.

Wham, the heavens split.

Like, this sound was incredible.

It was the biggest rush of my life.

Wow, you know, we're doing it, you know.

We're making this music.

# If that private eye can't see

# He better not take the ring from me... #

Tom Petty: We went to the dance, really nervous,

but we all got blue shirts,

and we started to play.

We were a huge success.

Everybody dug it.

We played our three songs, and, uh...

everybody yelled for more.

So we played them again.

# Bo Diddley bought an ol' alley cat... #

Then we started working.

The Epics were playing the hits of the day.

Leadon: The group practiced

at least five days a week.

That first time we got paid,

my mom really thought I had stolen the money

and was, like, really concerned

that I'd taken up a life of crime.

We thought the Epics was too corny a name,

so we picked this really terrible one--

Mudcrutch.

(laughing)

# I live on the west side

# By the county reservoir

# She lives down on Depot Street

# Behind the city hall

# Behind the city hall... #

Leadon: "Mudcrutch." We all liked it

'cause it kind of sounded dirty and decrepit.

It sounded like something that adults

and straight people wouldn't understand

or wouldn't approve of, you know.

We, we liked that.

Petty: we had realised that

if we wanted to truly make a living doing this,

we were gonna have to develop

songwriting, so we wanted to play original music.

I was playing the bass, Tom was playing the guitar.

and Jim Lenahan, who was singing lead.

We were looking for another guitarist and a drummer.

Lenahan: We had put an ad in Lippo Music,

the local music store that was the hub

of the music scene in Gainesville.

We went out to audition the drummer at his house.

Randall Marsh: I said, "Well, I live at this farm.

It's a perfect place to play."

So they came over, and we all

set up and played, and we took a break.

And they said, "well, you know, it sounds pretty cool,

"But, you know, what we really need is,

we'd like to have two guitar players."

And I said, "well, my friend is in the back room here,

and he plays guitar."

And I heard him yell,

"Mike, can you play rhythm guitar?"

And this voice comes back, "oh, I think so."

And into the room walks Mike Campbell.

He's wearing cut-off jeans

which I've never seen him wear since.

That's when I first met Tom. He was playing bass.

Petty: And he's carrying this 80 Japanese guitar,

and at that point, we all kind of looked at the ground,

like, "Oh, no.

This guy's bound to be terrible."

And Mike kicks off "Johnny B Goode,"

and we aren't looking at the drummer anymore.

So the song ended, and I just said,

"Hey, you're in our band."

And he's like, "Oh, I don't know."

I said, "I know. You're in the band."

And we were fast friends right away.

# When your baby leaves you all alone

# And nobody calls you on the phone... #

Petty: There's this snag that Mike

is going to college,

enrolled at the University of Florida,

and I said, you know, "you don't want to do that."

He's like, "oh, I don't know," you know.

And I can't believe now that I had that much gumption,

but I talked him into quitting school.

But I said, "let's get the band together,

"and we'll make a record, and that'll be your job.

"You're going to make tons of money,

"More money than you'll ever make

going to the University of Florida."

Then his next complaint was, "well, what about the army?"

'Cause, you know, Vietnam was going on.

And you got a deferment if you went to school.

I'm sure he played then as well as he does now,

and I wasn't going to lose him.

Campbell: he was pretty upset

that I might go in the army. He kind of talked me out of it.

I was like, "ah, we'll handle that," you know.

I had no idea how we'd handle it,

but I just kept saying, "we'll get around the army."

You know, that's...

(laughter)

I should thank him for that.

I might not be here at all.

The cool thing about Tom was he did have a couple of songs

he'd written, and all the other songs were like,

you know, cover songs.

But I thought that he had something on the ball

with his songwriting,

'cause not too many people around the college

were really writing their own songs.

# I was talking with a friend of mine

# Some woman had hurt his pride... #

Leadon: Mike Campbell, we tried to get him to sing harmonies,

but he was so shy.

We put a mike in front of him,

turned it up as loud as we could,

and you still couldn't hear him.

He was such a fantastic guitarist.

His fingers did his talking for him, I guess.

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby?

# Don't do me like that... #

Petty: So the next step was-- the main club in Gainesville

that paid any money was this place called Dubs,

Dubs Steer Room,

because they also served steaks.

And I had never played in a bar.

The Epics played teen dances and things like that,

but we were all too young to work,

to get, you know, permission to work in a bar.

You worked five sets a night, six days a week,

but you all got 100 bucks at the end of the week.

The real feature of dubs was six topless dancers.

You know, we got down to the club,

and it hadn't really registered to me

what topless dancing really was, you know.

And we played two or three songs, and they came walking up,

one on each side, started dancing,

and started removing their tops, and everyone in the band

was just getting all blush-faced and just looking at each other.

We were just, you know, playing like this.

And the music almost stopped completely.

And I started thinking,

I'm going to like this professional musician thing.

# Don't do me like that

# Don't do me like that

# What if I love you, baby?

# Don't do me like that... #

Marsh: We would do a lot of songs that were album songs

that the club owner would go, "We want our top 40," you know,

so we'd just play like a Neil Young song,

and say it was a number-one hit or something,

or we'd do one of our own and say, you know,

that was by Santana or something.

And they didn't know the difference, you know.

Petty: And as we were playing Dubs,

I was hanging with this guy, hanging in his apartment.

One night the door opens, and this guy comes in,

and he's got an armful of records

and a big bushy beard and hair down over his shoulders,

and I said, you know, "So what's your name, man?"

He says, "it's Benmont Tench."

I go, "Benmont Tench...

you're not the kid that plays the piano?"

"Yeah, that's me."

Benmont I knew when he was just a little guy.

He couldn't have been more than 11 or 12.

He came in to Lippo Music.

He began to play a Beatles album on the organ,

and he played the entire album--

certainly the best keyboardist I'd ever heard.

I love pianos. I can't stay away from them.

So if I'm in a music store, I'm going to sit down

and play the piano until they say, "Stop."

And they did.

They said, "Kid, enough."

On a break from boarding school,

I went to see them play a bar.

I was underage.

They were great.

When they came off the stage,

if there even was a stage, it was probably just a corner

of the bar, I don't remember,

you could see Tom had something going on.

You know, he had some kind of vibe,

even at the time, just playing some bar.

I go, "son of a bitch.

"What are you doing, you know?

What's up with you?"

He goes, "Oh, I go to school in New Orleans,

and I got a band up there, and I come back on breaks.

I'm like, "shit, man,

what are you doing tomorrow night, you know?"

And he's, "I don't know, nothing."

And I said, "well, why don't you come play with us?"

And he says, "well, how long do you play?"

I go, "oh, just, you know, we play five hours."

He's like, "well, what about rehearsing?"

"Ah, don't worry about, you know, rehearsing.

It'll be fine."

(laughs)

He was so good, you know,

and he had so much musical training that none of us had.

Petty: He got up, and he didn't have any rehearsal,

and he outplayed all of us for five hours.

# I can't fight it

# I can't keep myself from wanting you

# I can't fight it

# No matter what you say, no matter what you do... #

Tench: The main thing was I really loved the music that they made.

I think I was really looking for that thing

that the Beatles seemed to have, which was just a bunch of guys

to hang around with,

like a gang, like a bunch of friends

that made music,

that all, you know,

loved a certain thing and did it.

# 'Cause I know what I want and I need

# And I can't fight it... #

Petty: You could never have planned it or dreamed it up,

just two of the best musicians in the world

walked right into my life

and completely grasped what I wanted to do.

# You used to look wild-eyed... #

Leadon: We were sitting around the Mudcrutch farm,

as it became known later,

and we want to play for the kids.

We want to play some of these outdoor shows

that are so much fun.

And Mike had the idea, "let's invite them all out here."

We had the place with about ten acres,

so we cleared an area there at the side of the house,

and we invited a couple of other bands on a Sunday.

We had the local health food co-op bring some free food.

We just put posters around town,

and there were hundreds of people there,

maybe 1,500 people.

The police came the first time we had it

and said, "What the hell's going on here," you know?

"Do you guys have a license and everything?"

And luckily, you know, back then,

it was a simpler time, and they said, you know, "Next time."

And so next time we got the license.

Leadon: The second time, we must have had 15 bands,

and from all over the South,

and it became quite a famous thing.

It got too big.

We had to quit, 'cause it was...

people were coming from other states.

That was really in some ways some of the best times.

We were our own little entity.

We didn't have any controllers.

We did everything ourselves.

It was just a really good time.

# In the long run

# It made you feel helpless and confined... #

Marsh: Gainesville was just in a perfect place to be.

You know, it was a little hippie town

with a liberal university

that allowed us to do so many different things.

We had so many venues to play and to experiment,

and it was really pretty cool.

You couldn't ask for more.

Leadon: After about six months or so, Jim left the band.

Tom became the singer.

Well, he was writing all the songs anyway.

It was kind of silly for him to be writing songs for me to sing.

Petty: We had become the biggest thing Gainesville had ever seen.

We felt we had to break out of there.

The whole point of the band had been to make a record.

We heard there was a guy

who had a mobile recorder, which was just a van

with a two-track recorder in it.

He came for one afternoon,

and we set up and played live in Benmont's living room,

and the tape came out really good.

And I decided we should drive to L.A.

We had a whole stack of reel-to-reel tapes.

And we drove to L.A.

# Well I know I'm only one in a hundred

# And I know that you've heard this before... #

Petty: None of us had been west of the Mississippi,

you know, like...

it was a big deal.

# But this dream has become an obsession

# 'Cause I've held it inside for so long

# All my friends say I should use discretion

# But I know I'm just not that strong... #

Petty: Our first stop was Playboy Records.

In those days, it had a big Playboy bunny emblem

on the side.

And we must have looked pretty funny,

I mean, just having driven 3,000 miles.

And he brings us in the office.

"Look, guys, it's not done this way.

You just don't walk in."

And we said, "well, we're here, and there's a tape deck,

and why don't you put it on and listen," you know?

And he played not quite 30 seconds

when he stopped the tape

and said, "I've heard enough, get out of my office."

We're back on the street,

thinking, "This is going to be harder than we thought."

The next day, start out the day at Capitol Records.

They send us to the A&R department.

The guy says, "I like what I hear.

I'd really like to cut a demo."

Now, we go, "Well, we've already made a demo."

So we left Capitol, thinking, waste of time.

So I'm going to call ahead and try to make an appointment

at a record company.

While I'm on the phone, asking for the number,

I look down in the bottom of the booth,

and there's a piece of paper lying there, and I picked it up.

On this paper, there's 25 record companies

and their phone numbers.

That made me feel good and bad,

good because I had the numbers,

bad because, "Christ, how many people are doing this?"

MGM was there with the big lion,

and I said, "well, I've heard of them. Let's go in there."

And we go in, the guy says, "Okay, I'll listen to it."

He goes in and he listens to the whole tape, and he says,

"I'd like to make a deal for a single."

Our eyes go up, and we said,

"Well, we're really looking for an album deal."

And he goes, "you start out with a single,

and if the single goes good, we'll talk about an album."

So we hit the street, just leaping in the air.

All right,

got a single, but we got more places to go.

The next stop was a label called London Records.

He plays our tape.

He plays the whole thing,

and he starts clapping his hands and jumping around going,

"This is fantastic. You got a deal."

We just looked at him, you know.

"I want to hear the band right away.

I mean, I want to make a record. This is great."

"Well, the band's in Gainesville, Florida."

"Well, go get 'em!"

I call Mike

and said, "Guess what," you know?

"We got two record offers."

He goes, "you're crazy."

"No, we've really done it."

So we made the trip back and went up to Ben's place

and said, "Look, this is it with school.

We're going to make records."

I do remember having to go to his father,

who was a big-time judge, very intimidating,

and I had to talk him into letting his son quit college.

And I made a pretty good case.

(chuckling)

There was never any doubt in his mind at all.

Like a week after he left, he comes walking into my 7-11

where I'm behind the counter, and he goes,

"We got five offers. We're leaving next week.

You're the stage manager."

And I said, "okay," and that was it.

(laughs)

Petty: We started selling anything we owned of value,

which wasn't much.

We put all our money together in a pool,

like, I think I had 50 bucks to my name.

I gave him my 50 bucks for gas.

We had enough money to pay for gas to get from Gainesville

to Hollywood, California, and once we got there,

we would have 200 left,

and we said, "We can live for a month on 200 dollars,"

seven people-- seven, eight-- nine people.

Petty: We're rehearsing in this little bedroom we rehearsed in,

and we had a car for sale for money for the trip,

and the phone rings,

and I answer the phone,

but they're still kind of playing in the next room.

And I hear someone saying something,

and I think they're calling about the car,

'cause it's someone I don't know.

And I'm saying, "well, you know, it's 100 bucks.

It's not that good."

He goes, "no, no, no, no, no.

This is Denny Cordell, and I'm calling for Mudcrutch."

Denny Cordell produced records by bands we really loved,

"A Whiter Shade Of Pale" for Procol Harum,

the Joe Cocker great, great early stuff.

He co-produced Leon Russell's records.

He was the real thing.

Holy. "You know, this is, uh, you're speaking to them."

"This is Denny Cordell. I got your tape.

"I think it's the best thing I've heard in years.

I want to sign the group up."

"Well, gosh, I'm sorry,

but we've just taken a deal with London Records."

"Well, have you signed the deal?"

"No."

"Well, listen,

"I have an office and a studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

"If you're going to L.A.,

it's not too far out of your way to stop in Tulsa."

The Tulsa trip was my effort

to sort of head him off at the pass...

get to him before he came to Hollywood and go into the studio

and try and strike up a sort of bond,

which... 'cause I felt that at the end of the day, you know,

he wasn't going for the biggest deal he could possibly get,

but he was going for the chance to make good records, you know.

So I hoped, if we could do that in Tulsa,

maybe when he got to Hollywood,

he wouldn't bother with the others.

We left Gainesville on April Fool's Day, 1974.

Petty: I had gotten married

a couple of days before we left.

This time, the trip was really hard, because we had Benmont's

mother's station wagon.

We had a U-haul truck.

It did at tops about 50 miles an hour, you know.

A Volkswagen bus.

And all of us crammed in.

They had the dogs and everything in the truck

and all our gear.

Right at the city limits of Gainesville,

the truck breaks down.

You know, hours getting the truck ready.

Okay, we took off again.

Tench: we got a little farther along,

the bearings go out on the station wagon.

We had to stop and stay there for two or three days

while they ordered the parts to fix the station wagon.

It was very bizarre.

# I got my mind made up... #

Very bizarre.

# I got my mind made up. #

Petty: After a day or two, we got to Oklahoma.

It was just a windstorm of dust blowing everywhere,

and through the clouds almost,

this Englishman stepped through,

who was really something to see, you know.

He had the earring, which you didn't see a lot of then,

and a bandanna,

and we had never met anybody that was English.

And we immediately hit it off,

and he's, "Come over, I want to show you the studio.

And we had never seen anything like this studio.

It was just amazing.

We went down the next day, played a while in the studio,

and he clapped his hands and said, "I'm sold.

I'll sign you right now."

Either a guy's a true artist and a true poet and a true rocker,

or they're not, and, um...

in my judgment, he was.

Then he reaches in his pocket

and pulls out a wad of cash about this big,

as in, "You're going to need some money."

You know, we've never seen that much money in one fist,

you know, and just throws it down on the table.

"There's five grand there. That'll get you to Hollywood?"

"Yeah."

(laughs)

Drove into Hollywood, up to Shelter Records.

It was an old house converted into an office.

It was like a family. It was that thing.

It wasn't like some corporation or something.

Petty: Within a day or so, they'd rented us a couple of houses,

one with a swimming pool.

Now, this is heavy stuff for us, you know.

We ain't hardly seen a house with a swimming pool,

let alone live in one.

Of course, there's no furniture.

Campbell: It was like going to Mars for me.

I mean, coming from Florida,

back then, it was a huge cultural gap,

and it was overwhelming, you know,

things moving so fast, you know.

The south, back then, everything was real slow.

Everybody talked slow and thought slow.

And you get to L.A., it's like, "Yeah, go, go, go!

We're going to do this, do this, do this.

It's like it took us a while to catch on.

Tench: The world was very odd to me.

I felt like an alien in this band anyway,

'cause I was younger than anybody

in the band by a couple years,

and I'd been in boarding school

in New England, you know?

And I was having a great adventure of being broke.

I didn't want to call my parents for much money.

I wanted to live off of the little stipend

the record company was giving us.

And I was a mess,

and I looked like hell, and I was having a great time.

We were really tight.

We were really good friends, too.

I mean, we spent a lot of time together.

We knew that rehearsing was the key.

# I saw you walking down the street with him

# You know, I almost could have died

# I didn't know that... #

(song fades)

Petty: Mudcrutch was an overwhelming flop.

The band had one or two sort of weak links in it,

but because of that sort of brotherhood,

the Three Musketeers, you know, all together,

it was very hard to dislodge the weaknesses.

One day Tom, you know, sat down with me,

said, "Uh, the record company kind of...

"basically has told me that they, they want me,

and they are kind of not that interested in the band."

I was really devastated.

I was just,

I felt like I'd been hit by a truck or something.

These were the people I knew

that I'd moved out to California with.

And so it's like, oh, dissolution of the family,

and what am I going to do?

You know, who am I going to play with?

I went immediately to Mike and said, "Don't leave me, you know.

You've got to stay with me."

And I felt really bad about Benmont leaving,

but I didn't know what to do.

I wanted to be in the band.

I didn't want to be a solo guy that picked up,

no matter how good, the musicians were great,

but I didn't, they didn't, they weren't my guys, you know.

They worked for whoever had the dough.

Lenahan: The real reason I think

there's a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

is 'cause of Benmont Tench.

Ben had written some songs,

and so he put a little demo session together

to go in and record his songs,

and he called in me and Stan and Ron.

Lenahan: Stan and Ron Blair were from Gainesville bands

and had come out here independently.

I knew Stanley for a long time.

After Mudcrutch broke up, he and I would hang out,

and we wanted to have a band,

and we were going to call it "The Drunks."

And that's what those demos were going to be.

I was very excited just because Ben had said,

"We're going into a big-time recording session."

And he called me to play drums on his demos.

I called Ron.

And we just ended up at the same session one night.

Tom I called and said, "come tell me how to sing this vocal,

play a little harmonica maybe."

And that was the first time we all got in a room together.

Petty: So I walk in, and I'm sitting in the control room

listening to this band play.

I was, like, "wow,"

I got to steal this band."

And that's my first thought is "this should be my band."

So then they came in on the break,

and I started my pitch.

"You guys could throw in with me,

and I've got a record deal."

Blair: And it kind of organically became

a real band without, you know, any premeditation.

It just kind of, kind of happened.

Petty: So without any rehearsal or anything,

I just brought them to the next session I did

that was booked for a solo session.

And Denny was very impressed, and he said,

"You guys are really one of the best groups

I've heard in a long time."

And he said, "plus you look good."

Once that final personnel was in place,

then it was just full tilt, you know, full tilt ahead.

# Breakdown, go ahead, give it to me

# Breakdown, honey, take me through the night

# Breakdown

# Breakdown, I'm standing here, can't you see

# Breakdown, it's all right

# It's all right

# It's all right

Tench: During the course of the making of the record,

they brainstormed for names

and they came up with some really bad ones.

For a while, it was Nightro.

N-i-g-h-t-r-o.

(laughs) What that means, I don't know.

My choice was the King Bees.

"No, you can't call this.

Oh, my God, no, no, no, no, no!"

Petty: But I thought it sounded good.

Tom Petty and the King Bees.

# All right

# It's all right. #

Lenahan: Tom was living in a little apartment in the valley,

and I walked in one day, and he goes,

"What do you think of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers?"

And, of course, "heartbreaker" was a song that we all liked,

and I went, "Bingo! That's it."

And he goes, "And I got a great idea.

"The logo will be a heart

with a Gibson SG sticking through it."

And I said, "cool, but why don't you use a flying V

'cause it's shaped like an arrow, instead of an SG?"

And he goes, "Perfect. Great."

And then Denny Cordell, later, came up

with the idea of having a ribbon with the name around it

like it was a tattoo.

Tench: we thought, well, that's good,

because that's kind of ironic and funny, isn't it?

Heartbreakers?

(laughing): I mean, come on, you know.

Who are we kidding here?

Petty: Things were starting to get pretty exciting.

Stan was something new.

Stan had a... a really big personality--

just radiated personality-- and he was a great cheerleader,

really hungry, and really wanted to do this thing.

And he was a great drummer.

And Ron was really good, so it just all worked,

And I was so excited, you know.

I just thought, "we've got our band."

And, you know, it was kind of, like,

you've got something really good,

and nobody else knows it,

but you know they're going to know it.

(guitar-lead rock intro playing)

(drums begin mid-tempo cadence)

I was really inspired when I got this group.

They could pretty much do anything I threw at them

and give it back to me better

than I'd pictured it in the first place.

The first two records Cordell had produced or coproduced

with these two wonderful guys

named Noah Shark and Max,

who were engineers and coproducers

and out of their minds on LSD

as a deliberate part of their creative process.

Petty: We wouldn't take the acid,

though it was offered to us every day.

These guys would get out of bed, swallow some acid,

and go, "All right. Let's make a record."

Strange as it may sound,

they actually were pretty good at what they did.

And this is when we recorded

"American Girl," "Breakdown," some of the first

hits we ever had.

We would spend hours working on the simplest-- shakers!

We're going to learn how to do it.

We all had to learn how to do it.

You know, I was 19 years old when we made the first record.

Campbell: We were young and green. We would come in, say,

with four songs for the studio, and Denny would listen to them,

and he'd go, "Those two are crap.

That one's good. Let's do that one."

And he would just instinctively know.

He just sort of could zero in on,

"Okay, here's the essence of what's really good."

And, you know, "don't do that.

That's not so good. Do this." You know?

Blair: Tom came in one night, and he had a great song

and, for some reason, it just wasn't happening,

and Denny said, "well, what else you got?

And the look on Tom's face was priceless.

He was going, "uh... that was it."

And Denny kind of, like, in a...

in a, you know, nice way, kind of read him the riot act.

Like, "Look, son, you know, you're in the studio.

You got to have songs."

I think, from then on,

it probably doubled Tom's songwriting.

Petty: the record came out.

It pretty much did nothing.

Then, like a bolt of lightning-- bam--

it hits in England, comes out in England,

and it's an enormous success right out of the box.

I mean, they're writing whole page reviews,

and just going mad for it in England.

Disco was just rearing its head,

and there was a huge movement towards that,

and so rock 'n' roll seemed to be dying out.

And then, completely out of the blue,

here he came, a sort of 24-karat rocker.

(rock melody playing)

(audience cheering)

Petty: we went to England, and journalists met us

at the plane, taking our photos.

We were on the covers of the weekly music magazines.

This is like Mecca.

This is where all that music came from,

big time stuff for us.

It was, like, wow!

One that I've played an awful lot

on my Saturday morning Radio One program--

It's from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a new 45

called "Anything That's Rock And Roll!"

Before I met Tom, he was about the only American music

that was acceptable in Britain.

It was the one band that people would, like, go,

"Yeah, they're cool," in England.

But all other American bands were, like, not cool.

# Some friends of mine and me

# Stayed up all through the night

# Rockin' pretty steady till the sky went light

# I didn't go to bed, didn't go to work

# I picked up the telephone, told the boss he was a jerk

# Your mama don't like it when you run around with me

# But we got to hip your mama that you got to live free

# Don't need her, don't need school

# You don't like your daddy, don't dig rules

# So come on, baby, let's go

# Don't you hear the rock and roll

# Playing on the radio?

# Sounds so right

# Girl, you better grab hold

# Everybody's got to know

# Anything that's rock and roll is fine

# Anything that's rock and roll is fine

# Oh, oh, oh, hold me, little baby

# I'm a little bit shakin', I'm a little bit crazy

# But I know what I want, I want it right now

# While the electric guitars are playing way up loud. #

The English press really connected with the record

and built it up as the big deal,

and when we went over there, it was really exciting.

(rock music playing)

Petty: The first show in Wales, audience went insane.

Lenahan: They played about half of a song,

and the audience mobbed the stage,

and we'd never seen an audience mob the stage before.

It was kind of scary.

Petty: It was such an exhilarating thing,

the biggest mainline shot of adrenaline

you could have.

And we thought, "Hey, we're going to make it.

This is going to work."

We were really gung-ho, a lot of team spirit,

and then we did a few more television shows.

We did one called

The Old Grey Whistle Test.

That was a popular show.

(intro to "Fooled Again" playing)

# You never said you had no number two

# I need to know about it if you do

# If two is one, I might as well be three

# Good to see you think so much of me

# Looks like I'm the fool again

# Looks like I'm the fool again

# I don't like it

# I don't like it

# No! #

Campbell: It was amazing.

I mean, it was, like,

I could think about it now, looking back.

It was just like living a dream.

I mean, there's no other way to describe it.

It's, like, wow, this dream is happening, you know,

and people like us.

The band's really good.

You know, we're going to do it.

You know, it was, like, wow.

It was a gas. It still is.

The tour went into Europe, you know.

This was real adventure, going into Germany and Belgium,

France, Holland.

In those days, I remember Tom would always turn to me

and go, "Where are we?"

And I'd go, "Hollywood, California," you know.

Or, "where are we?" "Paris, France."

That was incredible that we were actually there,

the places that we'd heard about our whole lives,

and now we were finally doing it.

We went into Holland,

and hashish is legal.

Of course, we bought far more than we could

possibly have smoked, and then

the next day, we're going to Germany.

So we got big blocks of hash,

and we can't quite bring ourselves

to throw it in the trash, you know, but they're going,

"Look, you know, you're going to go through customs."

So I threw mine away.

We get in line to go through

the customs in Germany,

and they find in Stan's bag a little hash pipe.

Now, there's no hash in the bag, but there's a little hash pipe

with a little bit of residue in the pipe.

You know... "Out of the line."

And Ron Blair's looking at me kind of funny.

He smiles at me.

His whole teeth are black.

He's got the whole lump of hash in his mouth,

and he's chewing.

(laughing)

So they bring us into the little room,

and Blair's chewing away, you know.

Like, to chew a chock of hash is a really big job.

So it went through a long afternoon.

We had a tv show-- a network show--

we were supposed to be on,

and we had missed the rehearsal for sure,

and then people from the network show up.

They tell us in English,

"Look, we're going to work this out.

Just sit tight, and we're going to work it out."

So they take us through and put us in these

black Mercedes that were waiting for us,

and I get in one with Ron, who doesn't make a sound.

He's just looking at me, you know.

And I go, "Did you swallow that?"

(speaking German)

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

(intro chord plays)

(playing intro chords)

(plays "Dog On The Run")

(audience clapping rhythmically)

(full band playing melody)

# Well, I was downtown waiting for my number to be called

# Seen it through the window outside against the wall

# Well, I know this little secret

# You don't want no one to know

# You're living in a high-rise, try to stay low

# I don't think you realise, baby

# What one little kiss could do

# I would really love to make you understand, honey

# I can't get close to you

# Baby, you better stop and look at what you done

# You try to keep it living like a dog on the run

(music plays)

Petty: I think we had to do about 40 minutes on the show...

(chuckling)

and if you see the tape,

there's a very glassy-eyed Ron Blair,

played like a champ.

(Petty chuckles)

(playing instrumental bridge)

(playing solo)

But that's what it was like

touring with the Heartbreakers in those days.

Anything could happen day to day.

It was high adventure.

Everything was new, everything was exciting.

We were meeting lots of nice foreign ladies

and trying to extend

as much American hospitality to them as we could.

And so, next thing you know...

(car horns honking)

...we're back in L.A.,

taking out the garbage.

Blair: We come back to the States, and we have to, you know,

go state by state and area by area,

and I can remember Stan,

you know, I must have it on a tape somewhere,

but we're pulling into Toledo in some kind of van,

and then Stan is waking up,

and he's going, "Are we stars in Toledo?"

And we're going, "no, Stan, we're not stars here," you know.

We're going to have to like work the market, whatever, you know.

It's the big time. It's not the big time.

I remember that feeling, like, we got it, we don't got it.

We got it. We don't got it.

Blair: Depending on the area

and whether a radio station was actually playing the record,

we'd go some places, and, uh...

gosh, where was it, somewhere in the northeast,

and the guy from the record company walked up to us,

gave us back a stack of records going,

"I can't give these away."

The first record, we're going, okay.

Right opposite me across the road is the Whisky,

and that's where tonight

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are playing,

and that's also where we're going right now.

How did you enjoy the tour of England?

I love England.

'Cause you arrived in Wngland

right dead center of the new wave... rise.

Yeah, right in the middle.

And what's more, people kind of linked you

into that situation, too.

Yeah, well, that's... that was only... I expected that.

I mean, we had to be in the new wave

because we weren't in the old wave, so...

I just don't like clubs.

I don't like to join nobody's club, you know,

so we didn't join no clubs.

We're our own club.

We're just a rock and roll band.

All I wanted to say is

the reason that we've been here is because, uh,

Britain loves this band, and so do I.

Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

(audience cheering)

(opening chord plays)

(drumsticks clicking)

("Listen To Her Heart" intro plays)

Denny Cordell: The place was absolutely packed,

and they just came on, and they just...

they did it.

Everything was perfect.

The thing rocked.

Every solo was a burner.

Everybody was in cracking form.

They looked phenomenal.

And that was the day the tide turned really.

# You think you're gonna take her away

# With your money and your cocaine

# You keep thinkin' that her mind is gonna change

# But I know everything is okay

# She's gonna listen to her heart

# It's gonna tell her what to do

# She might need a lot of lovin' but she don't need you

# You want me to think that... #

Petty: We started out as a sort of alternative band.

It was in the time when

rock itself had become really big and bloated,

and songs had turned into seven minute exercises

of, you know, bullshit.

Long jams that don't have some kind of melodic

beginning, middle and end,

that's not the Heartbreakers' bag.

We have a slogan, "Don't bore us, get to the chorus."

(chuckles)

Some of the bands who were on top at that time

had once been great bands,

but they were just kind of staying around

way past their sell-by date.

It just seemed like a particularly uninspired moment.

And then suddenly, coming from the underground

only really getting played on college radio,

came The Clash and the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello

and The Sex Pistols and Patti Smith

and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

And even though it doesn't seem, especially now,

that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

would be in that company,

they did have the energy and the brashness

and, you know, that little edge of anger--

the short, punchy songs

that made them feel like part of something very new.

So who are your influences?

Um, the radio.

The radio? Yeah, the radio

in the '60s.

# Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man

# Play a song for me

# In the jingle jangle morning

# I'll come following you... #

Petty: Some of our earliest songs were really influenced by the Byrds.

They brought a kind of a folk

influence to rock.

Roger McGuinn: I was kidding my manager.

He played "American Girl" for me, and I said,

"When did I record that?"

He said, "It's not you," and I said,

"Yeah, I know it's not me. Who is it?"

("American Girl" intro plays)

(electric guitar plays)

# Well, she was an American girl

# Raised on promises

# She couldn't help thinking that there

# Was a little more to life

# Somewhere else

# After all, it was a great big world

# With lots of places to run to

# Yeah, and if she had to die

# Trying she had one little promise

# She was gonna keep

# Oh, yeah

# All right

# Take it easy, baby

# Make it last all night Make it last all night

# She was an American girl

# Well, it was kind of cold that night

# She stood alone on her balcony

# Ooh

# Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by

# Out on 441

# Like waves crashing on the beach

# And for one desperate moment there

# He crept back in her memory

# God it's so painful when something is so close

# And still so far out of reach

# Oh, yeah

# All right

# Take it easy, baby

# Make it last all night Make it last all night

# She was an American girl

(playing instrumental bridge)

# All right

# All right

(electric guitar plays melody)

# All right

# Oh, yeah

# All right. #

(loud cheering)

(song ends)

(mid-tempo rock intro playing)

# This might sound strange

# It might seem dumb

# Depends on the side that you take it in from... #

The second one is always a tough one,

because you want to prove that you're worth,

you know, staying around,

that this is gonna be an ongoing thing.

Two things keep this man happy:

chasing women and playing rock and roll.

And if he's as good with the ladies

as he is with his music, he's a very happy man.

Here's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!

(applause, whistling, cheering)

(up-tempo rock intro to "I Need To Know" playing)

# Well, the talk on the street says you might go solo

# A good friend of mine saw you leaving by your back door

# I need to know Need to know

# Need to know Need to know

# If you think you're gonna leave

# Then you better say so

# I need to know Need to know

# Need to know Need to know

# Because I don't know how long

# I can hold on

# If you're making me wait

# If you're leading me on

# I need to know

# Need to know

# Need to know I need to know

# Ow! #

Campbell: Tom was just...

blossoming as a writer-- I mean, all those great...

they're still some of my favorite songs,

like "American Girl," "Breakdown,"

"Stranger In The Night," "Fooled Again,"

"I Need To Know."

# Baby, I need to know

# Need to know

# Need to know... #

Tench: It all felt really great.

Successful rock band, that's great.

You're playing music you love, people love it.

It's just a day-to-day thing.

Didn't feel like some big dream came true.

It felt like what I was supposed to be doing.

That period, I was starting to drink a lot.

You know, there was a lot of cocaine around,

and sometimes I would just be blind.

I think for the most part during the shows,

I was pretty together, 'cause I really respected it.

But after the show,

I'd get pretty obliterated a lot of the time.

So a lot of that period

is a bit of a blur.

# Too much

# Baby

# Ain't enough

# No way

# Too much Baby

# Ain't enough No way

# Aw, come on, baby, I'm down on my knees

# Guess some little girls just can't be pleased... #

Elliot Roberts: The band was getting better and better and better.

They were playing more and building.

They were going from headlining in clubs

to headlining small halls, and the enthusiasm was starting.

First you can't get gigs-- you know, you want to get gigs--

and then you can't get out of them.

You know? Like, there's so many.

We weren't home much in those years.

We worked, and we loved working.

# Oh

# Ain't enough... #

Always smoking my fucking reefers.

(laughing): That's their problem.

(yells)

Petty: The crowds are all great.

They're just fantastic, you know?

There's never a bad one.

Can you say, I love rock and roll music?

(cheering) Can you say,

It makes me feel good inside?

(cheering)

# Sometimes

(crowd whooping)

# Sometimes

(Petty groans)

# Sometimes... # Easy.

I leaned out over, and somebody just got me

right around the legs.

(loud clap) You know, in we go.

That was, you know, pretty scary.

They, uh...

It was one of the first times it really registered to me

that, you know, the crowd is dangerous.

The crowd, a crowd, you know, out of control, is dangerous,

because that was dangerous, you know?

I was beat up pretty good there.

And it doesn't seem on the tape

like it takes very long at all to get me out,

but I mean, it was a lifetime.

I don't know, I think they really thought

that they could just...

take a finger home, you know, take this...

I don't know what they thought, to tell you the truth.

I got back up and finished the show.

(cheering)

They were a great audience, really.

It was a great show.

And I don't hold anything against the audience,

'cause, I mean, I'm the one that stirred it all up

in the first place.

I just should know better than to... to get too close.

Iovine: The songs of a second record in a lot of albums

that I have found in the '70s

was, especially singer-songwriter type guys,

the second album, you know, they wrote that first album

for ten, 15 years and the second album

in ten months, you know?

And it always showed.

And then you have to go in on the third album

and really just, you know...

That's what Bruce, Patti, and Tom Petty had in common.

To me, they were all third albums.

Petty: Cordell had become...

too busy with whatever was going on

in his company to produce records.

I, as a producer, you know,

I-I know that I can only...

take some people so far.

And there was a record out at the time by the...