Tom Petty Official Website
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers albums
1976 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
1978 You're Gonna Get It!
1979 Damn the Torpedoes
1981 Hard Promises
1982 Long After Dark
1985 Southern Accents
1987 Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)
1991 Into the Great Wide Open
1996 Songs and Music from "She's the One"
1999 Echo
2002 The Last DJ
2010 Mojo
Tom Petty Solo albums
1989 Full Moon Fever
1994 Wildflowers
2006 Highway Companion
I found this wonderful band in the seventh grade. As cliche as it is, Free Falling was the first song that sparked my interest. It was a guilty pleasure for the time, and I was kicking my own butt for liking it because I was very deep into my school's punk scene... After hearing Free Falling, I bought Full Moon Fever, little did I realize that Petty had much more to offer than just this brilliant album. By eighth grade my mind began to open a bit more, and same with the rest of my circle of friends, one of them actually made me a copy of their Wildflowers CD... I still had no idea what I would be getting myself into two years later.... the rest of eighth grade passed, I was still just playing FMF and WF thinking that was the extent of the Tom Petty catalog... ninth grade came around, I downloaded the greatest hits and American Girl hit me... because of some of my activities that year my memory is not so clear as to some of the events, and was certainly not clear at the time, I completely forgot about how much I liked just the greatest hits album.... Well, the summer of ninth going into tenth grade rolled around, I heard Listen To Her Heart, I'd never, ever, ever felt a song give me that feeling before....I hope you all know this intense mental eargasm.....
.... I had started the beginning to my still forming record collection.... I bought Damn The Torpedoes........ MY F***ING GOD!!!!... this was the beginning of what would become a brilliant musical journey....
Dramatic enough for you, basically it took me a while, but I now own Tom Petty's discography digitally, 3 albums on vinyl, and 3 on CD... and I will have all of the albums hard copies as soon as I get to the record store
Now, you're done reading about me, and we're on to the important part, the beginning of Tom Petty's musical career!
He was born in 1950 in Gainesville, Florida, and grew up there, listening to a lot of classic 50s and 60s country and early rock n roll, and like any musician of the time, was greatly influenced by Elvis and a bit later on, The Beatles, as his intrest in music grew he began to have another soon to be big name, Don Felder teach him guitar.... as He grew a bit older and his interest in music grew more, his first band came to form, The Epics... they played their highschool's prom, playing three or four songs over and over again... A bit of time later they decided to get a new name... this name... was brilliantly awful... the name was Mudcrutch.
Mudcrutch was formed in 1970. The original members were Tom Petty (bass and vocals), Tom Leadon (guitar and vocals), Randall Marsh (drums), very soon after forming mudcrutch, Mike Cambell was asked to join. A bit after that Leadon left the band in 1972 and was replaced by bassist/guitarist/vocalist Danny Roberts. Petty took over lead vocals after Leadon left in 1972. They began playing Dub's Steer Room as the house band for a while. Keyboardist Benmont Tench also joined the band soon after their first show at dub's. Tom Petty knew from grade school. Benmont joined the band the night after seeing them. Their first major achievement was the festival they had three times. They featured themselves playing obviously and ten to fifteen other bands.
Mudcrutch set out on a quest to California in late 1972 to hopefully get signed. In 1974, Mudcrutch signed with Shelter Records and re-located to Los Angeles, California. The band released one single, "Depot Street," in 1975, which failed to chart. After Danny Roberts left the group, Tom invited Charlie Souza to take over on bass guitar and the band continued recording in Leon Russell's Tulsa Studio, and later at Leon's Encino California home.
Mudcrutch dissolved in 1975, but that brings us to the wonderful creation of Tom Petty and The Hearbreakers
The heartbreakers consisted of Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Ron Blair, and Stan Lynch. Throughout the rest of their long, tireless career they toured constantly, recorded to perfection, and were(and still are) a great all around band... they define rock n roll to me--what it should be about, how to play it, and the pure passion of the music.
In 1976 their debut album was released, self titled, is a rock n roll masterpiece... it was not received well in the USA, but in England it made top 40, My favorites from the album are
Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll and American Girl
You're Gonna Get It was released in May 1978
It was the Heartbreakers first gold record
My favorites are Too Much Ain't Enough and Listen to Her heart
The third album, arguably their best album, Damn The Torpedoes went platinum, This was their break through album into the charts and what sent them flying to fame. Absolutely incredible... my favorites of this one are Even The Losers and Don't Do Me Like That
DTT also sparked a legal battle, which is one of the many things I completely respect Tom for outside of the tunes...
*Yeah, the company MCA was sold to MGM I think and Tom's music was being completely sold to a new company and he didn't want this at all. But he had already signed the contract. So Tom had no copyright to his music. He took his case to court and he even became bankrupt, which wasn't good. He won the case, and the company gave him his own label, called Backstreet.
During this whole time, he was still working his third album, Damn the Torpedoes. He even has a few songs about his whole experience such as "Century City", which was the name of the place where he had to go everyday to solve this case.**copied from an outside source*
Aside from Tom and company winning a case that changed the industry forever, he got some catchy as hell t shirts and tour names out of the deal... especially for the time.... shirts that read "Why MCA?"---a play on the awful disco song YMCA that was popular around the same time
In 1981 after the release of Hard Promises, Tom had another legal battle over record prices... and unlike many other artists.. Petty felt they were too high, he won this, and prices did not raise again for a good amount of time.... Yet another reason to respect the man
My favorites from Hard Promises are his beautiful collaboration with Stevie Nicks, Insider, Letting You Go, and The Waiting(I had to pick three from this album, its too great)
Long After Dark was released in 1982, Ron Blair became fed up with the music business as a whole, I think he really just liked jammin' in a basement more than playing stadiums, either was he is and was a brilliant player, and he was replaced by another great bassist who Petty stole from Del Shannon's band...Howie Epstein RIP, he passed away in 2003 for complications from drug use, he was on medicine for flu symptoms, and I don't think that mixed with Heroine very well....
this is not my favorite album from them, but it has two great rockers I love--Change Of Heart and Same Old You
The heartbreakers did a hell of a lot of touring between 1982 and 1985 until Southern Accents was released... Southern Accents once again is not any where near my favorite from the group, but I think it is what sort of sparked what Tom would be doing for his solo career without the Heartbreakers a few years down the line..... anyways, the sessions for this record were tense and mostly drug fueled, Petty punched a wall and shattered his hand, in an interview Petty said "I think we were all acting a bit moody at the time" with a laugh, in the clip(recorded in 1985) of The Waiting I posted for that album you can hear Petty talk a bit about his hand.... Southern accents began as a vision of Tom's to sort of get back to his roots... They all seemed to have different visions for the direction of the album though... In the end I think all of them were happy with what came out, even though it was not what any of their visions had began as.... the song Southern Accents was later covered by Johnny Cash. My favorites from the album are Rebels and Mary's New Car
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers albums
1976 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
1978 You're Gonna Get It!
1979 Damn the Torpedoes
1981 Hard Promises
1982 Long After Dark
1985 Southern Accents
1987 Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)
1991 Into the Great Wide Open
1996 Songs and Music from "She's the One"
1999 Echo
2002 The Last DJ
2010 Mojo
Tom Petty Solo albums
1989 Full Moon Fever
1994 Wildflowers
2006 Highway Companion
I found this wonderful band in the seventh grade. As cliche as it is, Free Falling was the first song that sparked my interest. It was a guilty pleasure for the time, and I was kicking my own butt for liking it because I was very deep into my school's punk scene... After hearing Free Falling, I bought Full Moon Fever, little did I realize that Petty had much more to offer than just this brilliant album. By eighth grade my mind began to open a bit more, and same with the rest of my circle of friends, one of them actually made me a copy of their Wildflowers CD... I still had no idea what I would be getting myself into two years later.... the rest of eighth grade passed, I was still just playing FMF and WF thinking that was the extent of the Tom Petty catalog... ninth grade came around, I downloaded the greatest hits and American Girl hit me... because of some of my activities that year my memory is not so clear as to some of the events, and was certainly not clear at the time, I completely forgot about how much I liked just the greatest hits album.... Well, the summer of ninth going into tenth grade rolled around, I heard Listen To Her Heart, I'd never, ever, ever felt a song give me that feeling before....I hope you all know this intense mental eargasm.....
.... I had started the beginning to my still forming record collection.... I bought Damn The Torpedoes........ MY F***ING GOD!!!!... this was the beginning of what would become a brilliant musical journey....Dramatic enough for you, basically it took me a while, but I now own Tom Petty's discography digitally, 3 albums on vinyl, and 3 on CD... and I will have all of the albums hard copies as soon as I get to the record store
Now, you're done reading about me, and we're on to the important part, the beginning of Tom Petty's musical career!
He was born in 1950 in Gainesville, Florida, and grew up there, listening to a lot of classic 50s and 60s country and early rock n roll, and like any musician of the time, was greatly influenced by Elvis and a bit later on, The Beatles, as his intrest in music grew he began to have another soon to be big name, Don Felder teach him guitar.... as He grew a bit older and his interest in music grew more, his first band came to form, The Epics... they played their highschool's prom, playing three or four songs over and over again... A bit of time later they decided to get a new name... this name... was brilliantly awful... the name was Mudcrutch.
Mudcrutch was formed in 1970. The original members were Tom Petty (bass and vocals), Tom Leadon (guitar and vocals), Randall Marsh (drums), very soon after forming mudcrutch, Mike Cambell was asked to join. A bit after that Leadon left the band in 1972 and was replaced by bassist/guitarist/vocalist Danny Roberts. Petty took over lead vocals after Leadon left in 1972. They began playing Dub's Steer Room as the house band for a while. Keyboardist Benmont Tench also joined the band soon after their first show at dub's. Tom Petty knew from grade school. Benmont joined the band the night after seeing them. Their first major achievement was the festival they had three times. They featured themselves playing obviously and ten to fifteen other bands.
Mudcrutch set out on a quest to California in late 1972 to hopefully get signed. In 1974, Mudcrutch signed with Shelter Records and re-located to Los Angeles, California. The band released one single, "Depot Street," in 1975, which failed to chart. After Danny Roberts left the group, Tom invited Charlie Souza to take over on bass guitar and the band continued recording in Leon Russell's Tulsa Studio, and later at Leon's Encino California home.
Mudcrutch dissolved in 1975, but that brings us to the wonderful creation of Tom Petty and The Hearbreakers
The heartbreakers consisted of Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Ron Blair, and Stan Lynch. Throughout the rest of their long, tireless career they toured constantly, recorded to perfection, and were(and still are) a great all around band... they define rock n roll to me--what it should be about, how to play it, and the pure passion of the music.
In 1976 their debut album was released, self titled, is a rock n roll masterpiece... it was not received well in the USA, but in England it made top 40, My favorites from the album are
Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll and American Girl
You're Gonna Get It was released in May 1978
It was the Heartbreakers first gold record
My favorites are Too Much Ain't Enough and Listen to Her heart
The third album, arguably their best album, Damn The Torpedoes went platinum, This was their break through album into the charts and what sent them flying to fame. Absolutely incredible... my favorites of this one are Even The Losers and Don't Do Me Like That
DTT also sparked a legal battle, which is one of the many things I completely respect Tom for outside of the tunes...
*Yeah, the company MCA was sold to MGM I think and Tom's music was being completely sold to a new company and he didn't want this at all. But he had already signed the contract. So Tom had no copyright to his music. He took his case to court and he even became bankrupt, which wasn't good. He won the case, and the company gave him his own label, called Backstreet.
During this whole time, he was still working his third album, Damn the Torpedoes. He even has a few songs about his whole experience such as "Century City", which was the name of the place where he had to go everyday to solve this case.**copied from an outside source*
Aside from Tom and company winning a case that changed the industry forever, he got some catchy as hell t shirts and tour names out of the deal... especially for the time.... shirts that read "Why MCA?"---a play on the awful disco song YMCA that was popular around the same time
In 1981 after the release of Hard Promises, Tom had another legal battle over record prices... and unlike many other artists.. Petty felt they were too high, he won this, and prices did not raise again for a good amount of time.... Yet another reason to respect the man
My favorites from Hard Promises are his beautiful collaboration with Stevie Nicks, Insider, Letting You Go, and The Waiting(I had to pick three from this album, its too great)
Long After Dark was released in 1982, Ron Blair became fed up with the music business as a whole, I think he really just liked jammin' in a basement more than playing stadiums, either was he is and was a brilliant player, and he was replaced by another great bassist who Petty stole from Del Shannon's band...Howie Epstein RIP, he passed away in 2003 for complications from drug use, he was on medicine for flu symptoms, and I don't think that mixed with Heroine very well....
this is not my favorite album from them, but it has two great rockers I love--Change Of Heart and Same Old You
The heartbreakers did a hell of a lot of touring between 1982 and 1985 until Southern Accents was released... Southern Accents once again is not any where near my favorite from the group, but I think it is what sort of sparked what Tom would be doing for his solo career without the Heartbreakers a few years down the line..... anyways, the sessions for this record were tense and mostly drug fueled, Petty punched a wall and shattered his hand, in an interview Petty said "I think we were all acting a bit moody at the time" with a laugh, in the clip(recorded in 1985) of The Waiting I posted for that album you can hear Petty talk a bit about his hand.... Southern accents began as a vision of Tom's to sort of get back to his roots... They all seemed to have different visions for the direction of the album though... In the end I think all of them were happy with what came out, even though it was not what any of their visions had began as.... the song Southern Accents was later covered by Johnny Cash. My favorites from the album are Rebels and Mary's New Car
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