Christopher McKittrick - Somewhere You Feel Free: Tom Petty and Los Angeles

Also by Christopher M c Kittrick

Cant Give It Away on Seventh Avenue:
The Rolling Stones and New York City

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

Somewhere You Feel Free:

Tom Petty and Los Angeles

2020 by Christopher McKittrick

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-511-0

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-512-7

Cover art by Cody Corcoran

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Cheers to Donna and Kevin

Contents

A fter claiming in interviews during the Heartbreakers 40th Anniversary Tour that it would be his bands last full-scale tour, Tom Petty departed the stage of the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017, the final show of the five-month celebration of the bands incredible history. Mike Campbell, the Heartbreakers lead guitarist and bandmate of Pettys since they were both twenty years old, was doubtful, telling Rolling Stone in a June 2017 story presciently titled Inside Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Last Big Tour: Ive been hearing that for 15 years. Well see. It certainly wasnt the first time that Petty had talked about scaling back the bands touring schedule, but this being another false declaration (or a cynical marketing ploy) seemed less likely than before.

For one, Petty was finally starting to look his age, moving across and off the stage that night with a noticeable limp. The sixty-six-year-old bandleader was not known for being particularly acrobatic on stage since the Heartbreakers late 1970s run to superstardom, but footage from the Hollywood Bowl concerts shows a Petty whose performances are every bit as powerful, if not more reserved in movement. Still, like Campbell, the Los Angeles audience had reason to doubt Pettys words about the finality of touring, particularly on the Heartbreakers home turf. Even when touring Europe, Petty never seemed far from Southern California. Most of the Heartbreaker tours either began or ended at venues not far from Pettys Malibu home, and almost half of the dates played on Pettys previous tour with Mudcrutchhis before-he-was-famous band that he revived in 2008had been in the Golden State. Many of Pettys older musical heroes, like Bob Dylan and Byrds bassist Chris Hillmanwhose album Bidin My Time was produced by Petty and released on September 22, the day of the second of Pettys three Hollywood Bowl concertsstill maintained active touring schedules. In fact, shortly after the Heartbreakers ceased serving as Dylans backup band in October 1987, Dylan embarked on a touring cycle critics and fans have dubbed The Never-Ending Tour. By Dylans standard, the Heartbreakers were practically in semi-retirement already.

Sadly, that third Hollywood Bowl show was indeed the final concert by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty died at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, on October 2, 2017, the consequence of an accidental overdose of pain medication he had been prescribed in part to treat knee and hip issues that plagued him before and during that final tour.

At a cursory glance, an artist with the voice of Tom Pettyboth in terms of his artistic voice and the unmistakably Northern Florida inflection in his vocalsseems like an odd fit for Los Angeles, especially when one has the erroneous point of view that the Heartbreakers music falls under the umbrella of Southern rock, or, even more off-base, whatever critics mean by the label Heartland rock. When Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their self-titled first album on November 6, 1976, nobody quite knew what to make of them. The Los Angeles-based band didnt fit comfortably in any of the categories of music popular in 1976. Petty certainly didnt look or sound like a hard rocker, and the band didnt sound like punk, even if they were a bunch of skinny twenty-somethings in casual dress and leather jackets. Their songs certainly werent disco or arena rock or anything that involved prominent synthesizers. Nonetheless, the Billboard review of their debut album dismissed Petty on one hand as another punk rock, black leather jacketed offshoot, while on the other stating that the album gains impact on its second spin. In the opening line of his review of the album for Rolling Stone , famed rock critic Dave Marsh asked, Who knows where they are from? He went on to say in his short comments that No part is particularly specialsongs, singing, playing are all kind of primordial L.S. rock, like Love or the Seeds. Still, he followed that lukewarm criticism with an extremely prophetic line: But its such a Sixties throwback, you cant help but fall in love. It demonstrated that the only people who really thought of the Heartbreakers as punk didnt actually listen to the record. The desire of the establishment to put any label other than rock n roll on the Heartbreakers music makes it no surprise that Petty, in the cover story of the November 1977 edition of Back Door Man magazine, declared the oft-repeated line, Call me a punk and Ill fucking cut you. (It even became the articles subtitle.) Petty continued, Im fucking serious. I dont fuck around. From the beginning, I think because I have a leather jacket on (on the album sleeve) they called me a punk. Dont fucking call me one. I dont like that. I aint joining nobodys club, Ive got my own club. Im in a rock n roll band.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was released by independent label Shelter Records and distributed by ABC Records, which by then was in the first stages of being on its last legs. (The label would be sold to MCA Records in 1979, leading to the first of Pettys many battles with record labels.) As a result, the album received little promotion stateside. The Heartbreakers were not a magic combination that instantly unlocked music industry success for Petty. The bands 1976 debut was mostly overlooked. In contrast, Pettys labelmate on Shelter, Dwight Twilley, had a top 20 hit with his bands debut single Im On Fire, which peaked at #16 in August 1975, before the Dwight Twilley Band had even recorded an album. The Heartbreakers didnt have the same luck. Of the singles from the self-titled debut album, only Breakdown charted in the US, crawling to #40 in February 1978. That nominally gave the group its first US Top 40 hit, but it utilized every bit of industry clout that ABCs Vice President of Album Promotion Jon Scott had, in a Herculean effort. The album wasnt certified as a gold record by the Recording Industry of America until January 1988, almost a dozen years after it was released.

Yet, just a few years later, more people would have heard the Dwight Twilley Bands Phil Seymour singing background vocals on Breakdown and American Girl than on any Dwight Twilley Band album. That Petty and the Heartbreakers survived and later thrived is doubly impressive viewing their collective accomplishments through the changing face of Los Angeles and the entertainment industry as a whole.

One doesnt need much of a deep dive on Tom Petty to realize that Los Angeles is the only place that could have produced a musician like him and a band like the Heartbreakers, which was formed from the remnants of Pettys Gainesville band Mudcrutch. Los Angeles had molded Petty before he and fellow Mudcrutch member Danny Roberts and roadie Keith McAllister crossed the Florida state line on their way to Hollywood in pursuit of a record deal in 1974.