TOM PETTY was going for broke because he had no other choice. He and his then-band Mudcrutch were running on fumes in their Gainesville, Florida home base—so, on April 1, 1974, they decided to head west in search of the last chance saloon of beckoning record deals. Though Mudcrutch made a brief go of it—their 1975 single on Shelter Records, “Depot Street,” stood as a hard-promise signpost of what was to come—the band soon enough dissolved with a fizzle. Undeterred, Petty regrouped with two of his Mudcrutch brothers—lead guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench—at the fore. With the addition of bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were born anew in 1976, ready to take on the world with renewed vigor.
Fast-forward 50 years on from that fateful, not-fooling April opening day into the here-and-now modern aural world wherein the rich, full sound palette and song-based heritage of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers continue to permeate many corners of the popular music spectrum. Whether it’s the jangly guitar stylings and multi-part vocal harmonizing on display in many a modern garage band, the accented focus on character-driven songwriting deployed by a score of Americana artists, or fully sanctioned tribute albums like Petty Country—a June 2024 release on Big Machine featuring household names like Chris Stapleton, Dolly Parton, George Strait, and Margo Price covering 20 of his best-loved songs—Tom Petty’s artistic legacy carries ever onward. Though he sadly passed away at age 66 on October 2, 2017, just weeks after a final trio of triumphant shows at the Hollywood Bowl in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles to wrap up the band’s 40th-anniversary tour, Petty’s deep catalog continues to expand with carefully curated family-authorized posthumous releases.
Ever passionate about how his music sounded—first, in the analog era on vinyl, and later, by way of 5.1 and eventual Atmos mixes done by his longtime engineer Ryan Ulyate—Tom always knew he wanted to push the envelope every time he entered the studio. “We started out trying to make sounds that were fun,” Tom told me well over a decade ago. “Mike and Ben and I are really record people. We lived with records a lot. We wanted to learn, from the outset, how to use the studio to do things that perhaps we couldn’t do otherwise.”
I had the privilege of interviewing Tom personally more than a few times over the years, and it’s worth noting that it was no accident on my part that our one in-person sit-down took place on April 1, 2010, at his beach house in Malibu, California. This beautiful expanse overlooked Escondido Beach. Around 3 p.m. Pacific time that day, we adjourned to the open-space living room. I sat on a couch facing the sliding-glass doors just beyond the wood-paneled dining room that led to a beautifully finished deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Tom perched in his favorite chair opposite me, his blonde hair cropped close and styled somewhat shorter than
