Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

Certain Songs #2493: Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”

November 24, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bella Donna
Year: 1981

. . .

I’m pretty sure everybody knows the story of this song, but just in case, it goes like this: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were recording Hard Promises with producer Jimmy Iovine — who had helmed their breakthrough Damn The Torpedoes — and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” was one of the songs they recorded but decided on to put on the album.

By this time, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty were already really close friends — a friendship that started in the late 1970s and lasted until Petty’s death (which still fucking sucks, by the way) — and in fact, Petty wrote “Insider” for her album, but it ended up on Hard Promises. Meanwhile, the story goes that Nicks wanted Petty to produce her solo debut, but he recommended Iovine, and Nicks and Iovine hit it off so well that they were living together after a couple of weeks. Cocaine is a helluva drug.

Certain Songs #1038: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Forgotten Man”

November 7, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hypnotic Eye
Year: 2014

I’ve been stalling on writing this last Tom Petty post, even though it won’t be the last Tom Petty post ever — not with Mudcrutch, Traveling Wilburys and even Stevie Nicks in the alphabetical future, not to mention a couple of the songs that I skipped, like “The Wild One, Forever” or “You Wreck Me,” — it’s definitely the last Tom Petty post for now.

That said: I started immersing myself in his music the day he died — at home, at work, in the car — at first for solace and research, but now for comfort and joy. Turning up the volume of “When The Time Comes” while stuck in LA traffic. Watching YouTube streams of Live From Soundstage or 400 Days on YouTube while working the elliptical in the pre-sunrise morning. Apologizing to Rox that all we’ve been listening to while doing chores or running errands is Tom Petty (“I don’t mind; I love Tom Petty,” she always says).

Certain Songs #1037: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “I Should Have Known It”

November 6, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mojo
Year: 2010

You could see it in the album cover.

There were very few Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers albums that even attempted to feature the entire band on the cover, and only two that truly succeeded. But if you looked closely enough, you could see the entire story of the band in those covers.

The first cover to feature the entire band was their second album, 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It! That cover depicted the band as bunch of serious young dudes — with their calm and confident leader right in the middle who were were clearly focused on a single thing: conquering the entire world.

Certain Songs #1035: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Have Love Will Travel”

November 4, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Last DJ
Year: 2002

For two decades, the Tom Petty Theory — that he’d never make an album that I wouldn’t like — that I came up with way back in 1981 held true and strong.

Until The Last DJ that is, a record that completely repelled me from almost the first listen, and a record that I wrote off after trying to find a way in. I mean, I was never going to care about what zillion-selling Tom Petty felt about the record industry as it tumbled into the new millennium , but what struck me was that I didn’t really like any of the songs musically, either. For the most part, they felt like song fragments looking for a way to cohere.

Certain Songs #1034: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Swingin'”

November 3, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Echo
Year: 1999

Poor Howie Epstein.

He joined the Hearbreakers in 1982 after Ron Blair decided to leave the music business, and he probably would still have been with the band when Tom Petty died except for one tiny little fact: he ended up being a junkie.

If you’ve ever been in a band with an addict, then you probably can empathize with what the Heartbreakers went through as heroin took over Epstein’s life. And by the time they recorded Echo, it was clearly a huge fact in the day-to-day operations of the Heartbreakers to the point where Epstein isn’t on the album cover, having missed the photo shoot.

Certain Songs #1033: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Free Girl Now”

November 2, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Echo
Year: 1999

All these years later, it’s a footnote, but “Free Girl Now” created a minor controversy when Tom Petty decided to allow it to be downloaded for free from mp3.com for a couple of days, presumably just to see what would happen.

As a publicity stunt for Echo — his first real album with The Heartbreakers since 1991 — it was probably pretty successful: I’m sure that I was one of the people who downloaded it, and there was no way that free download was going to keep me from purchasing the whole album, especially after hearing the song.

Certain Songs #1032: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Room at the Top”

November 1, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Echo
Year: 1999

This is embarrassing, but there is some dispute in my household over when the eighth (and final) time I saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers actually happened.

That it was at the Fillmore in San Francisco is beyond dispute. But Rox thinks we saw them during the initial January-February 1997 stand, whereas I think we saw them on the March 1999 stand. I even dug up my old email program — Pegasus Mail! — from that time period to see if I had any emails about it, but that was during the “stand in line at Tower Records for concert tickets” era, so no go.

Certain Songs #1031: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Supernatural Radio”

October 31, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs and Music from the Motion Picture “She’s The One”
Year: 1996

This is probably the weirdest entry in Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers catalog: ostensibly a motion picture soundtrack, She’s The One (as I’m going to call it) doesn’t really feature soundtrack music per se (exception, “Airport,” a jazzy instrumental at the end), has a few leftovers from Wildflowers (which had they been on Wildflowers would have been credited to TP only) and — weirdest of all — the only covers that ever appeared on a Tom Petty studio album: Beck’s “Asshole” and Lucinda Williams “Changed The Locks.”

Which was the last song I wrote about before Tom Petty died.

Certain Songs #1030: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Walls (Circus)”

October 30, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs and Music From She’s The One
Year: 1996

Like most of the other rockers of his generation, Tom Petty had his entire world turned around by The Beatles. So much so that after John Lennon was shot, he had “We love you J.L.” etched on the run-out groove of Hard Promises.

And, of course, unlike most of the other rockers of his generation — except for Linda Eastman, of course — Tom Petty not only became close with one of the Beatles, they co-founded a band together.

Still, for all of that, his music never really felt as derived from The Beatles as it did their contemporaries like The Byrds, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones.

Certain Songs #1029: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – “Wildflowers (Toronto 3-17-1995)”

October 29, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Live Anthology
Year: 1995

On the short list of The Prettiest Songs Ever Written, Tom Petty Division, “Wildflowers” was an atypical opening number for the album for which it also served as the title track : it was neither a single nor an uptempo rocker, which was usually how he opened his records.

But of course, it didn’t matter: “Wildflowers” was always about setting a mood of wistfulness. And hope. And regret. But most of all, inevitability of change.