(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 7 November 2025 18:00, UK
No one was going to find a better student of rock and roll than Tom Petty.
Although there are many artists who are in it for the glamour, the heartland rocker was born and bred to believe that he could do anything as long as he had a song in his heart and a few decent chords at his disposal. And while he never wanted to critique other bands for the hell of it, he did feel uncomfortable when it looked like one of his contemporaries started to believe their own hype a little too much.
Because if there’s one thing that rock fans can see through in a second, it’s pretentiousness. There are plenty of artists who will hold their hand up and call themselves out for being a bit too self-important, but for everyone who seems to genuinely want to help the world, like Bono, there are others who feel like every single solitary word they say needs to be pored over like some ancient musical text.
Petty may have never been that kind of person, but he also didn’t like people coming at artists with anger first. He definitely had a lot of the ethos of punk back in the day, but judging by how little tolerance he had for bullies, he would have gladly knocked John Lydon on his ass if he said anything out of place about him. But for all of the bile that could come out of Lydon’s mouth on occasion, it’s not like he didn’t have a few points.
Unless you were living under a rock in the 1970s, the genuine rockers didn’t have much to be proud of when Petty first started. There were some legends topping the charts, but when looking at the amount of money they were making half the time, they were far from the rootsy rock and rollers they started out as. They had become superstars and got to see how the other half lived, and Petty didn’t want any part of that life when he saw what Rod Stewart was getting up to.
Stewart never lost those golden pipes when he started working on his more commercial material, but given how much of a star he was back in the day, Petty had no desire to follow in his footsteps, saying, “Really all we are is musicians. It’s all we know how to do. I think we would be uncomfortable in a Rod Stewart situation — I’m not knocking it, I just wonder if you become more celebrity than musician.”
Then again, Stewart may have been one of the few artists who happened to agree that his commercial moments were getting out of hand. No matter how many times that ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ lights up the dance floor, Stewart has made it known that it’s far from his favourite song, and given how many times he was in the public eye without being onstage, it’s clear that he could make his way up in the world by sweet-talking the right people.
Even if Petty became one of the biggest stars of his generation, a lot of his famous friends didn’t get there because they wanted a piece of him. Every member of the Traveling Wilburys were more than happy to hang out because they go along so well, and while Petty could only bow in reverence to George Harrison and Roy Orbison, the important part was that he related to them as friends first.
But, really, there’s a way to appreciate both Petty’s approach to rock and roll as well as Stewart’s without putting the other one down. Everyone has their own way of becoming the biggest stars in the world, and while Petty refused to compromise his musical standards, it’s sometimes nice to see what Stewart can do when he takes a few cues from what the other half want to hear.
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