(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 8 October 2025 1:30, UK
Tom Petty never forgot the importance of being a fan of rock and roll before anything else.
Even in an era when the flavours of the day were new wave artists and the punk movement, Petty was never afraid to make music that was indebted to the older records in his collection, whether that was borrowing from The Byrds or embracing his inner Mick Jagger whenever he performed. But even if he had a lot of fertile ground to work with with the rest of the Heartbreakers, there would always be pieces of his record collection that would become mainstays in his life going forward.
When listening to Petty’s music, he was clearly indebted to the days when the term “album” started to change. The genesis of rock and roll may have helped pioneer the conceptual part of album-making, but artists like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley weren’t looking to make grand statements. Their records were a collection of singles before anything else, and it was a lot easier for people to cherry-pick the kind of tunes that they liked.
But when the British invasion started, the album started to feel a lot more important. The Beatles had begun making records that were nothing but a bunch of decent songs slapped together in a decent order, Rubber Soul was the first time that they made a completely cohesive product. Every song played off each other perfectly, and by the time they had begun making Sgt Peppers, they gave everyone else permission to make bold choices on their records.
That’s all well and good, but that was never Petty’s mindset looking at his first two records. There are many pieces that work remarkably well like ‘American Girl’ and ‘Listen to Her Heart’, but prior to making Damn the Torpedoes, there’s a lot more garage-rock edge to what they were doing that fell in line with the jam band scene that they grew up in. They certainly didn’t jam like that on record, but after learning the ropes of the studio, they wanted to create textures.
It’s one thing to have a great-sounding album with stellar songs, but a band that gave their audience ramshackle ditties like ‘Rockin’ Around With You’ were in for a surprise when hearing tracks like ‘You Can Still Change Your Mind’. They had fully embraced the studio techniques that The Beatles had pioneered, but Petty felt there was a lot more in common with what Brian Wilson was doing on Pet Sounds.
Because for Petty, The Beach Boys’ masterpiece was always ground zero when it came to dissecting music, saying, “That music’s made such an impression on me. I have all the outtakes of Pet Sounds, all the tapes of them rehearsing. I’ll sometimes listen to one track being made for two hours, and it completely entertains me. It drives other people crazy.”
And for someone that was about making the best sonic experiences, Petty almost needed that kind of discipline listening to his own music. Although an album like Wildflowers sounds like a purely homespun record if you play the record on a solo acoustic guitar, there was a lot more method to the madness when Petty made tracks like ‘It’s Good to Be King’, especially with that haunting orchestral swell at the end of the tune.
While Petty would have never guessed that he would eventually have the chance to work with Carl Wilson later down the line, it’s not like he lost the influence from Pet Sounds once he began rubbing elbows with his idols. He was always a fan until the very end, and given how much of his lessons came from his record collection, it’s safe to say that tunes like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ became part of his musical DNA.
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