(Credits: Far Out / The Bigger Picture)
Sun 1 March 2026 20:00, UK
Tom Petty wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of him being one of the greatest songwriters he could be.
He didn’t get into music for the fame and the fortune, and through every single setback with his label, he was going to push through and create the best songs that he could at any particular moment. But there were more than a few times where Petty came dangerously close to walking away from the industry and never coming back once he saw how the sausage was being made.
You have to understand that Petty isn’t the kind of person who takes kindly to any form of injustice. He had seen so many people be treated poorly when he lived in Gainesville, and after dealing with the stressful home life he had living with his father, he was going to make sure that no one walked over him from the first minute he got onstage. But it works a little differently once you reach the big time.
The label is both an artist’s best friend and sworn enemy, depending on what phase of their career they are in, and when Petty’s record company tried to seize control of his songs, he wasn’t about to roll over and let it happen. He felt that he had been ripped off when he first signed that contract, and he was going to do everything in his power to ensure that those money-hungry suits at his company didn’t lay a finger on the copyright of any of his tunes going forward.
And that extended to how much they were charging for every one of his records. His albums were going to be sold for a higher price because of his star power, but Petty fought back so that his music was never out of the reach of his fans. He put his audience before everyone else, but there had to come a time when all of that fighting for what he believed in started to backfire once he slowed down.
Southern Accents had already been one of the hardest albums for him to make, thanks to the drugs swirling around the studio at the time, but right before he went out on tour, Petty was devastated when someone tried to assassinate him by burning down his house. Everyone was able to escape the blaze with their lives, but for a brief moment, Petty started to feel like life as a musician wasn’t worth it if it meant having to defend yourself like this every single time you went to sleep.
Given how uninspired he was at the time, Petty had talked about having doubts over making music at all ever again, saying, “I thought about givin’ up music completely around that time. You know I’d been real busy – work, work, work, work – and then your house burns down, you’re nearly killed and you think ‘Jesus, what the hell am I doin’? It’s lookin’ like I’m gonna be busy for the next five years now if I do everything I’m supposed to do.”
But if there was one person that could help Petty get back on his feet, it was Bob Dylan. No one would have turned down the chance to work with one of the greatest songwriters of all time, but after working with him during his tour along with the rest of the Heartbreakers, Petty suddenly had a bunch of new friends that helped him rediscover his love of playing music, whether that was working with The Traveling Wilburys or getting Jeff Lynne to help him bring Full Moon Fever to life a few years later.
Although whoever burned Petty’s house may have hoped to silence him for good, ‘I Won’t Back Down’ perfectly encapsulates what Petty was all about throughout his life. You could throw anything that you could at him to slow him up, but he was always going to face his problems head on with that same brave look in his eye.