(Credits: Far Out / Tom Petty)
Tue 14 April 2026 23:24, UK
Spending extended periods in the studio can lead to songs blending together over time. Despite aiming to make a profound sonic statement, some tracks may fall short or seem ordinary compared to standout hits on the album. Although Tom Petty typically had a knack for selecting songs, he recalled that the entire band lacked faith in the potential hit ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’.
Before he had even gotten the song down in the studio, Petty already knew that Damn the Torpedoes was going to be one of the best albums he had ever made. After coming into the studio with ‘Refugee’ and ‘Here Comes My Girl’, he remembered producer Jimmy Iovine being knocked out by what he heard, saying that the frontman didn’t need any more songs for the album.
While a looming court case kept the album in limbo for almost a year, Petty would still slave away in the studio, determined to make the most of the time he had. Although most of his frustrations would air out on songs like ‘Century City’, ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ was a track that dated all the way back to the pre-Heartbreakers days.
Written while still in his childhood band Mudcrutch, Petty made sure to keep the song incredibly simple, letting the vocals be the real guide behind the track. Petty would eventually cut a version of the song with Mudcrutch, but he ended up putting it on the back burner, thinking it would have been better suited to a band like J Geils Band.
Once Iovine went through Petty’s back catalogue, he was determined to turn it into a hit. Cutting a quick version of the song over a few days, Petty still wasn’t convinced of the song’s potential when putting together the running order for the album when he heard one of the engineers pipe up from behind the mixing console.
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
That’s often the way these things go in the studio. Songs that have been sitting around for years can feel too familiar to the person who wrote them, almost like they’ve already given up everything they had to offer, while someone hearing it for the first time catches something completely different.
And sometimes it takes that outside perspective to bring a track back to life. When you’re buried in sessions day after day, it’s easy to overlook the obvious, but a fresh set of ears can cut through all of that and remind you why the song worked in the first place.
When talking about the song on Classic Albums, Petty said that he considered ditching the song, saying, “We kinda put it out of our minds. I didn’t think it was entirely in the running. Near the end of the album, the assistant engineer, Tory Swinson, who had been sleeping on the sofa in the control room, raised his head and said, ‘What about that ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’? I really like that one.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, what is that?’ and it became our first top ten hit”.
For how simple Petty claimed it was, the devil is in the details with their first hit. Outside of the amazing rhythm section, there’s a certain soulful element to the way the band interacts, having the kind of edge that wouldn’t be out of place on a record by Booker T and the MGs.
This would only be the beginning of Petty’s flirtation with the charts. For the rest of the 1980s, Petty would become one of the biggest hitmakers of his generation, following the lead of ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ with even more experimental pop marvels like the synthesised ‘You Got Lucky’ and the Eastern-tinged ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’. One of the biggest track records for smash hits…all stemming from a song that wasn’t even going to make the album.
