{"id":283248,"date":"2025-11-25T22:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283248\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:15:09","slug":"the-one-song-tom-petty-would-never-get-tired-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283248\/","title":{"rendered":"The one song Tom Petty would never get tired of"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ The Bigger Picture)<\/p>\n

Tue 25 November 2025 19:45, UK <\/p>\n

There was never any sense in stopping Tom Petty<\/a> at any point throughout his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even though he would be the first to say that he wasn\u2019t the smartest person in rock and roll, he was willing to fight for what was right even if it meant costing him nearly everything he had. And while that might have been a tough gamble for someone that had been squarely focused on making commercial pop rock, Petty knew that the songs that he wrote were worth protecting at all costs.<\/p>\n

As far back as his days in Mudcrutch, his focus was on trying to find the perfect melody to put on top of any chords that were presented to him, and if he didn\u2019t come up with the central guitar riff, he could always find ways of writing around it. Mike Campbell may be responsible for some of the biggest instrumental highlights in his catalogue like \u2018Refugee\u2019 and \u2018Breakdown\u2019, but it wasn\u2019t going to mean anything until Petty put those lyrics down with the rest of the Heartbreakers.<\/p>\n

But before he even had a proper band, the labels were already interested in his songs above anything else. Anyone who wrote a song like \u2018Don\u2019t Do Me Like That\u2019<\/a> when they were barely out of their teens is truly a gifted songwriter, but despite rubbing elbows with George Harrison and working on records with Leon Russell, the life of a solo artist wasn\u2019t for him. Petty wanted a band behind him, and after Mudcrutch fell apart, he knew he needed to bring Benmont Tench and Campbell with him to stardom.<\/p>\n

And right when they were about to take over the world, the band came out with their debut and saw\u2026nothing. Every song was great, but there was no real audience for it in the age of punk and new wave. This kind of Byrds-y rock and roll either seemed like a relic of the past or too pretty for the mohawk crowd, but from the first moment that he hit on \u2018American Girl\u2019, Petty knew he had something special. <\/p>\n

The song itself isn\u2019t exactly the hardest thing in the world to play, but the excitement that the band plays the tune with is still one of the best parts of the final record. The Roger McGuinn worship might seem fairly obvious when listening to the jangle of the guitars throughout the verses, but even up until his final days, Petty felt that nothing got better than playing that tune live.<\/p>\n

He already had \u2018Free Fallin\u2019, \u2018Refugee\u2019, and \u2018Here Comes My Girl\u2019 under his belt, but there was an electricity in the air whenever those opening chords started, saying<\/a>, \u201cSometimes I feel like I don\u2019t want to play \u2018American Girl\u2019 anymore. We\u2019ve been playing it for thirty years. But then maybe you\u2019ll get two hours into the show, and the place is frenzied, and the vibe is so great, and the first couple chords of that song come on, and there\u2019s such a rush of adrenaline throughout the building, that the next thing you know, you\u2019re really digging playing \u2018American Girl.\u2019 And I\u2019ll feel, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m digging this again, but I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was never a case of Petty getting nostalgic for his past by any stretch. He was always about forward momentum, and even the year that he died, he seemed to have as much love for tunes like \u2018Fault Lines\u2019 from Hypnotic Eye as he did for anything off of Full Moon Fever and half of the Heartbreakers\u2019 1980s material. <\/p>\n

Because looking at his career, Petty was about more than being the traditional face of heartland rock. He wanted to evolve the same way his heroes did, but when you have the pure sound of excitement on a record, it\u2019s going to be impossible to top it when you\u2019re going back into the studio.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ The Bigger Picture) Tue 25 November 2025 19:45, UK There was never any sense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,13576,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-283248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-tom-petty","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}