Credit: Alamy
Thu 2 April 2026 0:00, UK
There was never meant to be any sense of competition between any member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Everyone typically knew who the “important” one was whenever they looked at one of the marquees at their shows, but even when Petty was putting together the group, he emphasised that he wanted the Heartbreakers to be a band rather than a bunch of hired guns. He wanted the chance to live out the fantasy that he had when he saw the brotherhood that The Beatles had, but he didn’t have to worry about the musicianship whenever he landed on the right group of guys.
But if there was one thing for sure, it was that Mudcrutch was never going to get the distance as they should have. His teenage band may have lit up the festival circuit whenever they played in Gainesville, but they were way too rough around the edges for the masses to take them seriously. The label still believed in Petty, but when he was shown the best session musicians in California at the time, he knew that he needed his guys behind him to get the music to sound right.
And when you listen to that first Heartbreakers record, you can hear what he was talking about. None of them had to be the greatest musicians in the world, but on a track like ‘American Girl’, nothing lights up until you hear Mike Campbell’s jangling lead coming in or Ron Blair giving that perfect counterpoint bassline at the top of the tune. But that doesn’t mean that everything was perfect when they made hits.
It’s no secret that Stan Lynch was always going to be a problem when they were working on Damn the Torpedoes, but even when they began working with new people behind the scenes, the drummer was the first one that Petty thought of when looking for the sound of the Heartbreakers when working on tracks like ‘The Waiting’.
If you were to break down the best pieces of the band, though, it usually came from the camaraderie Petty had with his Mudcrutch bandmates. Campbell was practically the co-captain of the group after spending time writing songs with Petty, but Benmont Tench was a much different animal. His way around the keyboards was perfectly tasteful, and even when he was playing back in Gainesville, Petty was dumbstruck at how lucky he was to get someone like him in the group.
Compared to everyone that he had worked with, Petty said that Tench was by far the best musician in the group, saying, “It was very rare that you could stump him and he couldn’t play [something.] At least most of it. He’s an incredible musician. I’ve never really encountered a musician any better, and very few on his level. He’s really an extremely good musician.” But even if he didn’t write, Tench’s greatest strength was adding colour to every single tune.
Just listen to the way that his parts fit into the mix to see what I mean. ‘Here Comes My Girl’ is undoubtedly a guitar song, but the way that the piano comes in on the chorus is one of the best moments of the Heartbreakers’ career, and the way that he weaves together a melody on deep cuts like ‘A Wasted Life’ was proof that he was always listening for when he needed to add a little bit of flash to every single song.
Petty did eventually get the chance to work with far more accomplished musicians like Jeff Lynne and George Harrison, but there’s hardly anything that could get past Tench whenever he sat behind the piano. He was one of the most soft-spoken members of the group, but he wasn’t afraid to kick some ass every single time he got behind the keyboards as well.
