(Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
Sat 22 November 2025 18:30, UK
By the time Tom Petty reached the 1980s, he didn’t really need to answer to anyone anymore.
He knew what made a great rock and roll tune, and even if it took the rest of the world a bit more time to get on board, hearing him stand up for the little guy whenever he put out a record only endeared him to his audience even more when the label started to stick their hands into the picture. But of all the headaches he had to deal with, having a mini reunion with rock and roll juggernauts wasn’t even enough to sway the bigwigs.
Then again, anyone who played with a band like the Traveling Wilburys would have been virtually untouchable in the mainstream. This was like the varsity team of songwriters, and while Petty was considered one of the new recruits when he first joined the band, it made sense for him to contribute the odd line here and there and get a front-row seat to some of his greatest heroes writing songs together.
Anyone else would have taken all those lessons to heart, and when Petty started working with Jeff Lynne to create Full Moon Fever, he finally seemed ready to create some of the best material that he could think of. It clearly wasn’t Heartbreakers music, but when listening to tunes like ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’, it seemed like the perfect middle ground between the middle that he had been doing for years and the kind of freewheeling spirit of his famous friends.
And it’s not like his friends were always that far behind him, either. When working on the record, George Harrison turned up every now and again to add some backing vocals or the odd guitar part, and getting to hear Roy Orbison’s voice one more time after the Wilburys in the background of ‘Zombie Zoo’ is a nice way of wrapping up the album. But even with everyone contributing on the song ‘Free Fallin’, Petty was shellshocked when something that starstudded fell flat.
He was so proud of it, but he said that it wasn’t until he played it to Mo Ostin with the rest of the Wilburys that he got someone to listen, saying, “We had a kind of Wilbury arrangement of it with harmony. And we did it. And Lenny Waronker is sitting there, he said, ‘That’s a hit.’ With two acoustic guitars, you know? I said, ‘Well, my record company won’t put it out.’ And Mo says, “I’ll f*****’ put it out.”
If that’s how Petty’s label was treating him, though, it’s no wonder that he would be jumping ship only a few years later. Harrison had already been working with Warner Bros for a little while, and even if Petty had his own imprint with MCA, anyone who looked at ‘Free Fallin’ and didn’t hear a hit probably wouldn’t have known what good music was even if it hit them over the head with a hammer.
Then again, it’s not like Petty needed The Wilburys for the rest of the record. He had found a confidante in Lynne when working on tracks like ‘Yer So Bad’, but even on tracks like ‘Love is a Long Road’, there’s something about his lyrics that couldn’t have been written by anyone else, almost being somewhere between Mick Jagger’s attitude, Bob Dylan’s poetry, and the romanticism of The Beatles.
It was a hard-fought battle to get Petty to the top of the world again, but this kind of jerking around should be a lesson to all A&R men unsure of what to do with one of their artists. Not everything that’s committee-approved is right all the time, and sometimes the people want to hear something that sounds this natural.
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