Tom Petty Had an Angry Run-In With the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten: ‘Who the F*** Are You Talking To?’
Early in his career, Tom Petty said he was quick to get angry. He channeled the emotion into his music, but sometimes it spilled over into his outside life, especially when provoked. He explained that he was once in a hotel with his bandmates when the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten called out to him. Neither Petty nor his bandmates liked what Rotten was saying, so Petty went to confront him.
The Heartbreakers didn’t want their music to be labeled as punk
Petty described his genre of music as rock ‘n’ roll, but others categorized it as punk in the early years of his career. He resented this.
“Alright, what happened was they called us a punk band a lot, this is ’76, when we first came out, the end of ’76 I guess,” Petty told Hit Parader in 1980, per The Petty Archives. “We went over to England — the album did kind of well in England — and this is when Johnny Rotten, and The Ramones and the whole New York thing was going on. We would say in interviews, well we’re not punk, you’ve got that wrong, because we didn’t really think we were, and we weren’t you know.”
He said that he liked punk music, he just didn’t want his work to be construed as punk.
“I said to somebody once, call me a punk and I’ll cut ya,” he said. “And they took me dead serious, literally, you know. And I kept reading, ‘Call him a punk and he’ll cut you.’ I was trying to make a little play on words there. So ever since, a lot of people ask me, well, you hate punks, right? The truth is we really enjoyed a lot of those records, and still do.”
Tom Petty was angry with Johnny Rotten
The image of Petty as an anti-punk crusader, true or not, resulted in a run-in with Rotten at a hotel.
“We were walking into our hotel lobby in England,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 1978. “I hear this snotty voice saying, ‘Oh, it’s the American pop star Tom Petty.’ I ignore it, check into the hotel, and Stan [Lynch] and I start walking toward the elevator. We hear the same voice, kind of whining, ‘There the hippies go. Bye-bye, Tom.’ At this point, Stan wheels around and starts heading for whoever it is. He wants to kill.”
When Petty realized that Rotten was the one talking, he walked over to confront him.
“Well, it’s Johnny Rotten, surrounded by French journalists,” he said. “Stan has to be restrained. I went over there and said, ‘Who the f*** are you talking to?’ Rotten immediately went into his wounded-punk act, says nothing. There ain’t no Robin Hoods in rock, man. All that punk s*** was just a little too trendy.”
Tom Petty said he often felt angry early in his life
Petty said he often felt flashes of anger as a younger man. He channeled this into his music.
“I had an explosive side,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009, per The Petty Archives. “It wasn’t that easy to set me off. But when it happened, I lost it in a big way. I’ve learned to control that. But I had a tough childhood and took a lot of abuse. That rage was in me, and when it got away from me, I didn’t know how to control it. But I could vent it in this music.”
He said that as he aged, he was able to work through much of his anger and become calmer.
