Tom Petty Revealed Which of His Music Videos He Found ‘Particularly Embarrassing’
Shortly after Tom Petty rose to prominence, music videos became a crucial part of album promotion. They were important for boosting a band’s recognition factor, so most groups embraced music videos. Petty and the Heartbreakers wholeheartedly embraced the form. They were so successful with their videos that Petty won the Video Vanguard Award in 1994. Still, not all of them were hits. He shared the video that he found the most embarrassing.
Tom Petty said music videos were a necessary evil
Petty said that music videos were marketing tools and hoped they would eventually disappear.
“Well, videos are a necessary evil,” he told BAM in 1997, per The Petty Archives. “Even the videos, if you notice, I’m in them less and less. I’d love to see them just vanish; in essence they’re marketing tools. I notice MTV doesn’t really play many videos anymore; it’s just game shows and things. My dream down inside is maybe the audience will become so sophisticated, which I think they’re getting more that way, that they just dismiss them.”
Still, he said he enjoyed making music videos.
“In those days MTV was so hungry for product, you could have three or four videos an album,” Petty told Billboard in 2005. “Suddenly, we had a lot of stuff on TV, and then your recognition factor goes up on the street. Instead of being on once a year, you’re on all day long. People are seeing you all the time, so we tried to use it to our advantage, and it was so much fun.”
Tom Petty pointed to which of his music videos he found the most embarrassing
Petty explained that when they first started making music videos, he hadn’t expected them to have any staying power.
“The first ones we made were never meant to be played more than once or twice; they called them ‘promos’ then,” he explained. “You did ’em so you didn’t have to go on The Merv Griffin Show or some TV show you didn’t want to appear on, or you couldn’t appear on. You’d make a clip and send it, and they’d just play it once. So, imagine our horror years later when these things played repeatedly on television.”
He pointed to the one video that he found most difficult to rewatch: “Actually, the one of ‘The Waiting’ is particularly embarrassing [laughs].”
In the video, the band plays on a set of paint splattered steps in a white room decorated in primary colors.
He won the Video Vanguard Award in 1994
In the years after the video for “The Waiting,” Petty and the Heartbreakers pushed the envelope a bit more.
“By the time we’d done ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ [in 1993], I remember thinking, ‘Can we line up stiffs in the video? Can we open on a line of corpses? Yeah! Sure we can.'”
Their video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” was so controversial that it was part of the reason Tipper Gore pushed for parental warning labels on albums.
In 1994, MTV recognized the band’s commitment to exciting music videos by awarding Petty the Video Vanguard Award.
