Tom Petty Said He Became Bandleader on Accident: ‘I Still Don’t Want the Job’
Tom Petty served as the bandleader of the Heartbreakers from the mid-1970s until his death in 2017. It was a role he filled well; the band was successful for decades, and his bandmates agreed that he was a solid leader. According to Petty, however, the role was never one he set out to take. As it turned out, it wasn’t a role he particularly wanted, either. Decades into his time as the Heartbreakers’ bandleader, Petty explained that he had never actually wanted the job.
The Heartbreakers frontman took inspiration from The Beatles
Like many musicians in his generation, Petty counted The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show as one of the most influential moments of his childhood.
“I watched it with my little brother,” he said, per the Grammys. “My mom and dad were there, but they weren’t interested in it. They laughed at it and left the room. But my brother and me, both of us, we just flipped out. We thought it was the greatest thing ever.”
While watching the band, Petty realized he wanted to be a musician.
“This was the great moment in my life, really, that changed everything,” he said. “I had been a fan up to that point. But this was the thing that made me want to play music. You saw that it could be done. There could be a self-contained unit that wrote, recorded and sang songs. And it looked like they were having an awful lot of fun doing it.”
Tom Petty said that he never set out to be the bandleader
Before the Heartbreakers, Petty was in the band Mudcrutch. Petty wasn’t initially the band’s lead singer, but when the singer quit, he moved into the spot. Per the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes, not everyone was optimistic about this.
“The drag is that the singer quit,” Gainesville resident Stewart Powers wrote in a letter to future Heartbreakers’ keyboardist Benmont Tench, “and now the bass player, Petty, is singing, and he’s not nearly as good.”
After Mudcrutch moved to California to pursue music, the band split due to a lack of success. The Heartbreakers formed when, while working on a solo record, he recruited some former members of Mudcrutch to be his band.
“He was making a solo record,” Tench explained. “Then he got us for his band. But the agreement was that it was all for one and one for all. But the strength lay with Tom and Mike [Campbell], because even when Mudcrutch broke up, Tom and Mike stayed together to make Tom’s solo record. Tom was in charge.”
Petty explained that this leadership role wasn’t what he’d ever intended to achieve.
“I became bandleader by accident. I didn’t want the job,” he told Q in 2012, per The Petty Archives. “Hell, I still don’t want the job.”
According to his bandmates, Tom Petty was a good bandleader
Even if he didn’t want the job, Petty’s bandmates said he was good at it. According to Campbell, Petty reminded him of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards.
“He’s got a very powerful opinion, and he’s usually right,” Campbell told Canoe in 2010, per The Petty Archives. “But he’s a great boss, a great leader, a great force. It’s like having Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in one guy.”
He explained that this was part of why the Heartbreakers had stayed together for so many years.
“He’s stern when he needs to be, but he’s also democratic,” Campbell explained. “And we’ve been together this long, so obviously it works out well.”
