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Tom petty wiki5/28/2023 ![]() Still, it wasn't until Damn the Torpedoes hit big three years later that fans went back and picked up this first record. Petty supported the disc with a relentless tour, slowly gaining an audience. The top album was Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life there wasn't much interest in a bunch of Byrds-inspired songs from an unknown California rock band. The Number One song in the country that week was Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)," directly followed by "Disco Duck" by radio DJ Rick Dees. Tom Petty's 1976 debut album didn't get a lot of attention when it came out. It's not a bunch of old assholes trying to take your money.'" Like the song says, 'I was so much older then/ I'm younger than that now.' And I listen to the new album and I feel so good, because it's not a cheap shot. I didn't go through it a few years ago, when I was feeling like a failure at everything. "And it's tough when you look in the mirror and go, 'Shit, I'm an old guy.' But the night I turned 40 there was a big party for me, so I was surrounded by friends, and I'm glad that I turned 40 at a good time in my life. "The night before we started the record, I turned 40,'' Petty told Rolling Stone in 1991. The record wasn't quite the commercial monster of Full Moon Fever, but "Learning to Fly" and "Into the Great Wide Open" were huge hits and fans loved the disc. Much to the relief of the Heartbreakers, he brought them back into the fold for the highly anticipated Full Moon Fever follow-up disc. Full Moon Fever, his recent solo album, was an enormous hit and restored much of his commercial luster after the poorly received Let Me Up (I've Had Enough). Tom Petty was in a very good place when he began cutting Into the Great Wide Open in late 1990. I was playing the guitar, and it started falling out, and I wrote it down as quick as I could." "It's one of those embarrassingly revealing songs. "I'd always wanted to deal with Howie's death," he said. One song, "Running Man's Bible," addressed Howie Epstein's death (in 2003). We couldn't have made this album in the Eighties." "Everybody was in the same room, and we did very few overdubs. "We didn't use headphones," Petty told Rolling Stone. Instead, he got together with the Heartbreakers at his Los Angeles studio and cut a simple blues-rock album. He could write 10 songs as catchy as "Free Fallin'" and it wouldn't matter, so he simply stopped trying. ![]() He took a three-year break after it came out, and when he returned in 1985, he had a pretty new sound.īy 2010, it had become abundantly clear to Tom Petty that radio just wasn't going to play his new material. Long After Dark is the last Petty album exclusively produced by Jimmy Iovine, and it marked the end of the singer's early period. The disc didn't generate quite as many hits as previous releases, but "Between Two Worlds" landed on the charts and "You Got Lucky" became a huge smash. ![]() The move infuriated Del Shannon, but it provided a great boost for the Heartbreakers: Howie's background vocals are all over Petty's fifth album, Long After Dark. Petty quickly replaced him with Howie Epstein, a bassist in Del Shannon's backing band with an incredible singing voice. It was the first defection from the original group. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers bassist Ron Blair quit the band after their tour in support of 1981's Hard Promises.
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