Tom Petty is one of my rock heroes and the only artists who are better represented in my CD collection are Neil Young and Bob Dylan.
Petty has enjoyed a highly successful career in the States, starting in 1976. He has had numerous platinum discs, received prestigious awards for his performing and song writing and been nominated no less than 18 times for a Grammy award. According to Wikipedia, he is in the category of recording artists who have sold 50-74 million records, bracketed with such stars as Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and The Police. Yet in the UK he has never had a Top Twenty single and his albums have only achieved that status on four occasions, two of those being greatest hits compilations.
I first came across Tom Petty and his band, The Heartbreakers, when they were backing Bob Dylan on tour in 1986/7. He and Dylan then formed the supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys, with Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, which produced a hugely popular album in 1988. The following year Tom Petty made his first solo album, Full Moon Fever, which is among my all time favourites. It includes such Petty classics as Free Fallin‘, I Won’t Back Down, Runnin’ Down a Dream and A Heart with a Mind of its Own. Other favourite albums are Damn the Torpedoes, released in 1979, which contained Refugee, Here Comes my Girl, Even the Losers, Don’t Do Me Like That and Louisiana Rain; Wild Flowers (1994); and Highway Companion (2006).
If you enjoy unpretentious, tuneful, vigorous, classic American rock, then Tom Petty, with or without The Heartbreakers, could be your man.
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