twelve

DAMN THE TORPEDOES

I’ll sell fucking peanuts before I give in to you.

—TOM PETTY

IN THE SUMMER OF 1961, WHILE AIMLESSLY PLAYING IN A PILE OF pine needles in the front yard of his run-down Gainesville, Florida, home, an eleven-year-old Tom Petty looked up to hear the words that would forever change the course of his life: “How would you like to meet Elvis Presley?”

They came from Petty’s visiting Aunt Evelyn, whose husband, Earl Jernigan, had just told her he could set up a meeting with Elvis himself. Having been on a veritable cinematic tear after his much-publicized release from a two-year Army hitch, Presley was in Florida to film no less than his fifth postservice flick in a mere fifteen months, this one to be called Follow That Dream. For his part, Petty’s uncle found a way to hire on to the local production crew and had somehow ingratiated himself with the legendary singer.

“Me and Elvis are buddies,” Jernigan liked to brag.

On the day of the big event the small-for-his-age, towheaded Petty stood next to his aunt, uncle, and several cousins as they watched Cadillac after Cadillac pull up at the shooting location, dropping off one mohair suit–clad, pompadour-wearing member of Elvis’s personal posse after another. Hundreds of frenzied girls behind a nearby chain-link fence screamed with every arrival.

“Is that him? Is that him?” Petty asked over and over, only to be disappointed.

Finally, after almost an hour of waiting, with everyone growing weary, one last Caddy motored into view. With a bevy of bodyguards scrambling to be the first to open the gleaming black limo’s back door, out stepped a man with an aura so magnetic that Petty could feel it from fifty feet away.

“That’s him!” he cried out, triumphantly.

But as Elvis made his way over to greet the Jernigan/Petty clan, the future front man and namesake of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers suddenly froze. After all, who was he to speak to the most famous musician on the planet?

“These are my nieces and nephews, Elvis,” Jernigan said, pointing, as Presley smiled and nodded. Though Petty burned to say hello, he instead stood wide-eyed and mute, as if he had just borne personal witness to the Second Coming.

“Nice to meet y’all,” Elvis offered, then ambled off toward his trailer.

And that was all it took.

From the moment Petty returned home from the encounter, his mind reeling, all he could think about was Elvis. Or more precisely, all he could think about was how he—Thomas Earl Petty, a poor kid with no apparent musical aptitude—might someday, someway become the next King of Rock and Roll.

AT THE SAME TIME TOM PETTY FOUND HIMSELF FALLING UNDER Elvis Presley’s spell, a thousand miles to the north another youngster began his would-be professional musical odyssey under an entirely different set of circumstances. Born to Martha and Milton Yakus just outside Boston during the late 1940s, Sheldon “Shelly” Yakus virtually grew up in a recording studio. With his parents owning a small-yet-thriving local facility called Ace Studios, the precocious Yakus spent most of his free time as a kid acting as an in-house assistant to his father. Young Shelly enthusiastically learned how to do such things as fix tape machines and cut acetates (lacquer-coated demonstration records) while his friends were busy outside playing Little League baseball and cowboys and Indians. To be near his beloved father was a joy; to be working in an actual recording studio, if only a small one, was an even bigger joy.

One day, at the age of seventeen, Yakus received what would become a life-altering after-school assignment.

“Shelly, I want you to take this reel of quarter-inch tape down to New York and have it mastered so we can get some 45s pressed,” his dad said.

Thrilled to be making his first trip to see a big-time recording studio in action, Yakus was all eyes and ears from the moment he stepped inside Mira Sound on West 47th Street in Manhattan. And as his luck would have it, a recording session was just getting under way featuring a Queens-based, Top Forty–hit-making “girl group” called the Shangri-Las, who were being produced by industry veteran Brooks Arthur. Of further good fortune, the local musicians’ union rep not only happened to be on hand that day but also took a shine to the teenage Shelly.

“Hey, Brooks, this kid here is from out of town, and he’s crazy about record making. You mind if he watches your session for a little while?”

“Uh… sure,” Arthur replied distractedly, his eyes never leaving the mixing console in front of him. “Just tell him not to make any noise.”

From the moment the recording began on the future hit single “Give Us Your Blessings,” Shelly was in awe. It was like nothing he had experienced back home in Boston. This music was alive. From the high-end Neumann microphones and the state-of-the-art Scully four-track tape machine to the way Arthur’s fingers flew across the faders as he deftly mixed the sound while incorporating the unique acoustics of the studio, everything seemed to mesh so perfectly. Yakus was instantly hooked, realizing that audio engineering was what he wanted to do—what he must do—for the rest of his life.

IN FEBRUARY OF 1964 TOM PETTY FINALLY FIGURED OUT HIS entry point into the world of rock and roll. Having obsessed over Elvis and anything even remotely rockabilly-related for the better part of two years, the now-thirteen-year-old Petty had been spinning his small collection of 45s so incessantly that his parents began to worry, thinking he might need to see a psychologist. “Does the kid ever do anything but play records?” his father would ask in exasperation.

But the night the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that all changed—in an instant. Petty took one look at John Lennon and George Harrison on the TV screen playing their gleaming Rickenbacker and Gretsch electric guitars and decided then and there he would become a guitarist just like them.

Though perpetually low on disposable income, Petty’s doting mother (in contrast to his often drunk and violent father) somehow managed to scrape together enough money to buy her son a cheap, $35 Kay electric guitar and a tiny portable amp from Sears. And with the same level of dedication he showed in playing his cherished Elvis singles over and over, Petty now turned his attention toward mastering everything he could about his new axe.

After learning a few basic chords from some neighborhood pals and then teaching himself to play “Wooly Bully” by ear, Petty soon decided it was time to form a band of his own. He wanted his group to be just like the Fab Four, who met the only set of criteria that mattered to him: they wrote their own music, played their own instruments, looked like they were having a good time, and, perhaps most important to a kid with a turbulent home life, were self-contained—the Beatles were in control.

With an evolving set of names like the Sundowners and the Epics, Petty and an ever-changing cast of fellow underage musicians played any Moose club, birthday party, and fraternity function that would pay—and some that didn’t. Petty instinctively knew that it was all valuable experience, something bound to come in handy down the line.

In 1969 the now-eighteen-year-old Petty received an Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder from his mother for his birthday that changed his world. Finally he could get his musical ideas down on actual tape, putting him one step closer to his goal of becoming a real recording artist.

By the time Petty graduated from high school several months later the core of his band, unbeknownst to him, was now essentially set for the next forty-plus years. The Epics had metamorphosed into a new outfit called Mudcrutch via the defection of a couple of members and the addition of future Heartbreaker mainstays Mike Campbell (lead guitar) and Benmont Tench (keyboards). Through playing gigs virtually nonstop throughout Florida in the early seventies, Mudcrutch became tight and accomplished. Their southern-blues-meets-British-rock sound and repertoire consisted of a string of Petty-written originals, with the occasional Beatles rocker thrown in for good measure, such as “Day Tripper” or “Birthday.” Petty’s unique, nasally vocals led the way on stage as the band steadily gained a large and loyal regional following.

In the fall of 1974 Tom Petty decided it was time to make his big move. Dreaming of nothing more than having a nationwide hit to call his own, Petty and one of his band’s roadies impulsively hopped into a beat-up Chevy van, Mudcrutch demo tape in hand, and drove three thousand miles to Southern California to knock on as many record-label doors as possible. With no connections and even less guile, Petty naïvely hoped he could find someone who might at least consider listening to his work. Instead, much to his astonishment, he received no less than three offers for his services on the first day, something virtually unheard of in the music business.

Having written his own songs for a number of years, Petty had a flair for coming up with catchy lyrics and melodies, which in turn had caught the ear of Denny Cordell at Shelter Records. Co-owned by Cordell and Leon Russell (the solo star and onetime Wrecking Crew studio musician), Shelter had a reputation for putting out authentic, southern-style rock, blues, and Americana by the likes of J. J. Cale, Dwight Twilley, and Freddie King—about which the record album–obsessed Petty was already fully aware. So despite offers from big-money labels MGM and London, Petty chose to go with the smaller Shelter, primarily because of Cordell.

Born in Argentina but growing up in England, the lanky, aristocratic, chain-smoking Denny Cordell had become a full-fledged music business phenom before even reaching his twenty-fifth birthday. In 1964, at the age of only twenty-one, he produced “Go Now” for the Moody Blues. Two years later he produced “A Whiter Shade of Pale” for Procol Harum. Cordell then moved on to produce Joe Cocker’s first several hits, including the classic “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Based in the United States by the mid-seventies, the flamboyant-yet-pragmatic Cordell now saw his future musical fortunes in the form of Tom Petty and band. But first the boys from Florida would need a little education.

“We’re not making an album right away, mates,” Cordell declared. “We’re going to take some time to expose you to lots of people, lots of records.”

And expose them he did. Each evening at six o’clock for several weeks they would all gather in Cordell’s office for an hours-long tutorial on just what great music was supposed to sound like.

“Have you ever heard of Lloyd Price? Or Larry Williams?” Cordell would ask, seldom waiting for a reply. He would then slap the respective platter on the turntable.

“You hear that? Now that’s the shit!”

Petty soon realized how far he needed to go as a songwriter. What worked in Gainesville might not play in Peoria. As he and the band diligently fine-tuned their sound over many months (while being housed and supported by Shelter), Petty eventually found himself chucking every one of the original songs from the Mudcrutch demo tape in favor of a complete set of new compositions.

Finally, in early 1976, the debut LP by the rechristened Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was ready for primetime. Except primetime wasn’t quite ready for it or them. The album took a full year before it made so much as a dent on the Billboard charts. In the meantime Petty and his band scrambled to play whatever gigs they could get, mostly in England, where they had become cult favorites.

By mid-1977, however, with the benefit of some well-placed word of mouth from a few East Coast disc jockeys, the almost-punk-sounding album suddenly took off, especially among college students. The self-titled Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers then stayed on the charts for over a year, even after the band’s second album, You’re Gonna Get It, was released in early 1978. Petty’s long-cherished dream of being a bona fide rock star was coming to fruition. With hits such as “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” and “I Need to Know,” his distinctive voice was fast becoming an FM radio staple. People knew him by name. He was on the cover of magazines. After years of focus and hard work, it was all coming together. Yet in mere months, while beginning recording album number three, Petty would see his newfound success on the verge of being totally stripped away.

WHEN SHELLY YAKUS PULLED HIS RENTAL CAR INTO THE PARKING lot of Sound City for the first time in late 1978, he wondered what he had gotten himself into. Having never seen the studio before, to his eyes it didn’t look like much. Housed in an industrial complex in a rundown neighborhood, Sound City’s exterior evidenced nothing of what actually went on inside. Yakus figured it could just as well have been a factory, which it once was. After walking inside, Yakus’s suspicions were further confirmed. The place had none of the gloss or high-end accoutrements he was accustomed to inside the big New York studios, things like gorgeous wood paneling, sumptuous lounge areas, and gourmet kitchen facilities; instead, Sound City proudly featured raggedy-looking orange shag carpet, a beat-up sofa, and a broken candy machine.

Through working his way up the recording studio ladder in New York during the heart of the seventies, first at Phil Ramone’s vaunted A&R Recording, then at the world-famous Record Plant on West 44th Street, Yakus had established himself as one of the most important engineers in all of rock and roll. His contributions on helping shape the sound while sitting side-by-side with John Lennon on the ex-Beatle’s smash LP Walls and Bridges was the stuff of legend. Not to mention Yakus’s “other” work with the likes of Alice Cooper (“School’s Out”), Van Morrison (“Moondance”), and Bruce Springsteen (“Born to Run”).

So when Yakus received a phone call from a hot young NYC-based producer named Jimmy Iovine about going to California with him to cut the next Tom Petty record because Denny Cordell had become too busy running Shelter, Yakus understandably had his reservations. Working with Petty might be one thing—the guy had several hits and obvious momentum. But why record it at some no-name studio out in bumfuck Egypt or Van Nuys or wherever the hell the place was?

Once Yakus found himself inside Sound City’s Studio A, however, his mind began to change. With the state-of-the-art Neve 8028 mixing console that Keith Olsen had installed several years earlier, along with a fantastic-sounding live room, especially for drums, Yakus could see the potential. Plus, it was the only place Petty liked to work.

For Iovine, recording what would become Damn the Torpedoes with Petty and Yakus was all about intuition and believing in the “power of three”—not just the three of them sitting behind the console making all the sonic decisions but also the fact that this was Petty’s third album. And Iovine very much believed in third albums. He felt the third time out often proved to be an artist’s best work. Springsteen’s Born to Run and Patti Smith’s Easter (which Iovine produced) were two among many examples he liked to cite.

When Iovine sat down with Petty in the studio at Sound City during preproduction for the new album, the ever-blunt producer got right to the point. He hoped there might at least be something useable within Petty’s ever-present notebook of tunes.

“Play me what you got.”

So Petty did. Grabbing his Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, he proceeded to strum and sing “Refugee,” followed by “Here Comes My Girl.” Both of which left his new producer breathless.

“Holy crap. You don’t need anymore songs,” Iovine gulped, sitting back in his chair. “Those two are hits.”

As the actual sessions got underway, however, two things quickly became apparent: Shelly Yakus didn’t like the sound of Heartbreaker drummer Stan Lynch’s drum kit. And Jimmy Iovine just plain didn’t like Lynch.

During the first official day of recording, as Petty and the Heartbreakers ran through some of their material to help establish the best microphone placement out in the studio, Yakus felt compelled to have a little heart-to-heart chat with Lynch.

“Stan, can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure, Shelly, what’s up?”

Yakus cleared his throat, and then continued.

“Well, uh, you know, I don’t want this to sound insulting or anything, but your drums sound pink.”

“Pink? What the heck does that mean?”

“It means they sound like a toy, like a little kid’s drum set. We need to get you a better kit, something with more power. This record is gonna require that. C’mon, let me take you drum shopping.”

Yakus and Lynch then spent the rest of the day down at the local percussion store painstakingly testing and then selecting just the right combination of snares, tom-toms, kicks, and cymbals. To Yakus, getting the right drum sound in the studio was the single-most critical element in successfully building a song from the ground up. He felt that without the correct percussive foundation, a recording had every chance of ending up lifeless, no matter how great the composition or performance.

But for Lynch, the matter of his “pink” drum kit would prove to be far less problematic than his relationship with Jimmy Iovine.

A later addition to the band as well as a few years younger than the rest, Stan Lynch oozed both power and finesse when playing. By most standards he was an excellent drummer—certainly no one could question his passion. But he also naturally tended to play on the back of the beat, which was not quite the same place rhythmically as Petty’s singing. This, combined with the fact that Lynch had an over-the-top personality, forever rubbed the equally extroverted Iovine the wrong way.

One afternoon, during the recording of “Even the Losers,” Iovine stopped the session cold from inside the recording booth. He had heard enough: the drumming—and the drummer—had finally gotten to him.

“What pattern do you want?” Petty asked, trying to be diplomatic as he and the producer stepped out into the studio.

“I just thought he should play straight,” Iovine replied, clearly exasperated.

Overhearing the exchange, a less-than-pleased Lynch decided to toss in his thoughts from behind the drum kit.

“Dude, there’s a glass window back there,” a smirking Lynch said to Iovine, pointing toward the control booth. “You’re supposed to be on that side of the wall.”

With the diminutive producer knowing better than to take on the towering Lynch in any sort of physical confrontation, no matter how much he would like to, Iovine chose instead to end the encounter with a piece of barbed humor.

“That’s it,” he barked in mock dictatorial style to Lynch, Petty, and the rest of the Heartbreakers. “You’re gonna sound like the Motels on this record!”

After the guffaws subsided, they all went back to work. But the damage had been done. Shortly thereafter Lynch was asked to leave the band midrecord. Ultimately, however, when no suitable replacement could be found after several weeks of auditions, Lynch returned, but he remained under strict orders to keep his mouth shut around Iovine.

Which isn’t to say that Iovine was always easy to work with either. The producer’s big personality and domineering ways could also take their toll, sometimes even on Petty. One day Keith Olsen, who was busy down the hall in Studio B, happened to poke his head in Studio A’s control booth just as Mike Campbell suggested to Petty that “maybe they should get Jimmy’s opinion.” Petty had but a two-word response for his lead guitarist: “Fuck Jimmy.” After which the three of them, along with Shelly Yakus, broke into gales of knowing laughter.

AS RECORD LABELS OFTEN DO, THE GIANT MCA BOUGHT TINY Shelter in 1979—on its face just another garden-variety Hollywood deal between a whale and a comparative minnow competitor. The history of the music business is replete with a long list of such mergers and acquisitions. Bigger players have made it their practice to swallow up the smaller ones for decades, ever since the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) took a flyer in 1929 and purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, the world’s largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. But in the case of the MCA/Shelter accord, the two labels made a grievous error in judgment. No one at either place bothered to say so much as “boo” to Tom Petty about the impending transaction—something both companies would soon come to regret.

Whether through incompetence or hubris, when MCA took over Shelter they failed to honor a clause in Petty’s Shelter contract that required his approval before he and his band could be “sold” to a new label (known as an “artist’s guarantee clause”). Petty’s song publishing rights—which Shelter had obtained from Petty several years earlier without Petty even understanding what he was giving up—also went along as part of the MCA deal.

Prepared to accept it as perhaps an honest mistake, Petty and his attorney then scheduled a meeting with the brass at MCA. But when they sat down to talk over the illegalities involved, much less the ethical violations, they were stunned at the response they received from MCA’s head record man.

“Too bad,” the label head said with a shrug. “You’re in no position to fight a big corporation. You’re staying with us.”

A combative sort by nature, particularly when he felt wronged, Petty came out swinging. His two managers, Tony Dimitriades and Elliot Roberts, along with his legal team devised a plan for Petty to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, thereby nullifying his contract with MCA. Of course, given that no popular musician had ever done such a thing, Petty quickly drew the attention and ire of virtually every label in town. They worried that if Petty could get away with this tactic, then what was to prevent a deluge of other unhappy musicians from doing the same thing? In essence Petty’s precedent-setting maneuver put him more than merely in a battle with one record company; it put him in a war with them all.

MCA, of course, did not take kindly to Petty’s gambit—anything but. They immediately sued him and also filed for an injunction to prevent Petty and his band from signing—or playing—anywhere else. And they made sure to freeze all of Petty’s royalties too, thereby cutting off his cash flow. Fortunately for Petty and the Heartbreakers, however, Elliot Roberts then stepped in and personally bankrolled the hefty cost of recording Damn the Torpedoes at Sound City, a price tag north of fifty grand in 1979 dollars. Roberts, along with the Heartbreakers’ chief roadie, Alan “Bugs” Weidel, also took the extraordinary measure of spiriting the master tapes home in their cars after each evening’s session, lest MCA try to sneak in and get their mitts on them. Petty made it clear that he didn’t want to know where the tapes were being kept either in case he was deposed at some point. “Don’t tell me anything,” Petty ordered Roberts and Weidel.

Yet despite the intense outside pressure of the looming lawsuit, the recording of Torpedoes inside Sound City (and occasionally at Cherokee in West Hollywood) hurtled along almost as if Petty and his Heartbreakers hadn’t a care in the world. The songs were coming together practically by divine guidance, like it was all meant to be. In one instance, when they were all working on “Here Comes My Girl,” the idea suddenly popped into Petty’s head to just talk his way through the verses and then sing the chorus, something he had never tried. To Yakus it sounded like something right out of the Shangri-Las’ Top Forty playbook from back in his New York City days. And it worked perfectly. Petty’s impromptu narration helped the message of the song come across all the more powerfully.

On another occasion, with Mike Campbell wracking his brain to come up with a guitar solo on “Even the Losers,” Petty said to him, “Well, what would Chuck Berry do?” Campbell knew just what the singer meant. Both Petty and Campbell were longtime, ardent admirers of Berry, known for his trademark style of picking two strings at a time. Within a matter of minutes Campbell had a blistering solo in the can.

Sometimes the ideas even came from interested bystanders. While on a break from recording an early take of “Refugee” one day Petty happened to run into the noted session drummer Jim Keltner in the hall just outside Studio A’s door. In Keltner’s hand was a Latin percussion shaker.

“This is what that track needs,” Keltner said, rhythmically shaking the small, buckshot-filled metal canister. “Sometimes it’s the little things.”

With no one noticing, the drummer apparently had been listening in the back of the control booth during the session. And with an undeniable groove happening right before his ears, Petty was sold on the spot.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

After Keltner finished overdubbing his shaker part in one take, Petty, Iovine, and Yakus looked at each other dumbfounded as they listened to the playback. Keltner couldn’t have been more right: one simple percussion effect, placed correctly in the mix, had utterly transformed the feel of “Refugee,” giving it the hit-quality mojo it needed.

IN MANY WAYS TOM PETTY WAS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE AMERICAN dream: a hardworking, independent-minded, principled individual seeking his rightful place in the world. A rebel, even—someone known for taking exactly zero shit. The very image, of course, that record labels love to cultivate to make more money. Rule number one in the music business has always been that bad boys (and girls) sell more records.

Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, and Led Zeppelin are but three among countless examples. The public remains utterly fascinated with each of them decades after their last hits. Great artists all, but these acts had more than just chops; they were also unique and copped a ’tude. More so, they were outsiders who did things their way.

It was all about rebellion in every conceivable manifestation. A monotone-sounding talk-singer by trade, Reed made a career out of exhibiting a well-practiced disdain toward any kind of authority. Morrison allegedly exposed his genitalia on stage in Miami and subsequently drank and drugged himself to death. Zeppelin’s much-publicized debauchery while on tour in the seventies (including the infamous “mud shark” incident with a groupie in Seattle, which by now has taken on many of the hallmarks of an urban legend) forever cemented that band’s reputation as the very definition of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

There have always been more skilled musicians on the scene, of course. Plenty of hired-hand session pros can play laps around the stars they work for in terms of sheer ability. It’s been that way at least since back in the sixties, when the Wrecking Crew first played in the studio in place of bands such as the Beach Boys.

But that’s not what matters most. Not if the goal is to make it to the top of the heap. To really break through, to become a true rock god or goddess, it requires much more. Swagger, mystery, and charisma are the qualities that sell out stadiums and earn platinum album awards, not mere dexterity on a fret board or the ability to carry a tune. And if the act is difficult, then so much the better. It’s almost perversely axiomatic among popular rock-and-roll musicians, as long as the underlying talent exists: the bigger the asshole, the better the sales. To the labels, three chords and a sneer have always been worth a thousand jazz standards.

Which is where the irony came in when it came to MCA. They wanted Petty to be insolent. They wanted Petty to be uncompromising. They wanted Petty to be a rebel. Until, of course, it turned on them.

At one point during a set of pretrial depositions being taken from Petty and others, MCA’s high-powered lead counsel got in the singer’s face in an attempt to intimidate him into capitulating.

“Listen, kid, you’re going to forget all this, and you’re going to go make your records and shut up,” the lawyer said, leaning in.

“I’ll sell fucking peanuts before I give in to you,” Petty fired back.

And he meant it.

On the eve of the trial, however, MCA finally blinked. They floated an eleventh-hour offer that included allowing Petty to be on his own record label within MCA (to be called “Backstreet”) as well as letting him retain full creative control over all musical decisions. As the parent company, MCA would merely oversee the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing. The singer-songwriter could have all of his publishing rights back too. Knowing vindication when he saw it, Petty accepted.

In a rare instance of clear-headedness within the music business, MCA had created a win-win for everyone. Tom Petty was back in charge of his artistic destiny, and MCA was rewarded with arguably the best album of Petty’s career. From the moment of its release, Damn the Torpedoes was a runaway hit. Containing no fewer than four smash singles (“Here Comes My Girl,” “Refugee,” “Even the Losers,” and “Don’t Do Me Like That”), the album shot to number two on the Billboard charts, behind only Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It also went platinum several times over, making the suits at MCA very happy.

Damn the Torpedoes additionally had the effect of making radio stations realize that rock and roll had some teeth left in it, that old-school rockers could still kick disco, punk, and new wave’s collective asses when they had a mind to. Maybe even if they hadn’t had a hit record in years. Which was exactly what a new Keith Olsen client by the name of Carlos Santana planned to do next.