Help arrived when it was needed.
I’ve bothered Peter Guralnick about many things. And he’s been an unfailing resource. From parenting to assholes at work to writing in the first person, he’s generally had a point of view. And when he didn’t have one, he told me so. My first conversations about this book were with Peter, and they weren’t our last on the topic. Thank you, Peter, for your generosity.
Sloan Harris figured me out straightaway. Without putting me in a category, such as the-type-who-needs-a-babysitter, Sloan found a way to work with me. He didn’t climb up my shirt and hit me on the back of the head until I finished writing a book. But he did make sure I was working, and in the right direction. For a while there, it was just the two of us.
Gillian Blake at Holt started our first conversation by referencing a cover song Petty and his band recorded, John Sebastian’s “Stories We Could Tell.” She understood its imagery, the beauty of Petty’s version, the backbone in craft that made the song work. I needed someone with a mind-and-heart connection to the subject, someone who had fallen in love with this stuff. Gillian brought all that as well as consistently good ideas.
Tony Dimitriades has been a great help to this project, sharing his own stories, making introductions, the gentleman at the door of the Heartbreakers’ world. In his office, Mary Klauzer has been a singular help, for a long time. If she knew me back then, a kid in the opening band, she didn’t hold that against me. She welcomed me as an adult. In the East End Management office there has been a collective humor and intelligence that is certainly not industry standard. Laurence Freedman, Tiffany Goble, and Evan Bright have been in there with the others and helped me on numerous occasions.
I’m not quite sure how to thank the Heartbreakers, where to begin. After Tom Petty, Benmont Tench has been my longest, steadiest connection to the band. He came to me through Alison Reynolds, and in the years when I had all but left the music business, I still spoke with Ben on occasion. He expressed an interest in my unlikely academic pursuits and that meant more than he probably knew.
I was struck when Mike Campbell looked at me and said, “This is some deep shit you’re getting into here.” His point, as I took it, wasn’t that I should get off his property. He opened himself to what was happening, which no one had to do, and he expressed himself with a dignity that made my work more comfortable and effective. Stan Lynch did the same, eventually. It took a while to secure an interview, but in time we had one on the schedule. And, frankly, I don’t want to imagine what this book would have been without Stan’s participation. We met at his tree farm outside Gainesville, and at the start of the second day he said, “Do you mind if I lie on the couch while we do this?”
I was sure Ron Blair was avoiding me. As the guy who had left the band and then returned twenty years later, perhaps he was more interested in keeping his job than in digging through the emotional rubble. Once cornered, however, he quickly and graciously gave himself to the interviews. Scott Thurston was every bit the Heartbreaker in his humor and storytelling. He sat in a few hotel lobbies and let me poke around. If a somewhat marginal figure in this volume, there’s another book in which Scott is the protagonist. Steve Ferrone, too. Follow Ferrone’s life, and you get a good picture of popular music in the second half of the twentieth century. As a man, he’s a bit of a pied piper. After a few interviews with Ferrone while on the road in Texas, I found myself a part of his crowd, waking early for breakfasts that were often forget-to-eat-your-food hilarious. He was among the most welcoming in a group that has been generous, warm, and thoughtful.
Adria and Dana Petty: they both made this process possible, if in very different ways. They are the inner circle. Adria was a girl when we first met. And she was beyond her years then, as she is now. Her insights were crucial as I put together an account of her father’s life. Dana Petty came in at an important moment, opening herself to the process and bringing the kind, generous spirit for which she is known. Her mother, Nancy, often welcomed me at the house, getting me a cup of the remarkable coffee that comes out of the Petty kitchen. Tom’s brother, Bruce, was unguarded in his interview. Without ever parading it or profiting from it, he’s been an emotional buoy to his brother. There’s a longer story in that relationship, but Bruce let me look into it. I needed that. To know the man, one needs to know the family. And they have been a lovely, funny, smart bunch throughout this process.
Bugs Weidel had never done an interview. I am very grateful that he stepped up for this. He let it all hang out. As I hope this book makes clear, Bugs was right there the whole time. I came away with a great admiration for him. He loves this band. Richard Fernandez and Mark Turner sat, with Mike Campbell, for an interview that could have been its own television show. The Heartbreakers’ world is often very, very funny. They have a shorthand with one another that comes only from decades of practice. They have all been helpful in so many ways, but just getting to be near that band culture was enormously valuable to me. You may not see them when you go to a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers show, but they’re back there—or the band wouldn’t be up there. There are people among the crew not mentioned here. But I extend a collective thank-you to that bunch as a whole.
Tom Leadon is like no other. He invited me to meet his family, talked whenever I needed him, and has a relationship with the past that is lucid and respectful and fully alive. Alison Reynolds was an important early connection to Tom Petty, a friend and an ally. Maia Pilot, Kane Balser, and Chris Steffen helped transcribe interviews, often with very little turnaround time and always for less pay than they deserved. Sean Weber-Small and his family put me up in Los Angeles during a number of my interview visits. Ken and Anna Zankel put me up, in the most perfect place and in the most perfect way, when I needed it and the project needed it. Chuck Prophet, driven by the force of his own opinions, was always ready to talk Petty. He understands the importance of the subject. My conversations with Steven Van Zandt have shaped my thinking about rock and roll in the wide, anthropological sense. Mad for the stuff and ready to fight for it: this is a man who believes. His encouragement has meant as much as my conversations with him.
There are others who have helped, sometimes without knowing it: Stanley Booth, John Biguenet, Dan Zanes, Julia Zanes, Hope Zanes, Paula Greif, Harry Butterworth, Anna Zanes, Isak Saaf, Olaf Saaf, Trigger Cook, Brad Jones, Daniel Tashian, Bill Flanagan, Angelo, Don Fleming, Michael Azzerad, David Barker, Joe Pernice, Terry Stewart, Bruce Warren, Anisia Lapina-Yang, Peter Bogdanovich, Jeff Dupre, Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen, Scott Robinson, Jed Hilly, Weil-Vincequerra-Dobo-Mesek, David Newgarden, Geoff Edgers, Mary Davis, Parker Quillen, Phil Galdston, Jackson Browne, Brian Henson, Ryan Ulyate, Margaret Bodde, Evan Cutler, the Shelters, Jann Wenner, and Aimee Mann. At Henry Holt: Stephen Rubin, Patricia Eisemann, Maggie Richards, Leslie Brandon, Meryl Levavi, Eleanor Embry, Chris O’Connell, Emily Kobel, and Jason Liebman. At ICM: Heather Karpas, Liz Farrell, Kevin Keyes, and Henry Reisch.
I thank all of the folks who talked to me about Petty and his history. They provided the fabric of the book. Many are mentioned above, but there are others who helped significantly: Jimmy Iovine, Stevie Nicks, Jim Lenahan, Elliot Roberts, Ricky Rucker, Dickie Underwood, Don Felder, David Mason, Marty Jourard, Jeff Jourard, Danny Roberts, Rick Rubin, Jeff Lynne, Olivia Harrison, Jakob Dylan, Charles Ramirez, William Crawford, George Drakoulias, Charlie Souza, Mike Lembo, Chris Blackwell, Al Hospers, Peter Holsapple, William Crawford, Mike Lembo, and Harvey Kubernik.
This book is born of interviews. The many days spent with Tom Petty, sitting down at his house in Malibu, sorting through the past and talking about a life making records, will remain among my favorite possessions. Mostly, we were at work. We’d sometimes break for a meal after a few hours. The table would always be set in advance of our arrival, with a vegetarian dish awaiting us. If only occasionally, I sometimes spoke of whatever was going on with me. The day I mentioned that I was getting divorced, Tom got out his stationary, with a still from Méliès’s Trip to the Moon on the front, and wrote notes to my sons. He thanked them for loaning their father, told them they should come out for a visit, wished them luck in their new house, finally drawing a caricature of himself for their immense pleasure. Those notes still hang on the walls of my sons’ bedrooms. Petty’s been like that for me, ever since I first met him.
There were times I knew I was writing things that would be hard for Tom to see in print. But he always insisted that this was my book, and he wasn’t there to say what went in and what didn’t. He was there to work with me, but he didn’t want it to be a whitewashed account. Sometimes I worried that the friendship we’d come into might not survive the process. That thought, however, I had to set aside. The job required that I think not about him but about the people who want to know more about him. He’s never been much of a self-promoter, never constructed his own mythology, never hinted that he’d like to lead the people through the streets. He has put the songs out there, then waited to see what happened. And the songs, and the records made of them, have been so good that plenty has happened. But as someone raised on that music, I believed there were people who wanted more. All that was required was that he let me in. And he did. I thank him for the style with which he did that. He’s still the coolest man in rock and roll. And I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him during the time we’ve spent together.
And, of course, my sons, Lucian and Piero. You brought humor, ideas, a love for good songs, and a patience for life’s sometimes wonderful, sometimes strange happenings. Thank you for being in this with me. I can’t always get you what you need, want, or deserve, but you seem to get all of that for me. You are my treasure.
Lastly, Svetlana Lapina. I was too busy celebrating your arrival to ask how you got here. What timing! Whose plan was this? You helped me so much. You brought the motion and belief back into my life. The blood started circulating again, to the brain as to the heart. You made a good save, Svetlana Lapina. Thank you.