The late Tom Petty made songwriting look easy, churning out dozens of classic tunes during his long career. According some of the people who were close to him, though, Petty put a lot of effort into crafting the songs that helped make him and his band The Heartbreakers legendary.
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In a recent episode of the Life of the Record podcast focusing on the recent reissue of Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album, Long After Dark, the group’s founding drummer Stan Lynch, and Tom’s daughter Adria reflected on Petty’s devotion to the songwriting process.
“It was hard work,” Lynch noted. “I know he worked very hard at writing songs. I don’t think they came tumbling out of him the first thing in the morning. I mean, he was disciplined, you know. While I was out water skiing, Tom’s writing songs. … It’s like, he learned the craft, he worked it, so it was paying off … around then.
According Adria Petty, her father “viewed songwriting as a job.”
“[He] took it very seriously and studied it,” she noted. “I mean, being a great songwriter, if you want to do it like he did it, it has a couple of components. And one of them is isolating yourself. One of them is, like, really knowing that you’re gonna get up around 10 [a.m.], have a coffee, and go in the room and write for hours, and play for hours by yourself, and really not let anybody sort of distract you from that. And then, the other is to listen to a lot of music.”
She added, “Like, he was always reading and always listening to music and watching movies.”
Adria Petty on How Disciplined Her Dad Was with Regard to Songwriting
Adria went on to share more specifics about how disciplined her father was when it came to writing songs.
“He had a space for it, which I think is really important,” she pointed out. “A lot of musicians, you know, don’t realize how important it is to be able to go in a room and shut the door, with your stuff in it, even if it’s a tiny little room. Like, my dad, when we were poor, it would be like, ‘Okay … we’re closing off the kitchen … and that’s dad’s room,’ or whatever. … But it’s important to just have a time and a place that you do it, a lot.”
Adria added, “And it’s a practice, just like yoga or meditation or something like that. Like you get better and better and better at it, but there’s no guarantee it’s gonna be the same every day. You know, you got to just be in that practice.”
Heartbreakers Guitarist Mike Campbell on Petty’s Songwriting Talent
In a separate online feature, founding Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell also reflected of Petty’s talent as a songwriter.
On his social media pages, Campbell posted an audio clip of himself reading a passage from his new memoir, Heartbreaker, about Petty’s knack for composing memorable tunes.
Mike recalled that Petty always was confident that he was going to become a successful musician.
“[E]ven early on, when I couldn’t fathom, not in my wildest dreams, how far he would take us, [Tom] never doubted it for a second,” Campbell said. “He once told his dad that if he would just get off his back, he would be a millionaire by the time he was 35, and he was right.”
Mike continued, “Tom was a songwriter too. Like me, but also not like me. I could give Tom a tape of three chords that I recorded to play over while I practiced, and he would come back with lyrics thousands of people would sing with tears in their eyes. He wrote songs that gave people great courage and comfort.”
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