When you’ve been in the business as long as Tom Petty had been up until his death in 2017, you tend to learn a lot about the best (and, more importantly, worst) things a musician can do in their career. As someone with numerous chart-topping hits and a catalogue that still gets plenty of radio and online airplay to this day, Petty worked up a professional formula that undoubtedly worked well.
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Did he live up to it one hundred percent of the time? He was the first to admit when he didn’t. But more often than not, identifying those “worst practices” in yourself really makes those lessons stick.
Tom Petty Once Shared The “Worst” Thing A Musician Could Ever Do
There are some obvious no-nos in the music business (and life in general) that all of us know without a famous rockstar telling us so. Making good music, forging strong working relationships, and speaking your truth are all positive things an artist can do to bolster their career over the years. Exploiting colleagues, using a global platform to belittle others, and other abusive or harmful behavior are more obvious things to avoid. But according to Tom Petty, one of the worst things a musician could ever do was be “too serious.”
“You don’t want to be real serious all the time,” Petty explained in a 2010 interview with M Music & Musicians Magazine. “That really makes you a boring a**, doesn’t it? Nothing worse than some musician being really serious.” While the Heartbreakers frontman admitted that there might have been times in his life where he was more serious than others, he added, “I was probably a boring a**. I don’t want to be too serious; I just want to be pure.”
He continued, “I want it to move people rhythmically, provoke them mentally, or just make them feel good. Mostly, I’m trying to get a song done. If it feels good, I offer it to the band and say, ‘What do you think?’ I’d like people to notice that we’re still doing things that are worth hearing. Very few can say that about a 35-year-old band. I want to keep moving. We’ve found a musical area where there’s a lot to be mined. These are good days for the Heartbreakers.”
The Rock ‘n’ Roller Certainly Lived Up To This Professional Ethos
Of all the words to describe Tom Petty’s music, “cerebral” might not be the first that comes to mind. The chord progressions are relatively simple, so much so that a novice guitarist can often pick up most of the rhythm parts with relative ease. Mike Campbell’s guitar riffs, while integral to the song, aren’t particularly challenging either. (The “feel” is harder to replicate than the notes themselves.) The same goes for Petty’s lyrics. While they undoubtedly have the ability to make a listener think and feel something, he never required his audience to wade through heady, highly metaphorical prose.
Petty struck gold with his ability to craft approachable, universally appealing rock music that was simultaneously simple and iconic. His music was never boring, whether from being too simplistic and rudimentary or lofty and hard to understand. He was a true Everyman musician, catering to rock, country, and Americana lovers with his expansive musical catalogue. And through it all, we’d say he succeeded in never being a “boring a**” (even if he was willing to say that about himself back in 2010).
Photo by Larry Marano/Shutterstock
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