Tom Petty Wrote a Third Verse to This Heartbreakers Classic Specifically for Grace Jones

By 1980, Grace Jones started moving away from the mostly disco and R&B sound of her first three albums—Portfolio (1977), Fame (1978), and Muse (1979)—with the release of Warm Leatherette. The title track was a cover of a song, based on J.G. Ballard’s controversial 1973 novel Crash, released two years earlier by British music producer and Mute Records founder, Daniel Miller, for his project The Normal.

Warm Leatherette veered into some post-punk edges, new wave, reggae, pop, and other unexplained sounds with Jones’ androgynous interpretations of Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug,” the Pretenders’ “Private Life,” and Smokey Robinson’s “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.”

Videos by American Songwriter

[RELATED: Auto Fetishes and J.G. Ballard’s ‘Crash,’ Mute Records, and the Story Behind Grace Jones’ 1980 Dance Hit “Warm Leatherette”]

“Breakdown”

Jones also took on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1976 debut single, “Breakdown.” Originally released on the band’s self-titled debut album, “Breakdown” cracked the Top 40 (at No. 40) for the band. For Jones, Petty’s song was part of a further experiment, transporting its classic rock through her reggae sieve.

When Jones was working on the album, not only did Petty approve of her cover, but he even wrote a third verse to the song, just for her.

It’s OK if you must go
I’ll understand if you don’t
You say goodbye right now
I’ll still survive somehow
Why should we let this drag on?

Breakdown, honey, go ahead and give it to me
Breakdown, hone,y take me tonight
Breakdown, I’m standing here can’t you see
Breakdown, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, baby

Suzi Quatro to Lydia Lunch

Female vocalists were always drawn to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, from Stevie Nicks’ cover of “Free Fallin’” in 1996 for the TV drama Party of Five to Melissa Etheridge’s powerhouse “Refugee” in 2005.

When it came to “Breakdown,” there was another female rock legend, who was actually the first artist to cover the Petty classic: Suzi Quatro.

Released on Quatro’s 1978 album If You Knew Suzi…, her rendition was the first by a woman but not the last. German rocker Inga Rumpft was the second in 1979, before Jones, while British actress and singer Maria Doyle Kennedy (Downton Abbey, Outlander) also covered it in 2005.

In 2017, no-wave icon Lydia Lunch also recorded her own cover of “Breakdown” on her album Under the Covers with British musician and producer Cypress Grove, before Lucinda Williams released an entire album of Heartbreakers covers, Runnin’ Down a Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty, in 2021.

Photo: Mick Hutson/Redferns