Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. There is one band that has had more of an impact on my life than any other, and this is the one. Though I’ve only been familiar with their full discography for a little over three years now, the ways my life has changed since diving in to everything they have to offer has amazed me. 2021 marks 45 years since Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers came onto the rock ‘n’ roll scene, and to celebrate that, I want to share with you a personal piece about how this band has changed my life.
What’s funny is that the biggest impact this band has had on my life can be summed up in one single line from one single song that was released AFTER Tom passed. It is my all-time favorite song by any artist or band ever, and if you told me I had five minutes left to live, I’d listen to this song and then start it over even though I know I wouldn’t be able to finish it a second time. The song is “Keep a Little Soul,” and it was released in 2018. As soon as I first heard the lyric that ends the second verse, my life was changed.
I had just gotten into Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers in late 2018 (and I’ll forever regret taking so long!), and I had also just been given a huge collection of old records from my high school Spanish teacher. I remember being sat in my living room floor digging through the records with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ music videos playing on my TV for some background noise. I was crate digging and letting YouTube’s Autoplay function take over when I heard Tom’s voice count off into a song I’d not yet heard before. I looked up and saw archival footage of a happy early 80s Tom and was drawn in immediately. I was bopping along and digging on the song when the ending line of the second verse hit – “don’t be afraid to live what you believe.” At face value, that line might not mean much to you, but to me, it hit me like a train. As soon as I heard it, it started to rule my life, and it still does to this day.
To an extent, I suppose I changed the meaning in a way – I really latched onto that first part, “don’t be afraid.” For a big part of my life I’ve refrained from doing certain things just because I was afraid of something. I was afraid of embarrassing myself, or of people making fun of me. I was afraid I would make some kind of mistake that couldn’t be fixed, or I’d face some kind of rejection and get hurt. I wanted to protect myself, but in sheltering myself, I found that despite being “protected,” I was still as unhappy in my own skin as I would be if I embarrassed myself or made some kind of irreparable mistake. That lyric just drove that point home. You are equally as unhappy when you shelter yourself from hurt as you are when you get hurt. When I started to risk getting hurt to do the things that mattered to me, things began to change.
With that lyric, Tom Petty helped me realize that it’s okay if you don’t fit in, or if who you are doesn’t belong where you are. His and the Heartbreakers’ music feels like a second home, a place to go when you feel like you don’t belong wherever you are. It’s a place without judgment and without fear. In that home, I could wear as many of my weird hats as I could ever want without getting snide glances, my Instagram username could be as dorky as I want it to be without being laughed at (and it’s dorky, trust me). It was because I felt safe in their music that “don’t be afraid to live what you believe” is so easy for me to live out now.
I think I could even attribute my moving to Indiana from Arkansas to this line. The only reason I’m here in Indiana is because I believed in my crazy idea that children’s educational media is not only something interesting to study, but something I could pursue graduate work and eventually a career in. When I first started thinking about going to graduate school with this interest, I was scared. I agonized over it, whether or not I could do it in the first place and if I could even find a place to go that would take me. Every time throughout the process of deciding what I was going to do that I would hear “Keep a Little Soul,” that line would hit me again just like it did the first time, and nudge me in the right direction. I filled out applications, I wrote essays, I wrote an entire thesis based on this idea, and I got in, because doing this is something I believe it, and I lived it.
It's also because of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and this song that I’m writing this piece that you’re reading in the first place. Tom Petty effectively brought my fellow BANDED contributor Baylee Avery into my life. From what I understand, she friend-requested me on Facebook after seeing that we share a love of Tom Petty and The Shelters, a band that Tom had worked extensively with. I accepted, seeing that we had some Tom Petty-related friends in common, and we connected on Instagram. Immediately upon connecting with her, I could see that writing was something she’s unbelievably passionate about. Music journalism is her dream, and her passion and enthusiasm for it radiates off of her in everything she does. I was inspired by that – she was doing everything in her power to live what she believes. Seeing that made me realize that my own journey with music didn’t have to be over just because I had chosen an academic path.
I remember becoming more and more interested in BANDED as I saw Baylee post about it more and more often, but it took me a while to actually consider it for myself. Once I did start to consider it as something I could do too, I found myself making every excuse I could think of as to why I couldn’t do it. I would fill in the submission boxes to apply to be a volunteer contributor, but I’d never click that submit button. It was something I wanted, but I was hesitant and afraid. In conjunction with an also inspiring line from a Shelters song, this line from “Keep a Little Soul” worked its magic on me yet again. I realized that I was just making excuses and that being involved in music in any and all capacities possible was something that I very much believed in, with my whole heart and soul. It was important, it was imperative, that I live that, so I hit that submit button, and here we are today. It is because of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers that I joined the team, and now I get to write all about them.
Their music has spoken to me since day one. Whether the meaning I pull out of each song is the meaning Tom intended doesn’t really matter, and I think he knew that people would do that. I think he wrote his songs in a way that mattered to him, but he knew that people could and would find some other meaning outside of anything he ever imagined. I hope he was proud of that, that his music had that kind of power and effect on people. I hope all of the Heartbreakers are. Despite having not truly discovered his discography until after Tom passed, it feels like he knew me, he knew my struggles, he knew where my heart was, and he knew what I needed to hear. It felt like he understood me without ever even knowing me. One of the songs released after his passing, “For Real,” has a line that I think is important here.
“I did for real,
would’ve done it for free.
I did it for me,
cuz it was all that rang true.
I did it for real,
and I did it for you.”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers made music for them, because they loved it, but in the least selfish way possible. Anyone who loves to make music knows how just how powerful music can be; they did it for them, but they did it for us too, to create something real, something meaningful. I just don’t think they knew just how many lives they would change while they did it.
It’s so easy to only talk about Tom, and not the rest of the Heartbreakers simply because Tom did a vast majority of the writing for the band, and it’s his words that have connected with me. However, you cannot discount the influence of the Heartbreakers, and ultimately, we wouldn’t have Tom Petty without them. When Mudcrutch went to LA to try and get a record deal, got one, and then the label only wanted Tom, he fought to have a band. He didn’t want it to just be him, he never intended for it to just be him, and if the label had refused to let him have his band, I think he would’ve walked away. He cared about the music being bigger than just him – it meant so much more to him than just the spotlight.
Talented as he was, he couldn’t have replaced a single Heartbreaker because they were all so necessary to the makeup of the band. Tom couldn’t have taken the place of Mike Campbell, or Benmont Tench, or any of the Heartbreakers. Each one of them is integral to the sound and legacy of this band. They didn’t write the words, but they brought the emotion to every single song as though they were all living every word. Their contributions to every single song are insurmountable. They brought ideas that only they could have had, and without those elements they brought in, the songs just wouldn’t have been the same. Who would ever want to hear “American Girl” without Mike’s guitar riff, or “You Don’t Know How It Feels” without Steve Ferrone’s perfectly tasteful drums, or “Southern Accents” without Benmont’s beautiful piano?
I truly believe this band changed my life. I am who I am now because of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. No band has influenced me the way this one has, and no song has impacted me the way some song recorded in the 80s that was thrown in the vaults until being uncovered nearly 40 years later has. I find myself endlessly amazed when I look at where I am now, knowing that I’m only here because I finally decided to stop being afraid. I will forever be grateful to this band for having given me and continuing to give me the pushes I need to keep moving in a forward direction. There really will never be another band like them.
Cheers to 45 years of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and never being afraid to live what you believe!