In 1977, Nils Lofgren was already a respected singer-songwriter with eight albums to his name, either as the frontman and creative force behind the band Grin, or latterly as a solo artist. With major label backing, his tour of the UK was geared towards moving him significantly further forward, in terms of recognition and commercial success.
However, through no fault of the headliner, the dates have since passed into rock folklore more for the sensational arrival on a wider stage of the opening act, hand-picked by Lofgren himself. And while the act’s self-titled debut LP had been issued in the US the previous November to very little fanfare, it was the reception Brits (both press and the public) gave Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers that rocketed the group to stardom.
Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell remembers the time well, but balks at the oft-repeated suggestion he, Tom and their fellow players routinely upstaged the man whose name appeared in larger print on the posters and tickets. “The press always likes to exaggerate, but it’s true we went down well everywhere he played,” he toldRecord Collectormagazine in 2022.
“Nils was very good to us, there was never any friction. But with the benefit of hindsight we were maybe a bad band to have opening, because we were so young and hungry; we were just ruthless. We were practically willing to kill ourselves on stage to win an audience over.
“The reaction from the British music press filtered back home and kick-started the band to the next level. It gave us momentum and a hell of a lot of confidence that we were on the right track.”
For Campbell and Petty in particular, being clasped to the UK’s collective bosom was a thrill, seeing as their blueprint for the band had always had an Anglophile bent. Asked in early press biography about their influences and aspirations, the two guitarists mentioned five groups; The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies and The Zombies – all British.
Those influences are evident on the opening disc of the box setOrigins:1971-1978, out in early November. SubtitledNo Sleep ‘Til LA, it charts the course of Petty’s previous group Mudcrutch (which also featured Campbell and keyboard player Benmont Tench) from his hometown of Gainseville, Florida, to their name change and relocation to Tulsa, Oklahoma, before making a permanent base on the West Coast.
Seven of its 12 tracks are previously unreleased, building blocks of The Heartbreakers’ signature sound, the melodic motifs of power pop and the harmonies of The Byrds, but with a tougher rock edge that speaks to the Stones parallels frequently cited in reviews of their earliest club shows. From the very beginning, Petty was unapologetic about being seen as a revisionist, a musician perceived as unfashionable and too in thrall to the past to make any headway in the early ‘70s industry.
“People in Gainesville were telling me I lived in a dream world, thinking that rock ‘n’ roll would come back,” he told US magazineRock Around The Worldin ‘77. “They didn’t think it was hip; the club owners denied it, the press denied, and the people denied it.
“It was a drag because in a lot of ways it was a cool town, but all that was happening when I was into the English side of things, everybody else was getting into Allman Brothers type things. The Allmans were fine with me, but when you’ve got every single band playing slide guitar for hours, I couldn’t buy that. I said ‘I’m going where they know about other things’.”
Following the demise of Mudcrutch, Petty remained signed to the group’s label Shelter as a songwriter, his paymasters mulling over taking a risk on him as a solo artist. Tentative recording sessions spawned unsatisfying results, however, Tom himself later dismissing the tapes as being too “laid back” and similar to other California-based performers he never held in particularly high regard.
His solution was simple. Bring Campbell and Tench back into fold, beef up with sound with a skin-tight rhythm section of bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch, while reaching a compromise with a label looking for a solo act by agreeing to have his name in front of the band’s.
However, Shelter didn’t put a great deal or marketing or promotional muscle behind the five-piece’s eponymous debut, and although there was a healthy showing at the band’s live shows in modest-sized clubs, neither the LP nor its single “Breakdown” made the slightest dent on the charts.It was time for the UK to come to the rescue.
Enthusiastic reviews of the gigs with Nils Lofgren, coupled with excitable word-of-mouth recommendations from punters were enough to propel the single “Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” to Number 40, securing an invitation to the prestigiousTop Of The Popsstudio. The more discerning viewers among the show’s weekly audience of millions subsequently sought out the album in numbers large enough to to take it to a chart peak of 24.
Back home, news of the band’s overseas triumphs helped the independent Shelter to broker a new distribution deal with a major label, ABC, who put fresh impetus into making the album a hit. The first step was to place “Breakdown” on the soundtrack to a star-studded album of songs from the cult movieFMand reissue it as a 45. Second time around, the single became a mainstay on pop radio and climbed to Number 40, the album also charting, on its way to being certified gold.
Though never a hit single, the track that would emerge as the LP’s most celebrated three-and-a-half minutes was “American Girl”, a perennial crowd favourite that its composer once revealed came to him more quickly than anything else he’d written. It was the last song The Heartbreakers ever played together, at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2017, little more than a week before Petty’s death.
Posthumous charts compiled by bothRolling StoneandBillboardhad it at Number One among the band’s best songs; a fitting accolade for a track so integral to the formative emergence of an American great.