How Tom Petty Embraced the Future With ‘You Got Lucky’

Tom Petty’s method to songwriting was easy: Stay humble and write what you’re keen on.

“I don’t think that I can sit down and pick out, ‘OK, another classic,’ you know, or ‘Everything I write is an epic,'” he stated in a January 1983 interview, lower than three months after the launch of his fifth album with the Heartbreakers, Long After Dark. “I hate that attitude.”

The method Petty noticed it, there was a center floor between custom and transformation – a solution to write sincere songs that will stand the check of time irrespective of after they have been written. “I wanna be free enough to write ‘Tutti Frutti,’ to write that because I like that,” he stated. “I like those old cheap rock songs. I really do, as much as I like ‘Born to Run,’ but I just had this theory that if it’s a good song, whatever that is, it will endure. I think any songwriter that stands up and plays the guitar and really thinks that he’s changing the world and singing to millions needs a tomato in the face.”

This was the angle Petty carried into the ’80s, which began turbulently after Petty went head-to-head with MCA Records. The label needed to boost the worth of his 1981 album, Hard Promises, from $8.98 to $9.98; Petty refused to launch the file until the worth remained the similar. MCA ultimately relented. “If we don’t take a stand, one of these days, records are going to be $20,” Petty stated at the time.

The standoff turned a major instance of a big-name artist pushing again in opposition to the profit-driven nature of the music trade. It additionally led some observers to consider that Petty was a part of the previous guard and oblivious to the swiftly altering music trade’s march to the future. But that is not utterly correct. Petty’s roots have been grounded in ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, however that did not imply he wasn’t inquisitive about new methods of recording and releasing music.

“You Got Lucky,” the first single from Long After Dark, was written to a drum loop that guitarist Mike Campbell had put collectively. The loop was recreated in the studio as a template for the band to comply with, a observe that was changing into extra mainstream at the time however was nonetheless one thing of a international idea to rock musicians accustomed to conventional recording strategies.

“The drummer [Stan Lynch] would actually go out and play, then we’d cut the tape and tape the loop together,” Campbell recalled in a 2003 interview with Songfacts. “We ran it around the room over some mic stands and through the tape heads, and then printed that for three or four minutes and then recorded the song over that drum loop.” The secret ingredient, as Petty later recalled, was Lynch monitoring his drum half once more with the loop taking part in, making for an additional sturdy groove.

Watch Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Perform ‘You Got Lucky’ 

And then there was the most important riff, carried out on a DX7 synthesizer by keyboardist Benmont Tench, who wasn’t precisely excited to take action. “He begrudgingly played it,” Petty recalled in the 2005 guide Conversations With Tom Petty. Tench had grown up taking classical piano classes, and even when his consideration shifted towards rock ‘n’ roll and he started taking part in electrical keyboards, he by no means understood the attraction of synths. “I hear people do great things with them, and I can’t make them do that,” he stated in 2017. “Mike will sit down at a synthesizer and write ‘You Got Lucky,’ and I’ll sit down at a synthesizer and it’s … ‘You Got Ugly.’ I don’t have a lot of fun or patience going, ‘Here’s how I get a sound.'”

Petty needed to verify the use of the synthesizer was strategic. He’d heard albums by different artists by which synths have been used simply sufficient to make an impression however not sufficient to change into a distraction. “I didn’t want to use synthesizers just because they’re a neat toy. You can create a wide spectrum of textures in the music, but I don’t like it when synthesizers kind of wash out the whole record,” he instructed Hit Parader in 1983. “I’m fascinated by the technology, all the new instruments that are coming out, and even though some of my purist friends think they should be avoided at all costs, I think they’re the instruments of the times. One of my favorite albums of the year was Roxy Music’s Avalon. There were things on there that just blew my mind.”

The video for “You Got Lucky” additional emphasised Petty’s willingness to transfer ahead whereas staying true to his imaginative and prescient. The Heartbreakers had spent loads of time on music video units earlier than, principally lip-syncing for promotional clips. It was merely one other solution to get their music on the market. “We made videos before we knew they were videos. … And we actually thought the term ‘video’ was weird, because they were on film,” Petty later stated. “They weren’t serious, big, huge projects.”

Watch Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ ‘You Got Lucky’ Video

“You Got Lucky”‘s video wasn’t essentially a giant, enormous venture both. In the clip, the band members arrive in the desert through a spacecraft and come across a cassette participant containing the music. Petty drew inspiration from previous westerns.

“I’ve always admired those Clint Eastwood movies, with the music by Ennio Morricone,” Petty instructed the Gainesville Sun in 1983. “That’s what the song reminded me of, so we made the movie ourselves.” The music’s guitar solo borrowed from these movie scores, too, Campbell remembered. “Sort of a surf guitar with a tremolo arm, like a Clint Eastwood movie,” he famous. “A Good, the Bad and the Ugly kind of thing.” A near-silent intro that lasts greater than a minute was included in the clip and was a novel thought at the time. “It really changed everything,” Petty stated. “No one had ever – even Michael Jackson – done a prelude before the video. A bit of business before the song started.”

The video arrived simply in time for the rise of MTV, which debuted somewhat greater than a 12 months earlier in August 1981. “That’s when everybody knew who you were. Like, you know, even grandmas knew who you were. Because you’re on TV all day long, you know?” Petty later stated. “MTV was this incredible promotional device. … There was this whole new thing happening, and we were right in the front of it.”

The single, launched in October 1982, only a couple of weeks earlier than Long After Dark got here out, made it to No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. But the music did not make it to his set lists too usually, admitting in 2005 that “You Got Lucky” was by no means one among his favorites. But he additionally confessed that the music had grown on him over the years. “It’s not about a lot,” he stated. “It’s just kind of a love song. But it doesn’t have to be about a lot to be good. ‘Tutti Frutti’ is not about a lot, but I like it.

“You know what that music is? It’s an ideal little single. … When I hear it on the radio, I believe, ‘Wow, we actually simply crammed each little house in the proper method.'”