Tom Petty was one of the great performers/musicians to come out of the late 70s and continued his success into following decades. Petty's initial inspiration came from the Byrds and he was able, in his career, to perform with members of the Byrds individually and, on a couple of occasions, with various lineups of the Byrds at reunion shows. The jangling Rickenbacker sound and the vocal style of The Heartbreakers owes a lot to the great LA band. This clip is Tom and the band doing a cover of a Byrds classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8fBJmKFzgI
Tom was also instrumental in paving the way for bands and performers to fight their way out of onerous record company contracts and he also took a stand against record company price gouging:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...for-bankruptcy
Tom had signed to Shelter Records because he admired of one of the label's owners, Leon Russsell, and because the smaller label gave him more control over his work; he and the band also gave up far more lucrative signing offers from larger labels in order to have a higher degree of artistic freedom. When the label was sold to mega-label MCA (who made the buy of Shelter specifically to get The Heartbreakers and a couple of other acts into their stable), the new owners expected the band to conform to their practices and to continue under the cut-rate contract they had signed with Shelter and refused any sort of renegotiation. The Heartbreakers were referred to a non-entertainment Beverly Hills law firm and one of the attorneys came up with the simple solution of threatening to file for bankruptcy, thereby voiding any existing contracts and releasing the band to sign better deals with other labels. It must be remembered MCA was a huge label very much used to getting its own way and having artists fold in any dispute, but the simple solution left MCA no choice but to fold and accept making a new deal lest they lose the act that was, at the time, the biggest selling act on the recently acquired Shelter label. Sometimes Goliath just has to deal with with the fact the stone is headed for a knock out punch...
RIP, Tom Petty, thanks for the music and for putting together such a great band...
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