At the dawn of the 1980s, Tom Petty was on top of the world.
His third album with his trusty sidekicks the Heartbreakers – 1979's Damn the Torpedoes – was his breakthrough, one of those blockbusters of the era where virtually every song either was a hit single or could have been one.
Refugee, Here Comes My Girl, Even the Losers, Don't Do Me Like That, What Are You Doin' in My Life? – these were all masterclasses in songwriting. Petty delivered winning chorus after winning chorus, while ever-underrated lead guitarist Mike Campbell played the perfect supporting role, gamely responding to Petty's exhortations with leads and solos that often had hooks almost as catchy as the ones tasked with carrying the load up the mountain.
The music business is a tough one, though, and once Petty had delivered literal and figurative gold, the expectation was that there would be more to follow.
Though his disdain for the needs and wants of record companies was legendary, Petty was also a dogged perfectionist who was himself determined to not lose any momentum. No pressure or anything.
Petty knew that the followup album's lead single in particular needed to hit the nail on the head. Consequently, he explained in an interview captured in the terrific documentary Runnin' Down A Dream, he “wanted something that had a little lick from the beginning.”
And then came the riff – perfectly simple, perfectly effective; pick-up-'n'-play-it – and that's what he did. All he did, really.
“That's all I had,” he said. “I did that for weeks.”
Then, another breakthrough – that magical chorus; unforgettable and charming, but again, so simple.
But then came another wall. So, what to do other than go back to that riff? Over and over again...
“All week,” Petty said, cycling through the riff to the amused interviewer. “You eat dinner, come back, sit down and pick up the guitar... People started banging on the wall – ‘Don’t play that anymore!’”
Then, the song that would become The Waiting finally came.
The opening line alone, “Baby don't it feel like heaven right now”, made the teething process worth it. Throw in Mike Campbell's instant classic of a lick that swirls beautifully around that stubborn riff in the intro, and you have something timeless.
A top 20 hit, The Waiting – coupled with the duet he wrote for himself and Stevie Nicks around the same time, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around – indeed kept things rolling at pace for Petty & the Heartbreakers. No-one would think of him as a one-album wonder again.
