At some point, Campbell walked out on the sessions.
Wilson and Phil Seymour of the Dwight Twilley Band proved fruitless. But he was brought back when attempts to record the song with Procol Harum's B.J. Of particular concern were the drums on "Refugee." Warren Zanes' biography Petty notes that 70 takes were recorded, which led to Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch being fired during the sessions. Watch Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' 'Refugee' VideoĪfter the garage-rock approach of the first two Heartbreakers albums, Iovine's method through the band for a loop.
We got those two songs, we got an album.' And he was right." Then they hired Jimmy Iovine, who was on the rise after engineering Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, and producing Patti Smith's Easter. Iovine listened to "Refugee" and "Here Comes My Girl" on the tape and, Campbell recalled, "'I don't care what else you do. The band's manager, Elliot Roberts, heard the demo and thought it was on the right track. I don't think he saw it the same way as me, where the chorus would go. "I remember writing really quickly to his tape," Petty recalled in Paul Zollo's Conversations With Tom Petty. He put that and a few other new songs on a cassette and gave it to Petty, who recognized it as something special. Realizing it was "more than just an exercise," Campbell added a bridge and built a demo using a DrumDrops track, rhythm and lead guitar and bass. Then he added two more chords - D major followed by a B major - that led back into the main progression. So he put one of the DrumDrops beats on one track, created a progression around three chords - F-sharp minor, E major and A major - and used it as a bed over which he'd play lead. It was a very dramatic period of my life.Inspired by a new Gibson Les Paul gold top and Albert King's 1966 Stax classic "Oh, Pretty Woman," Campbell wanted to practice soloing in the key of F-sharp minor. I didn’t set up to write an album about it, but it just crept into everything. But Petty said it affected the way he approached the album: “It was a topic I couldn’t get very far from - consciously, subconsciously, and otherwise. The matter was eventually settled out of court and Petty landed on the MCA-distributed Backstreet label. Petty even declared bankruptcy to prevent MCA from grabbing his assets.Īs part of the battle, the tapes were kept in a roadie’s car so Petty could honestly claim they weren’t in his possession. Then the Shelter label was sold to MCA Records, and when Petty sued to get out of his contract, the new label threatened to impound the Torpedoes tapes. It was delayed first by Petty’s split with his manager Denny Cordell. Turbulence also surrounded the release of Damn The Torpedoes. This went on throughout the whole album… It took a lot of emotional fortitude. We knew the song was strong, so we’d leave it and come back. We just couldn’t make it sound as good as the demo. It got so bad that I actually left the studio, walked out the door and left town for two days. Campbell recalled, “It was a nightmare… It was very tedious. Recording “Refugee” was a difficult process, as the sound the group wanted for the song proved elusive.
“The verse and chorus are actually the same chords,” Campbell said. “Refugee” began with a demo by lead guitarist Mike Campbell. Just before Damn The Torpedoes was released, Petty & the Heartbreakers performed at the No Nukes benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Pink Floyd‘s The Wall kept it out of the top spot. The second single from Damn The Torpedoes, “Refugee” peaked at Number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.ĭamn The Torpedoes was the breakthrough album for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, hitting Number Two on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks. Mike Campbell - guitar, bass, squeeze box Recorded: 1979 at Sound City, Van Nuys, California, and Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, California
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