Tom Petty let the songs do most of the talking

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It wasn’t just a certain sound that Tom Petty shared with his idol, Bob Dylan.

The iconic rocker from Gainesville, Fla., who died Monday at 66 of cardiac arrest, had a similarly elusive side to his personality.

“Tom was a really quiet guy,” says Rich Engler, who promoted many of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers shows in Pittsburgh. “Did you ever interview him?” Nope. “That’s why.” Like Dylan, Mr. Petty preferred to let the songs do the talking, and did he ever have songs. Not many artists could come to town and play a two-hour-plus set that left off about half of his radio classics, but that was the joy and frustration of a Tom Petty concert. Thousands of Pittsburghers now revel in the memory of those shows, where he delivered hit upon hit, forming a soundtrack of their teen years when they blasted songs like “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Breakdown” out of their car windows.

He had just wrapped up the Heartbreakers’ 40th anniversary tour, which played the PPG Paints Arena on June 9. As usual, he didn’t talk a whole lot, but he was in a gregarious mood, telling the fans, “We've certainly made a lot of trips here over those 40 years…Thanks for coming back, it means a lot to us.” He opened that show with “Rockin' Around (With You),” the first song on the band’s 1976 self-titled debut album.

Pittsburgh rocker Joe Grushecky recalls first seeing him at the Agora Theater in Cleveland, opening for Meat Loaf, just after that debut came out.

“We were struck by the overall vibe of the band — very British Invasion-like, with the Vox amps and the way they played. There was an economy to it. They were a song band. There were definitely periods of my life when I listened to him more than anybody.”

In the ’80s, Mr. Grushecky’s band, the Iron City Houserockers, were on the same label as the Heartbreakers, MCA, but they met only once, backstage at the Civic Arena. Mr. Grushecky mentioned that they were label mates, and he remembers Mr. Petty just saying, “Aw yeah, Nick Lowe spoke highly of you guys.”

Former WDVE morning man Steve Hansen was working in San Francisco when Petty and the Heartbreakers broke, bringing an honest heartland rock sound back to the airwaves.

“Tom Petty arrived like a cool breeze on a muggy day,” he says. “It was a time when Player and the Little River Band were ascendant. Because of Fleetwood Mac, everyone was trying to write sappy love ballads. Tom Petty was the pre-wave of the New Wave. He wrote stripped-down, guitar-driven, threeminute gems with big, tasty hooks. He sang