The single that nearly broke up Tom Petty's Heartbreakers

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers : Refugee

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On January 26, 1980 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released "Refugee" b/w "It's Rainin' Again". The single would peak at US #15, but its recording nearly broke the band. Producer Jimmy Iovine had the band do more than 70 takes, as he and Petty tried to find the right feel. Part of the problem: drummer Stan Lynch and Iovine kept butting heads. Lynch was fired and rehired and in the meantime version of "Refugee" were recorded with Phil Seymour and session drummer B.J. Wilson.

“Iovine really disliked Stan,” Benmont Tench tells Petty biographer Warren Zanes.. “I think they didn’t like each other. I owe Jimmy a hell of a lot. He gave me a career as a session musician, expanded my life in a million ways. But I think he poisoned the well a little bit with Stan, starting with Damn the Torpedoes. Jimmy and Shelly put Stan through the fucking ringer. He’s not a session drummer. He’s not supposed to be a session drummer. He’s a band drummer. Of course, I’m not in charge, and that’s probably a good thing. But Jimmy came from the East Coast, from working with East Coast drummers, like Max Weinberg. Now he’s on the West Coast, working with a southern drummer who listened to English drummers who listened to black drummers.”

Lynch wasn't the only member having trouble with the "Refugee" sessions. Guitarist Mike Campbell, who wrote the music, walked out of the Damn the Torpedoes sessions for a few days thanks to all of those takes.

“On ‘Refugee,’” Campbell tells Zanes, “I had a mental breakdown. I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was my song, a cowrite with Tom, and we kept playing it over and over and over, changing the thing, changing the sounds. It sounded like Nazis marching. There was no groove. We got into this hole of misery cutting that song. And I said, ‘I need to get out of this room for a few days. This is not healthy.’ It’s the only time I’ve walked out of a session.”

"It's Rainin' Again" is the 91-second B side. An amusing throwaway.

The Heartbreakers would spend March touring the UK where they first received critical and popular acclaim.

Revel in Your Abandon

Tom Petty + The Heartbreakers : Refugee

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On that magical day, October 19, 1979, the day Prince released his second album and The Specials  released their debut, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released Damn The Torpedoes, one of the greatest rock + roll albums of the decade. It was promoted by their label as "their long awaited new album" and that was true. The band has spent much of the year dealing with a lawsuit when ABC Records, Shelter's distributor, was sold to MCA Records. Petty refused to be transferred to another record label "like a piece of meat", even asking an assistant to hide each day's session tapes in a secret location without his knowledge. Eventually Petty even filed for bankruptcy as a tactic against MCA. Surprisingly, the label caved and Petty won back his songs , his own Backstreet label and a more lucrative contract.

It wasn't until the lawsuit was settled that Damn the Torpedoes, produced by Jimmy Iovine and Petty, was released. Our dorm master would crank side one to the entire floor. 30 seconds into "Refugee", I had a new favorite album.

Producer Jimmy Iovine, who engineered Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run and produced Patti Smith's hit "Because the Night" remembers the first time Petty played him the new songs for the band's third album.“It’s the first and last time I’ve ever said to anyone that they don’t need any more songs. I’ve never said that to anyone since.” Petty recalls Iovine announcing to the room "We;'re all gonna be millionaires!".

Iovine put The Hearrtbreakers to work. According to the band "Refugee" took between 100 and 200 takes.  Remarkably, it sounds as fresh a band playing live in the studio. "Here Comes My Girl" blends the streetwise banter of Mink Deville, an Iovine favorite, with the 12 string guitar and vocals of The Byrds' Roger McGuinn.

Damn the Torpedoes is the big breakthrough. American critics were instantly taken. Ariel Swartley , writing for Rolling Stone, called Torpedoes the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album we've all been waiting for adding:"

What makes Damn the Torpedoes the Hearbreakers' best album yet isn't so much its sound (though that's clearer and punchier than before, thank heaven and coproducer Jimmy Iovine) but its assurance. Mechanical rhythms are hip, but something more fluid makes better time with the flowing organ and guitar surges Petty uses so well, and Damn the Torpedoes glides like a supertanker. What starts out tough ("Someone must have kicked you around some"), and might have stayed there, turns tough-minded ("You don't have to live like a refugee") -- certainly a more durable attitude.

The album finished #9 on the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop Poll. Christgau has graded the album a B+,writing 

This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers are rocking as powerfully as he's writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it -- whether he has anything to say -- remains shrouded in banality. 

In his year end essay he admitted he was relieved Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks has won the year's poll. 

Damn the Torpedoes is a pretty good record, but a measure of its appeal is that of 18 first-string daily critics, always the conservatives, 12 voted for it... if Tom Petty ends up defining rock and roll heaven, then Johnny Rotten will have died in vain.