Bob Dylan’s opinion on Tom Petty

Bob Dylan and Tom Petty had a lot in common when it came to songwriting, especially in how they portrayed their views of life in the United States and the obstacles and difficulties that someone would encounter throughout their lives. So, it was natural that after they had the chance to meet and play together, a friendship and musical partnership would develop. Over the decades, Bob Dylan talked about many of his friends, giving his opinion on them, including the late Tom Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers.

What is Bob Dylan’s opinion on Tom Petty

Bob Dylan didn’t only admire Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers as musicians and songwriters; he also admired Petty as a person. They had been close friends since the 1980s. When Petty suddenly passed away in 2017 at the age of 66, Bob said: “It’s shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom, he was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.” Not long after Tom’s death, Bob covered “Learning to Fly” as a tribute in one of his shows.

They first met each other in the late 70s when Petty and his roadie Bugs Weidel went to see his show in Los Angeles. “We left the Shelter studio, and we drove to the Universal Amphitheater, had a flat tire, and both of us got out on the road trying to change the tire. So we were just covered with grease and dirt. And we got to Universal, found our seats. The show had just begun. And then midway through the show, Bob introduced the celebrities in the audience, which was kind of unusual for Bob.”

He continued:

“It was like ‘Joni Mitchell’s here” and there’d be applause. Then suddenly he said, “Tom Petty’s here.” And there was applause. And that was the first time it really hit me that people knew who we were. Because I’d only made two records then. Then a guy came up to us where we were sitting in our seats, and said “Bob would like you to come backstage.” So we went backstage and had a brief conversation. Nothing of any substance. But I had met Bob,” Tom Petty recalled in an interview featured in Conversations with Tom Petty”.

A couple of years later, their friendship really began when Dylan invited him and The Heartbreakers to be his backing band during his appearance at the Farm Aid benefit festival in 1985. He enjoyed the experience of playing with them so much that he ended up inviting them to tour with him in Australia, marking the beginning of a partnership that lasted almost two years on the road. In that meantime Bob and Tom wrote songs together that would later end up on Bob’s albums and also produced some of those tracks for him. The Heartbreakers also were part of Dlyan’s 1985 album “Empire Burlesque”.

Bob Dylan said that during their joint tour Tom Petty was at the top of his game and he was at the bottom

Although the tour was successful and Bob was quite happy with Tom and the Heartbreakers as his backing band, he wasn’t really happy with himself. In his book “Chronicles”, Dylan recalled that he felt that it was maybe time to retire. “I’d been on an eighteen month tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It would be my last. I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. Whatever was there to begin with had all vanished and shrunk. Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine. I couldn’t overcome the odds. Everything was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me. I didn’t have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces.”

“It wasn’t my moment of history anymore. There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn’t wait to retire and fold the tent. One more big payday with Petty and that would be it for me. I was what they called over the hill. If I wasn’t careful I could end up ranting and raving in shouting matches with the wall. The mirror had swung around and I could see the future, an old actor fumbling in garbage cans outside the theater of past triumphs.”

He continued:

(…) Benmont Tench, one of the musicians in Petty’s band, would always be asking me, almost pleadingly, about including different numbers in the show. ‘Chimes of Freedom’ — can we try that? Or what about ‘My Back Pages?’ Or “Spanish Harlem Incident?’ And I’d always be making some lame excuse. Actually, I don’t know who was making the excuse, for I had closed the door on my own self. The problem was that after relying so long on instinct and intuition, both these ladies had turned into vultures and were sucking me dry. Even spontaneity had become a blind goat. My haystacks weren’t tied down and I was beginning to fear the wind,” Bob Dylan said.

Bob would sometimes get angry about things during the live shows, like the lights being too bright. Tom was someone who would help lift his mood and inspire him to carry on. George Harrison’s son Dhani, recalled that funny story that Petty told him once. “Onstage one night, Dylan kept complaining that the stage lights were too bright. (He) threatened to leave if they were not turned down. Finally, Dylan walked off, forcing Petty to coax him back on as the Heartbreakers kept playing. Bob was going, ‘Fucking lights. I’m not going back out there. It’s like fucking Disneyland out there.’ And Tom says to Bob, ‘You’ve never been to Disneyland.’ Bob just started laughing. Tom called him on it, straight out. They walked back out there and carried on playing,” he said as featured in the book Dylan: Behind the Shades.

Their songwriting partnership during the Traveling Wilburys

Tom’s friendship with Bob Dylan helped him get to know other musical legends like George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, eventually leading to his being invited to join the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup that also featured Roy Orbison. The legendary musicians wrote many of the songs together, but some were primarily written by individual members for the two albums they released. ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man,’ for example, was written primarily by the two friends. All started after Bob told Tom he wanted to write a song about “a guy named Tweeter”.

“It started with Bob Dylan saying, ‘I want to write a song about a guy named Tweeter and it needs somebody else.’ I said, ‘The Monkey Man.’ And he says, ‘Perfect, ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man.’ And he said, ‘Okay, I want to write the story and I want to set it in New Jersey.’ I was like, ‘Okay, New Jersey.’And he was like, ‘Yeah, we could use references to Bruce Springsteen titles.’ He clearly meant it as praise.”

“We weren’t trying to knock anybody, there’s not much of it in there anyway. So we sat and wrote the song. The English guys (Harrison and Lynn) left, actually. It was the only song that they were like, ‘This is just too American. We’re out on this one.’ So the two of us just sat there for most of the afternoon, and then we edited it down the next day,” Tom Petty said in an interview featured in the book Conversations with Tom Petty.