Tom Petty Estate Blasts Politician for Using ‘I Won’t Back Down’

The Tom Petty Estate has released a statement in response to Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake using "I Won't Back Down" during her campaign.

The statement begins, "The Tom Petty estate and our partners were shocked to find out that Tom’s song 'I Won’t Back Down' was stolen and used without permission or a license to promote Kari Lake’s failed campaign."

It continues, "This is illegal. We are exploring all of our legal options to stop this unauthorized use and to prohibit future misappropriations of Tom’s beloved anthem."

The statement concludes, "Thank you to all of the fans who brought this to our attention and who help us protect his legacy every day."

Lake, who lost to Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs, is refusing to concede in the race. The Associated Press reports Lake is "assembling lawyers and collecting evidence of voters having trouble casting ballots on Election Day."

In November 2020, Petty's family issued the following statement about then President-elect Joe Biden using "I Won't Back Down" during his victory speech in the 2020 Presidential election:

"We were all so touched to see Tom included on such an important night in America. Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."

Tom Petty was a bit like Tom Hanks: he was so great that after a while you almost took his greatness for granted. When compiling this list, we kept in mind that the man was putting out great music up until the very end, and we wanted to recognize some of his gems that didn't get as much love as they should have, including some of his final recordings.

We decided that anything he wrote was fair game: obviously his songs with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, as well as his three solo albums. We also included songs from Mudcrutch, his pre-Heartbreakers band (which included Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) who broke up in 1975 after recording a few songs; they reunited in 2007 and released a pair of albums. Of course, we included the Traveling Wilburys, focusing on the songs where Tom was the main singer, as well as the songs he wrote for Stevie Nicks, Roy Orbison and Roger McGuinn. We mostly went with studio recordings, but nevertheless, we still heartily recommend the 2008 box set The Live Anthology. We also decided against including covers (although we love his Byrds covers "So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better," his cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" and his duet with Stevie Nicks on Jackie DeShannon's "Needles and Pins," to name a few). It's worth noting that we frequently referenced Paul Zollo's excellent book, Conversations With Tom Petty often, and we'd definitely recommend that book, as well as Warren Zanes' Tom Petty: The Biography.

Did we miss a few songs? Sure - Petty had waaaaay more than 50 great ones (and we're sure you'll let us know on social media what we missed). But for now, enjoy these, there might be some that you forgot about or some that you haven't even heard.

Apparently, Petty really enjoyed the video for this song, which was ubiquitous on MTV in ‘82. He was less fond of the song though, and the band rarely played it live in the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s (although it started to enter the setlists in the 2010s). The song was dominated by Benmont Tench’s synths, although Mike Campbell’s spaghetti western guitar leads are unforgettable.

Mike Campbell has said that this song and “Refugee” were written in the same week. “Tom wasn't sure how to do the verse,” the guitarist noted. “He kept trying to sing it different ways and he finally came across sort of half-talking it, and that's when the song seemed to come to life.” Petty perfectly described how being in love can make everything else seem better: “It just seems so useless to have to work so hard, and nothin' ever really seems to come from it/But then she looks me in the eye and says ‘We're gonna last forever’/And man, you know I can't begin to doubt it/No, 'cause it just feels so good, so free and so right/I know we ain't never goin' to change our minds about it.”

It’s one of Petty’s biggest and most distinctive hits, but clearly he was a bit ambivalent about it: he only performed the song twice between 1983 and 2002, when he brought it back into his sets. The song wasn’t a big pop hit though, and Petty felt that it may have been blocked by another big hit from that era: his collaboration with Stevie Nicks, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” He told writer Paul Zollo, “They came out roughly the same time, and Stevie's record was huge. And so it was an awkward position for us because it was billed as 'Stevie Nicks With Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,' and a lot of the radio programmers didn't want to have two Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs around the same period. Especially while one was getting this extreme amount of airplay. So it was a little awkward for us."

How good was Petty’s solo debut, ‘Full Moon Fever’? Good enough that he could ditch this obvious hit, which featured one of the hottest bands of the era - the Bangles - on backing vocals. The funky bass playing came courtesy of Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell.

OK, so it sounds a bit like “Stand By Me.” But hey, sometimes originality is overrated! It’s a sweet and earnest love song to a long term partner: “So come to me my darlin', hold me while I sleep/I know you feel lost, but you're not in too deep.”

It sounds a bit like the Band, and there’s a good reason for that: Robbie Robertson produced the song and his former Band-mates Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson guested on the track, on backing vocals and keyboards, respectively.

One of Petty’s last huge pop hits, it was constantly on MTV during an era where Petty’s peers were being shoved aside by Pearl Jam, Nirvana and other alternative rock bands. But Petty has always been cool, it’s no surprise that he’s always transcended trends.

Usually extra songs for “best of” collections are a bit “throw-away” but that was definitely not the case with “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” Petty’s first collaboration with longtime producer Rick Rubin. It was also the last Heartbreakers track to feature original drummer Stan Lynch. Years later, there was a rumor that Petty was going to sue the Red Hot Chili Peppers for their song “Dani California,” which sounded a bit like “Mary Jane” (Rubin produced both songs). Petty didn’t sue… and anyway, “Mary Jane” sounded a bit like the “Waiting For The Sun” by former Petty opening act the Jayhawks (and Heartbreaker Benmont Tench played keyboards on that song). As we said earlier: originality is overrated!

The first single from Nicks’ solo debut was a smash hit, reaching #3 on the pop charts. Petty said, “Stevie Nicks wanted a song really bad for a couple years. So I wrote her this song called ‘Insider.’ And I really liked that song. I played her the song. She says, ‘I love it. Can you put it down for me?’” But he liked it too much to give it away. “I said, ‘Would it really sound totally lame if I said I wanted to keep this one and write you another?’ She said, ‘No, not at all.’ I had a few songs that I didn’t think I was going to use and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ was one. I played it and she said, ‘I like that.’ It was credited to Stevie Nicks featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, although bassist Ron Blair didn’t appear on the song; legendary Booker T. & the MGs bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn filled in for him on the track.

Petty’s first solo single was a massive hit, reaching #12 on the pop charts. The song featured Petty backed by Heartbreakers Mike Campbell on guitar and Howie Epstein on backing vocals, as well as his Wilburys mates Jeff Lynne (bass and backing vocals) and George Harrison (acoustic guitar and backing vocals). For the video, George’s old pal Ringo played drums (and kind of stole the show) but it was Phil Jones who played on the record.

The original version from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ 1976 debut is, of course, a classic. But this live version is even better. He lets the audience sing the entire first verse, and then deadpans, "You're gonna put me out of a job," which is a fun “lighters up” arena rock moment. And we love those kinds of moments! But things take a darker turn a few minutes later, when he starts vamping on about a breakup: “You wanna leave, you just leave, babe/You wanna go, you just go, babe… You just start the car, you take all the money, you take everything I got, you take all the lawyers, you just go… I’ll see you later, you know? I’m gonna handle this pretty good, you know?” But you know that it isn’t going down that way. He melts down even more: “I’m gonna be all right by myself, you know? I’m gonna handle this pretty good, I think, you know? I’m gonna handle this like a man: this is an adult situation and I’m gonna handle this like an adult! You wanna leave? You go! You got your life, I’ve got my life, if you wanna go….AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!” By ‘85, “Breakdown” had been on the radio constantly for nearly a decade, and the live version was a reminder of what a painful song it was.

“It didn’t take long at all to write it,” Petty once noted. “But it was a difficult song to record… And [producer] Jimmy Iovine did a really great job of making a great record out of that song. It’s really just a beautiful sound. Jimmy really, really believed in the song. He wouldn’t accept less than greatness... And he got it.” Mike Campbell concurred: “It took us forever to actually cut the track. We must have recorded that 100 times. I remember being so frustrated with it one day that - I think this is the only time I ever did this - I just left the studio and went out of town for two days. I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.” The band’s patience definitely paid off. As Petty noted, “It’s really one of our best records; certainly, one of the best singles we ever made.”

Petty allegedly wrote the lyrics based on a story that his wife Jane told him: she was at a party thrown by R&B legend Ike Turner. A few hours into the party, Turner locked the doors to his house from the inside so no one could leave. Petty turned the story into a song about a guy who doesn’t care about a woman’s feelings (and if you’ve seen the Tina Turner documentary ‘Tina,’ this story tracks.) The song was controversial because of Petty’s mention of cocaine, which he was asked to change to “champagne.” He didn’t comply. “What women would leave some guy for money and Champagne?” Petty said at the time, per Rolling Stone. “I mean, champagne is only $4 a bottle.”

Did Petty hold on to the song after recording it in 2000 because it sounded like a final bow? You decide. In it, he sings, “I didn't do it for no magazine/Didn't do it for no video/Never did it for no CEO/But I did it for real/Would've done it for free/I did it for me/'Cause it was all that rang true/I did it for real/And I did it for you.” It’s one of his greatest songs, and if you missed it upon its release, hey: check it out today.

The poet Allen Ginsberg coined the phrase “first thought, best thought” which is the idea that spontaneous writing leads to authentic work. (Easier said than done, my dude!) But that seems to have worked here: as Petty said in an interview,, “I just played it into a tape recorder and I played the whole song and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song.”

Petty’s biggest hit single, it reached #7 on the pop charts: it’s nice when the best music is also the most popular! As Petty told Billboard, “Jeff Lynne and I were sitting around with the idea of writing a song and I was playing the keyboard and I just happened to hit on that main riff, the intro of the song, and I think Jeff said something like, ‘That’s a really good riff but there’s one chord too many,’ so I think I cut it back a chord and then, really just to amuse Jeff, I just sang that first verse. Then he starts laughing.” But what started as a joke became an anthem: “I got to the chorus of the song and he leaned over to me and said the word, ‘freefalling.’ I sang ‘freeee,’ then ‘free falling.’ And we both knew at that moment that I’d hit on something pretty good.”

In the song, Petty seems to be referring to waiting for a relationship to happen: “Well yeah I might have chased a couple of women around/All it ever got me was down/Yeah, then there were those that made me feel good/But never as good as I feel right now!” But he said in Paul Zollo’s ‘Conversations With Tom Petty’ (an essential book for any Petty fan, by the way) that it was inspired by something Janis Joplin said. “I love being onstage and everything else is just waiting.”

A classic song about a memorable one-night stand, but this one has a much different vibe than “The Wild One, Forever.” In that song, he sounds heartbroken. Here, he’s a bit bummed, but getting over it: he sings, “It couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me!” But he’s glad the romp happened at all, because, hey, “even the losers get lucky, sometimes!”

“Well she was an American girl/Raised on promises/She couldn't help thinkin' that there/Was a little more to life/Somewhere else!” Hasn’t every kid felt that way at some point in their teens? Legend has it that when Roger McGuinn of the Byrds first heard this song, he said, “When did I write this?” (Years later, he’d pay Petty the ultimate compliment by covering it.) Petty denied that it was directly influenced by the Byrds, noting that there are no 12-string guitars on the song (the 12-string Rickenbacker electric guitar was an essential part of the Byrds’ early sound). He also pointed out that the drumbeat is practically a tribute to Bo Diddley. Whatever influenced it, the closing song from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ 1976 debut album would go on to be an American classic, one of Petty’s finest moments, and the final song he ever played on stage.