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J. Geils Band's Peter Wolf Recalls Passing on Tom Petty Hit
Tom Petty performs at the Fox Theater on June 22, 2016 in Oakland, Calif
In 1979, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
recorded their song “Don’t Do Me Like That.” It ended up being one of
the most important songs in Petty’s career. It was his first top-10 hit,
and it served as the lead single from Damn The Torpedoes, the album that made Petty a star.
But
the song could’ve ended up with someone else. Legend has always had it
that Petty thought about giving “Don’t Do Me Like That” to the J. Geils Band,
who were still in the midst of their hot streak at the time. (Petty and
the Heartbreakers had opened for the J. Geils Band on tour.) And the
rumor has always been that Damn The Torpedoes producer Jimmy
Iovine convinced Petty to keep the song for himself. But now J. Geils
Band singer Peter Wolf has said that Petty really did offer his song to
Wolf’s band and that the band turned him down.
Talking to Rolling Stone,
Wolf tells the whole story about how he got to know Petty and how he
ended up turning down what would become a massive song. Here’s what he
says about “Don’t Do Me Like That”:
It was in the midst of
stuff. Maybe we thought we had the songs for our album: “We can do it
for the next one.” I called up Jimmy and, I think, Tom and said, “Love
the song. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to it. But I do like the song.”
Tom wasn’t sure of it for himself for some reason. It was almost like,
“As soon as I finished writing it, I thought of sending it to you.”…
It’s
funny — it came up in our last conversation. Tom and I were together in
his dressing room [in Philadelphia last July]. I said, “Tom, I gotta
tell you, ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’…” And he goes, “Oh, yeah! Whatever
happened?” I explained the whole thing – we were in the mix process or
something. And he said, “I gotta thank you for that. When you didn’t end
up doing it, everybody talked me into putting it on the record. And it
became one of my big, big hits.”
Wolf’s new band the Midnight
Travellers actually opened for Petty’s final tour, which is a cool
full-circle thing. Read the full story here.
This article originally appeared in Stereogum.
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