Writer: Tom Petty
Producers: Tom Petty and Jimmy Iovine
Recorded: 1979 at Sound City in Van Nuys, California, and Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, California
Released: July 1980
| Players: | Tom Petty — vocals, guitar Mike Campbell — guitar Ron Blair — bass Benmont Tench — organ Stan Lynch — drums |
| Album: | Damn The Torpedoes (Backstreet, 1979) |
Though never a hit single, “Even The Losers” was one of the most popular radio tracks from the third Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, Damn The Torpedoes.
Petty said the song is “loosely based on an incident in Gainesville,” Florida, where he grew up. “I remember hanging out with some people on a bridge, we might have been on LSD, throwing rocks from the overpass.”
Petty added that while writing the song, “I had the hardest time finding the lines for the chorus. I didn't know what to sing… I went into the studio anyway, to teach everybody how the chords went, and just mumbled the melody through. I had no idea what I was going to sing. Then, on the first pass with the band, out came the line, 'Even the losers get lucky sometimes.' I was immensely pleased.”
Damn The Torpedoes was Petty's breakthrough album, selling two million copies and hitting Number Two on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks. Pink Floyd's The Wall kept it out of the top spot.
The album marked the beginning of Petty's association with producer Jimmy Iovine.
The release of Damn The Torpedoes was delayed first by Petty's split with his manager, Denny Cordell. Then Petty's original label, Shelter, was sold to MCA Records, and when Petty sued to get out of his contract, the new label threatened to impound the Torpedoes tapes. Petty even declared bankruptcy to prevent MCA from grabbing his assets.
During the legalities, the tapes were kept in a roadie's car so Petty could honestly claim they weren't in his possession.
The matter was eventually settled out of court and Petty landed on the MCA-distributed Backstreet label, with a better royalty rate. But Petty says it affected the way he approached the album. “It was a topic I couldn't get very far from — consciously, subconsciously, and otherwise. I didn't set up to write an album about it, but it just crept into everything. It was a very dramatic period of my life.”
