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: Fall 1979
| Players: | Tom Petty–vocals, guitar Mike Campbell–guitar, squeeze box Ron Blair–bass Benmont Tench–piano, organ Stan Lynch–drums |
| Album: | Damn The Torpedoes (Backstreet) |
The first single from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' third album, "Don't Do Me Like That" was the band's breakthrough single, hitting Number 10 on the Billboard chart. It remained the band's highest charting single until "Free Fallin'" in 1989.
Damn The Torpedoes was also 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.
"Don't Do Me Like That" was first recorded in 1974 by Mudcrutch, a band that featured Petty and future Heartbreakers members Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. The song was written in California but recorded in Oklahoma.
Petty says the song wasn't being considered for the album, but one of the engineers, Tori Swenson, began lobbying for it. "I didn't really want to deal with the Mudcrutch songs after the band broke up… I was really shocked when it was the first single off the record and a big hit because I thought it really misrepresented the album. Here we had a hit, and it was the wrong one! But it all worked out."
Petty certainly didn't mind having a hit, however, and he told Musician magazine, "No matter what anybody ever tells you, life is never sweeter than when you have a hit record. I mean, it is a sweet g–damn feeling."
Just before Damn The Torpedoes was released, Petty and the Heartbreakers performed at the No Nukes benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The release of Damn The Torpedoes was delayed first by Petty's split with his manager, Denny Cordell. Then the Shelter label 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 legal actions, 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, and with a better royalty rate. However, 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."
