Next October will mark the 10-year anniversary of Tom Petty’s death, just one week after the conclusion of his 40th anniversary tour with the Heartbreakers. Throughout that time, members of his band have played together on special occasions, but never the full lineup, and never billing themselves as the Heartbreakers. That changes Wednesday night when founding members Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch, and Ron Blair will perform with Chris Stapleton to open the Americana Awards before receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. At the end of the show, they’ll be joined by latter-day Heartbreakers Steve Ferrone and Scott Thurston.
The reunion performance comes at the same time the Tom Petty estate rolled out plans for a new box set, Origins 1971-1978, chronicling the formative years of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The box set — available as a four-disc or five-LP set, each one with a bonus Blu-ray and DVD — is packed with previously unreleased material, and contains collaborations with Al Kooper, Leon Russell, Jim Gordon, and Emory Gordy. It comes out November 6, but you can hear a preview of the unreleased track “Parade Out Loons” right now. There’s also a video for the song starring Young Sheldon actor Iain Armitage.
The box set begins with No Sleep Til L.A., which cobbles together the material Petty recorded, with and without his early band Mudcrutch, after moving from his hometown of Gainesville, Florida, to Los Angeles in 1971. Seven of the tracks have never appeared on an official release.
“Spanning recordings from Miami to Tulsa to Los Angeles, the album follows the band’s journey from their first-ever studio session at Criteria Studios in 1971, through the formative Tulsa sessions where Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch, and Ron Blair learned to make records, and into Los Angeles, where it all finally clicked into place,” the estate wrote in a statement. “It captures a singer, songwriter, and bandleader in rapid development, growing more assured with each session.”
Editor’s picks
It continues with remixed and mastered versions of Petty’s first two albums, 1976’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!, a live show from the Record Plant in 1977, and a disc entitled The Cut Out Bin, which showcases five tracks that Petty worked on as a solo artist alongside session musicians before putting together the Heartbreakers. The package wraps up with a DVD of the band’s appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978.
“[It was] one of the greatest performances we had ever seen by a band at the top of their game,” BBC host Bob Harris wrote in an essay included in the package. “They played music from another planet to a room packed with manic fans, in one of the most iconic venues in the world. It was an experience so powerful that five decades later we could still remember every chord, every song, every solo.”
The vinyl edition of Origins 1971-1978 comes with an 88-page fanzine containing liner notes by Bud Scoppa and longtime Rolling Stone writer David Fricke.
One year after Petty’s death, Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell predicted that the group would play again at some point. “We love each other too much not to do that,” he told Rolling Stone. “[But] we’ll never go out with Paul Rodgers [who performed with Queen for five years] or someone else. Nobody can fill those shoes. I can’t fill them and I don’t know anybody else that I would want to fill them.”
At the time, he was more intrigued by the idea of the Heartbreakers backing another musician in the studio. “In the stretch of my imagination, if there’s somebody that we really respect that would want to do an album with a band, we could maybe do that,” Campbell said. “And if we made an album together and that felt really good and we wanted to go on the road as a whole, doing different songs, maybe there’d be a place for that in the future. But that’s just pie-in-the-sky talk. But it definitely would have to be all new material. It wouldn’t be going out and doing Heartbreakers songs without Tom. That would just be like…ugh.”
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Origins 1971-1978 Tracklist
LP1: No Sleep Til L.A.
Parade of Loons
You’re Gonna Learn
Another Lonely Night
I Can’t Fight It†
Depot Street†
Sin City
Wild Eyes†
Unheard of Kind of Hero
Up in Mississippi Tonight†
Satisfy Yourself
Since You Said You Love Me†
Long Way
LP2: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (50th Anniversary Edition)
Rockin’ Around With You
Breakdown*
Hometown Blues
The Wild One, Forever
Anything That’s Rock ‘N’ Roll
Strangered in the Night
Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)*
Mystery Man
Luna
American Girl*
LP3: You’re Gonna Get It! (50th Anniversary Edition)
When the Time Comes†
You’re Gonna Get It†
Hurt
Magnolia
Too Much Ain’t Enough*
I Need to Know
Listen to Her Heart
No Second Thoughts
Restless*
Baby’s a Rock ‘N’ Roller*
LP4: Live From the Record Plant 1977
Pre-Show
Surrender
Jaguar and Thunderbird
Band Intros
American Girl
Al Kooper, Denny Cordell Intro
Fooled Again
Luna
How We Doin’ on Tape?
Listen to Her Heart†
I Need to Know
Strangered in the Night
Dog on the Run
(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66
LP5: The Cut Out Bin
Save Me
Making Some Noise
The Ballad of Harry, Neil & Tillie
Cry to Me†
Lost in Your Eyes
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DISC 6: Live on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test 1978
9 performances in HD and restored audio • Running time: 41 minutes • 48kHz 24-bit PCM stereo Picture: 4:3 Pillarbox / 29.97 fps • NTSC All Region
*Extended version
†New mix of previously released version
