“I felt they just sold us like we were groceries or frozen pork,” he said in the 2007 documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream. Petty had become entangled in a nasty lawsuit when MCA acquired his label Shelter Records. However, the record wasn’t without conflict. With the scorching opener “Refugee,” the desperate ditty “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and the yearning “Here Comes My Girl,” the record was a breakthrough for the Florida band, instantly making them stars.
Released 40 years ago this week, Damn the Torpedoes was the group’s most successful album to date, spending nine weeks at Number Two on the charts behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
The rest of the band - guitarist Mike Campbell, drummer Stan Lynch, bassist Ron Blair, and keyboardist Benmont Tench - digs in behind him, with Lynch singing background vocals. In the video above, Petty, dressed in a New Wave–style polka-dot shirt, tears through the song, singing about an unpredictable woman who hates her boss. Before they launched into the classic “American Girl” from their 1976 self-titled debut, the band played “Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid),” a track from their then-new record Damn the Torpedoes. On June 6th, 1980, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers arrived in Hollywood to perform on the short-lived variety show Fridays.
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