Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Record Plant
Sausalito, CA
April 23, 1977
KSAN-FM broadcast

sourced from GWH’s master cassette recorded off the air…

1. Surrender
2. American Girl
3. Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)
4. I Need To Know
5. Strangered In The Night
6. Dog On The Run
7. Route 66

Tom Petty released his first album on November 9, 1976.

His sophomore release “You’re Gonna Get It” didn’t turn up until May 2, 1978, a long gap of a year and a half. In the interim, we had this live tape that was broadcast over San Francisco’s KSAN-FM.

Only three of the seven songs on the broadcast came from the first album. Leading off with “Surrender,” a great song that would remain unreleased until the Deluxe Edition of “Damn The Torpedoes” in 2010, Petty launches into a tight, focused set that plays to the band’s strengths: strong original material, the ability to extend a song with a jam that doesn’t wander off into aimless noodling, and tasteful covers of classic covers (in this case, the Nat King Cole Trio’s “Route 66,” by way of the Rolling Stones).

I was early into what was later called “New Wave” and “Punk” I’d spent ’74-’76 trying on a bunch of musical hats that didn’t fit. Jazz rock with Herbie Hancock and Jean Luc Ponty. British music hall bands like Sailor.

I bought Patti Smith’s 1st LP in late ’75, bought the Ramones LP the week it came out in April ’76…and that first Petty LP late in ’76.

I was an evangelist; I’d show up and try and talk my friends into listening to the Heartbreakers. They were unconvinced. “Punk” put them off. SHORT hair? What the hell was wrong with me?
From 2017 it’s hard to remember how badly that first Petty LP flopped; it didn’t get airplay. Petty worked that record, he toured relentlessly, played hundreds of gigs…and finally the LP broke in England and the success washed back across the Atlantic Ocean and in ’78 “Breakdown” finally cracked the U.S. charts.

In my efforts to win him a few fans, I handed out a lot of copies of this tape.

I went over to my pal Dennis’ apartment in late ’78 to buy…uh..to buy…uh something, let’s leave it at that. Dennis was a mainstream hard rock guy…Boston, Ted Nugent, that sort of thing.
He thought the Ramones were lunk-headed morons and Smith a caterwauling banshee. But Dennis told me he was “totally into this new punk rock thing.” He’d bought the first Petty album, now over a year and a half old.

Hey, Petty had a leather jacket, just like the Ramones, so the category wasn’t completely without merit. I had finally won a convert.

Petty wasn’t a punk, though, he was classic Rock & Roll musician who’d absorbed 60s rock influences (Beatles, Stones, Byrds) and a bunch of the ’50’s founding fathers licks (Berry, Diddley, Waters). He was himself, more than anything else; he wasn’t jumping on a bandwagon.

I was wrong about a lot of things back then. Eddie & The Hot Rods would not make it big here; Blondie would have to “go disco” before America would listen, the Count Bishops turned out to be a footnote…but I was not wrong about Petty. Damn, I was 100% spot on the money with everything I said about him back then. Tom Petty was the real deal.

Download