The Gift Tom Petty Gave to Cameron Crowe

By the time Cameron Crowe signed on to help Tom Petty make a movie, he was already a well-respected journalist. But once he finished Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party, he had a new job title, “director.”

“That was really a step that I didn’t ever think I’d ever be capable of making,” he tells UCR. “Though it was kind of a joke and a gift from him at the time, I never stopped directing.”

As Crowe shares in the below conversation, Heartbreakers Beach Party aired only once on MTV in 1983, an innovative promotional tool of sorts to shed light on the band’s latest album at the time, Long After Dark. But more than 40 years later, it goes far beyond than that, as a time capsule that chronicles the impressive journey that Petty and the Heartbreakers had taken in less than a decade.

As he details, the film captures the group navigating past a crossroads of sorts. Where were they headed? Some of the important particulars of the potential answers to that question were going to be determined by the decisions they were making collectively. In that way, Heartbreakers Beach Party helps to shed new light on Long After Dark, which has sometimes undeservedly felt like one of the odd records out in Petty’s catalog.

But heard from beginning to end, it’s clear that they were actually writing and recording some of the best music of their still-developing career. An expanded edition of the album, which lands on Friday (Oct. 18) helps to further colorize those thoughts.

Crowe shares his assessment of the Long After Dark period and also, some behind the scenes moments from Heartbreakers Beach Party, which screens this week on Oct. 17 and Oct. 20 courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing. You can find theaters and times at the film’s official website.

It’s always been clear how much Tom’s music lives in your DNA. What’s the moment that really cemented your love for Tom and the band?
I loved that first album. When I heard “American Girl,” I thought it was the greatest Byrds-influenced song that I’d ever heard. Later, we find out that it was a Bo Diddley riff that started it. It wasn’t even a Byrds thing. I just loved that that was a band that I could claim as my own. At Rolling Stone, there was always little fiefdoms where like, Dave Marsh wrote about Bruce Springsteen and the Who. And so and so wrote about Van Morrison and stuff. I was happy to say, like, I’m your Tom Petty guy here. I’m going to tell you that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are a great band. I pledged my love to that band very early on and went to see them at the Whisky where they opened for Blondie. They were amazing.

They opened with “Surrender” and they were killer that night. That’s where I met them and started writing about them. I was able to write about them through the years [after that]. There was one moment where I went on the road with them on the West Coast, I think from Seattle to San Francisco and L.A. I think they did a show in Seattle, where it was my first time seeing them at that stage [of their career]. They did this thing that made me think, “Well, this guy is going the distance. Petty knows how to put a show together.” It was all of the great songs from that era, but then the walkout music, they ended on a real high note and then boom, the lights come up and what is he playing? He’s playing the instrumental track, no vocal, of “Ruby Tuesday” as the audience walks out. It was like, that is the coolest walkout music I’ve ever heard — and what a vibe it sets! That was kind of when I knew that this was the horse that was going to go a long way.

I appreciated hearing Adria Petty talk in the film about how the perception of Long After Dark has evolved. It seems like you have a good amount of appreciation for the album as well.
I do. He really had something to say. I think he was at the crossroads then. I think he felt that there was a shot this band was going to go the distance. [Hard Promises] was a thoughtful follow-up to Damn the Torpedoes. But now, it was a time to kind of remind people that they did have rock in their arsenal. They did know how to blow it out and write all kinds of songs in many different genres. This was something that was going to last maybe into a place that years from now, you might still hear those records on the radio, as he says at the very end [of Heartbreakers Beach Party]. So, I felt like they were at the crossroads of believing that they had it in them to be one of the great bands. But it wasn’t going to be easy. That’s kind of where he is and that’s what he talks about, like really, from his heart, in the film and at that point.

How did you get involved with doing this film?
My buddy Danny Bramson had done great work at Universal by making their amphitheater this cool rock experience. So they kind of paid him back with a bonus: You get your own record company. He’d signed Nils Lofgren and it was good, he was signing some really cool people that were on the rise. Tom Petty had his blowup with MCA because they wanted to price his album at $8.98 and he didn’t want to go up another dollar with the money the fans would have to spend for a record, so he went into a protest mode. There was a legal dispute and all of that stuff. It was settled by [agreeing that] he would make records for Backstreet [Records], Danny’s label. Danny was smart enough at the beginning of MTV to say, “Well, let’s use some of the publicity budget and make a film. I’ll get my buddy Cameron to do a video interview and my other buddies [can handle the rest of it.”

Phil Savenick had a tiny bit of TV experience and [he also knew] a great editor, Doug Dowdle, who had worked with Stevie [Nicks]. “Let me just throw some money at this, instead of taking ads that may or may not work, let’s make a film.” That was how I got the shot. I was really kind of nervous about being on camera. Then, I started to feel like, “Oh wow, this is pretty cool. You can have Tom Petty with his guitar showing you how he wrote ‘The Waiting’? That’s cool.” You can ask him to tell [the story of] “The Wild One, Forever.” How’d you do that? There he is, showing you. So I kind of started getting really excited. Towards the end of it, he told me to pick up a camera and film him doing a song called “I’m Stupid.” I put the camera down and he said, “Congratulations, you’re a director.” I was like, wow! That was really a step that I didn’t ever think I’d ever be capable of making. Though it was kind of a joke and a gift from him at the time, I never stopped directing.

Watch the ‘Heartbreakers Beach Party’ Trailer

You’d done profiles before and you’d been on the road with bands. Still, it seems like this would have been a leap. What were the challenges in doing the film, for you?
Well, I look like a goofball to myself, asking the questions. But you know, as time went on, I began to realize that nobody was going to look at me. They’d be looking at Tom Petty, which made it easier. We have shots where it’s the two of us in the back of the limo and I’m asking questions and stuff like that. It’s just so funny to me today that he looks timeless, man. He looks timeless. I’m in a weird shirt I picked out because I wasn’t sure how to look cool and I’m asking him these questions. And he never throws a question back at me. He answered every question. He made me feel really comfortable. What he did was he created an atmosphere where you realize that a true documentary of someone you admire is about getting out of the way. Show them for who they are and also show them having fun. Because you don’t get into music or any job that you love for the grind of it. You get into it because it’s also fun!

So he made sure that we put the fun in there. The first cut of it was a little too traditional. He said, “You know, let’s make this more like a joint passed among friends.” So we went to Germany and he filmed some stuff, with the band walking around at night. It looked really good, the whole bit that ended up getting co-opted by Spinal Tap of being led into the wrong rooms and stuff, that came from Tom. There was just funny stuff, like the opening where Stan [Lynch] wakes him up — that’s real. They wake him up way too early and he gets pissed off and it’s like, this is the fun of the Heartbreakers, knowing they’re a real band, with a ways to go and a ways behind them. It’s a snapshot of the band. If you love the band, that’s a real sweet chapter to have documented. And he taught us to get out of the way.

I love that we get to see a bit of what was going on behind the scenes on the “You Got Lucky” video shoot. That’s a really cool clip.
It is cool. It tells a story and one of the reasons I think MTV didn’t want to show the film more than once, besides the fact that I think they thought it had some illegal footage in it, was that we did sneak in the showing of some of their videos. I think they were like, “Well, we’ll make the decision of when we show those videos.” We showed the whole “You Got Lucky” video. I remember the vibe going out there. You can see it in the movie — they hear “You Got Lucky” on the radio for the first time and Stan is playing drums with it and they’re really vibing with it. Petty starts playing Elvis [Presley] songs, you know, it’s like the first thing in the morning. They’re playing these Elvis songs and I’m really proud of this in the outtakes reel that’s at the end…it’s part of the film now, I guess.

Watch Tom Petty’s ‘You Got Lucky’ Video

He plays the Elvis song, “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame” and it’s so galvanizing. It’s amazing. Suddenly, we’re not just making fun of Elvis, but he’s really singing his song and it’s so [cool]. It was the thing that didn’t fit into the Heartbreakers Beach Party film that was first shown. That was the heartbreaking thing about that film, that that piece wasn’t in it. So we went back and put it in the additional [footage] and that’s the moment I think where you see everything to come. You see this guy and he’s going to be able to do everything he wants to do as a singer-songwriter and an artist and also be with that band. It’s not going to be Rod Stewart and the Faces, where Tom splits off. He can do it all in the course of this band. I just felt it in the back of the RV going to that video shoot that day.

You spoke to this a little bit, but with hindsight, how do you think Heartbreakers Beach Party shaped you with the things you have gone on to do, as far as method and structure, things like that?
[Crowe pauses] There’s a couple of things and it’s a wonderful question. I’m honored to have that question. Tom’s been kind of a voice in my head all along, even in Jerry Maguire, when Tom Cruise sings “Free Fallin’” in the car, that’s kind of the voice of Tom that never left me, that began with Heartbreakers Beach Party. It’s the marriage of what you love with the music that you love with the thing that you love to do — which is tell a story. I’m still doing it. It’s like, let the music guide you to that place in your heart where you have a story to tell and tell it with your whole heart. People will show up and people will feel it too. They’ll feel it, not only in your lifetime, but if you’re Tom Petty, way past that time. So that voice always did stay with me and it’s with me still.