For those familiar with This Is Spinal Tap, the 1984 “mockumentary” about a metal band struggling to succeed, you’ll likely remember one of the film’s funniest scenes in which bassist Derek Smalls becomes trapped in a small pod during one of the band’s shows.
Something remarkably similar happened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers during their 1995 Dogs With Wings tour, in support of Petty’s 1994 solo album Wildflowers. On the very first evening of the trek in Louisville, Kentucky, a large golden-winged dog was floated out above the audience during “It’s Good to Be King,” only for the set-piece to malfunction and get stuck above everyone’s heads. It was, to put it mildly, distracting.
You can see footage of the dog below in a clip posted by the Petty estate.
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Typically, Petty kept a tight and well-oiled schedule, especially with decades of performing experience under his belt. “When you’re on a tour, it becomes very routine,” he recalled in the 2005 book Conversations With Tom Petty. “Tours are very organized. Everything’s done by the book.”
Which doesn’t mean there isn’t room for error or the possibility that something, in this case an enormous golden dog, could go wrong.
“Look, if you’re going out in front of 20,000 people and you’re not nervous, there’s something wrong with you,” he said. “You know? You’re not plugged in somewhere if you’re not nervous.”
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Though the below clip states that the dog was retired that night, “never to fly again,” a Chicago Tribune review from around this time notes its presence at the United Center.
“A good-natured tribute to Willie Dixon, ‘I Just Wanna Make Love to You,’ was a bit beyond the band,” the review (via thepettyarchives.com) said in March of 1995, “but ‘It’s Good to Be King’ brought the night’s one true embarrassment: A statue of a flying dog was trolley-lined over the audience while a mirror ball spun for no apparent reason.”
Later reviews that fail to mention the dog suggest that it was indeed removed from the show. The Dogs With Wings tour lasted until Oct. 8, 1995, with a closing performance in New Orleans.
“I thought touring might feel like a chore at first,” Petty told the Tuscaloosa News a few days before the tour ended, noting that prior to Dogs With Wings, he had not toured in approximately three and a half years, “that I would need a period of adjustment since I’ve been in one place for two years making Wildflowers, but it came back really quickly.”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
