Like his contemporaries Graham Parker and Elvis Costello, Petty presented himself as an angry young underdog, his songs the soundtrack to an alternate universe in which losers get lucky, rebels are worshipped, and everybody’s got to fight to be free. Later on, high profile conflicts with major record labels would continue to paint the grandstanding Petty as a sort of nobly heroic enfant terrible, even when his music owed a bigger debt to the Byrds or the Beatles than to any act that might have packed out CBGBs.

Petty - no dummy - played the role to the hilt: In a 1977 television interview, he explained that he and the Heartbreakers “had to be in the ‘new wave'” because they “weren’t in the ‘old wave.'” It was a bon mot on par with Beatle George’s claim to be neither rocker nor mod, but a “mocker.” This disassociation with the so-called “old wave,” combined with the band’s estimable blend of power pop, pub rock and nervy punk, was enough to ingratiate Petty to a new breed of record buyers who associated acts like Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac with the worst kind of rock star extravagance. Upon its release in 1976, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ debut album had every indication of being a flop until the British press embraced the album, suddenly anointing Petty and his band as the torchbearers of a new hybrid of rock and punk called new wave. Emerging during that brief period between ’70s rock bloat and the nascent punk and new wave scenes, Petty was one of very few heftily subsidized young artists embraced by both sides of this divide. Much of this success is attributable to the fact that time has always been on Petty’s side. From his early days as leather-jacketed pseudo-punk thumbing his nose at a greedy and gormless Establishment to the baked, flannel-clad cornball of his later years, Petty has managed to maintain a loyal following while constantly attracting new fans. Tom Petty is the rare classic rocker on whom almost everyone - boomers, punks, alt-rock brats, classic rock radio junkies, and normals alike - can agree.

Petty’s music advances the notion of rock and roll as utopian ideal, and the tremendous success of his band Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers proves that populism is not necessarily the byproduct of compromise. If so-called rockists ever decide to secede and form their own nation, Tom Petty is a shoo-in for the country’s first presidential nominee.

Tom petty torrent discography