A rock band declares bankruptcy to escape a contract, then channels that fury into a top-10 album. The band was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the album was Damn the Torpedoes, their third studio record, released on 19 October 1979.
The contract fight with MCA
The trouble began when Petty's distributor, ABC Records, was sold to MCA. Petty argued that his contract could not simply be handed to another company without his consent, so he declared it void. MCA sued him for breach of contract, and Petty responded by declaring himself bankrupt to kill the deal.
The standoff ended with a new contract on Backstreet Records, a subsidiary of MCA, but the fight left its mark. The album's title came from Admiral David Farragut's phrase 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!' — a fitting slogan for a musician who had just stared down a corporation.
Recording with Jimmy Iovine
Petty produced the record with Jimmy Iovine, and the new co-producer sharpened the band's sound into something noticeably more advanced than their earlier work. Every song on the album was written by Petty, except 'Refugee' and 'Here Comes My Girl', which he wrote with guitarist Mike Campbell.
Campbell also played bass on those two tracks, and added accordion to 'Refugee', giving the song its strange, wheezing texture. The single 'Refugee' reached number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, while 'Don't Do Me Like That' climbed to number 10.
Chart performance and critical standing
The album became the group's breakthrough and their first to enter the top 10. On the Billboard 200 it rose to number 2 and stayed there for seven weeks. The only record that kept it from the top spot was Pink Floyd's The Wall. The album's legacy has only grown over time. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed it at number 313 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and in the 2020 revision it climbed to number 231. It also appeared at number 537 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums in 2000.
Petty summed up the frustration in an interview with Westwood One: 'I love Pink Floyd, but that year I hated them.' The sales told a happier story — Damn the Torpedoes earned triple platinum status from the RIAA. The album has been reissued several times to meet demand. In 2001, it was remastered by Joe Gastwirt and released on HDCD. A deluxe edition followed on 9 November 2010, with two CDs, two 180-gram LPs, and a Blu-ray Audio disc. All tracks, including previously unreleased material, were remastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering Studios in Hollywood from the original analog master tapes.
The fight with MCA could have ended Petty's career. Instead, it gave him a reason to push harder, and the result was an album that turned a struggling rock band into one of the biggest acts in America. The album's reach extended far beyond the United States. It topped the charts in New Zealand, reached number 2 in Canada, and charted in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. By the end of 1980, it was the third best-selling album of the year in New Zealand and the fifth in the United States. The recording sessions brought in some notable collaborators. Donald "Duck" Dunn played bass on "You Tell Me," while Jim Keltner, uncredited, added a samba shaker to "Refugee." Audiophiles can also find the album in high-resolution digital form, offered at 96 kHz/24-bit through retailers such as HDTracks.