Ian

1976. Gainesville, Florida, to Los Angeles. Tom Petty is 25 years old. He just landed a record deal for his band, the Heartbreakers. He is thrilled. He signs everything put in front of him. Buried in the fine print, he signs away his songwriting and publishing rights. The price: just $10,000. He does not realize what he has given up. Not yet. 1976–1978. The band's debut album lands with barely a ripple in America. Then "Breakdown" becomes a hit in Britain. It gets re-released in the US. It finally catches fire. A second album, "You're Gonna Get It!," goes gold. Petty is now a rising star. On paper, at least. In reality, he has almost nothing to show for it financially. 1979. Los Angeles. Petty's label, Shelter Records, gets sold to industry giant MCA. Nobody asks Petty how he feels about it. He refuses to go along quietly. He says he will not be "bought and sold like a piece of meat." MCA disagrees. MCA and Shelter both sue him for breach of contract. Petty keeps recording anyway. He pays for the sessions himself. He racks up over $500,000 in studio costs, out of his own pocket. Then he refuses to hand the tapes over. He has one of his guitar techs hide them. Nobody at MCA can find the masters. Here's what makes it worse: Petty has almost no leverage. He is one guy against a major label with lawyers on retainer. His debts pile up: $576,638 owed, against just $56,845 in assets. He could lose everything. His music. His band. His name on his own record. So he does something almost unheard of for a rock star. May 23, 1979. Tom Petty files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is not a financial collapse. It is a calculated legal weapon. Bankruptcy court can void unfair contracts. Petty is betting his career on that single fact. He later explains his math simply: no matter how hard he worked, the people who trapped him in that contract would always profit far more than he did. MCA is stunned. They did not expect this. The label fears other artists will copy the move next. Within months, MCA folds. They release Petty from the old contract. Then they turn around and sign him to a brand-new $3 million deal. A label built just for him, called Backstreet Records. He finally gets his publishing rights back too. 1979. "Damn the Torpedoes." The album he fought so hard to protect is released. It goes double platinum. Petty is now a certified superstar. 1981. "Hard Promises." MCA is ready to cash in. The label wants to raise the album's price from $8.98 to $9.98. They call it "superstar pricing." One extra dollar, aimed squarely at Petty's new fame. Petty says no. Flatly, no. MCA had promised him $8.98 from the start. Now they are quietly changing the deal. Minimum wage, at the time, is $3.35 an hour. A dollar is not nothing to his fans. He threatens to withhold the album completely. He even jokes about naming it "$8.98," just to make his point impossible to miss. "If we don't take a stand," he says, "records are going to be $20." MCA blinks first, again. They agree to release "Hard Promises" at the original $8.98 price. Petty gets the last word anyway. The album cover shows him standing in a record store, right in front of a bin of albums priced at $8.98. Years later. Petty's bankruptcy strategy does not stay a one-time trick. Other artists study it, and some later use versions of it themselves to escape crushing label debt. He is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. He goes on to sell more than 80 million records worldwide. He never becomes known as a lawsuit-happy troublemaker. He becomes known as the guy who simply refused to be pushed around. Tom Petty dies on October 2, 2017, at age 66. Decades later, artists still cite his fights with MCA when they talk about who really controls a record, a song, or a price tag. A 25-year-old with no leverage stood his ground anyway. The industry eventually had to meet him there. ~Old Photo Club