Tom Petty Called Out Bob Dylan After He Stormed Off Stage During a Concert
In the 1980s, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty toured together. While they both valued the experience — Dylan didn’t ever want to lose The Heartbreakers as his backing band — things didn’t always run smoothly. For one thing, Dylan felt creatively blocked in the early stages of the tour. Tempers also ran high. Petty and his bandmate fought, and Dylan stormed off the stage in the middle of a show. Luckily, Petty was able to coax him back out to perform.
The two musicians toured together in the 1980s
After performing together at Farm Aid in 1985, Dylan invited Petty and the Heartbreakers to join him on a tour of Australia.
“We’d all been huge Dylan fans, and we were very intrigued by the idea of playing with Bob,” Petty said, per American Songwriter. “So off we went. And that went on for two years. We’d do part of it and then more would get added on, and then more would get added on. We really did the world with Bob Dylan.”
Petty realized they finally had to break up the tour after an arsonist burned his house down. Still, he would work with Dylan again in The Traveling Wilburys.
Tom Petty coaxed Bob Dylan back onstage after cracking a joke
During one show, Dylan grew increasingly worked up about the brightness of the stage lights. He thought they were too bright and threatened to leave if they weren’t turned down. Evidently, nobody lowered the brightness level because Dylan stormed off the stage in the middle of the show. The Heartbreakers kept playing, and Petty followed Dylan backstage.
“Bob was going, ‘F***ing lights. I’m not going back out there. It’s like f***ing Disneyland out there,'” George Harrison’s son Dhani told Rolling Stone. “And Tom says to Bob, ‘You’ve never been to Disneyland.'”
The moment broke through Dylan’s anger and frustration.
“Bob just started laughing,” Dhani said. “Tom called him on it, straight out. They walked back out there and carried on playing.”
Dhani believed that this brief backstage moment “says everything about the way Tom interacted with people: honest but cheeky.”
Bob Dylan did the same thing for Tom Petty at a different show
At another show, the roles were reversed. After an onstage altercation with drummer Stan Lynch, Petty stormed off.
“I looked at him, not to communicate something, just looked at him for some reason, and he took his drumsticks in one hand and just shot me the bird, mouthed the words’ F*** you!'” Petty said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “I don’t know what it was, but something about it made me so mad. I went into a rage, just pushed my guitar off, walked from the stage, shut myself in my dressing room.”
Dylan followed him backstage and was able to calm him down.
“Finally, the door opens, and it’s Bob,” Petty said in Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “He comes in and goes, ‘Hey man, I heard you got mad. Don’t be mad. Let’s go back and play.’ I was so angry. I said, ‘Stan gets…’ But Bob stopped me, said, ‘No, no, don’t go there. Everything’s okay. John Lee Hooker’s here. We’re going to play with John Lee Hooker. C’mon, you don’t want to miss that. Let’s go play.’ So I went with Bob and John Lee Hooker, went up and finished the set.”
