“Breakdown” by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

"Breakdown" was the first single off Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' self-titled debut on Shelter Records, and its hook turned up almost by accident. Mike Campbell's guitar lick originally surfaced only near the end of the track. Then one night Petty was playing the tape back with Dwight Twilley in the studio, and Twilley, digging that lick, told him to run it through the whole song. Petty took the advice, rounded up the Heartbreakers at 2 AM and cut it again.

The keeper stretched to seven or eight minutes before being trimmed to 2:39 for the album. Jeff Jourard sits in on guitar and Phil Seymour, Twilley's bandmate, adds backing vocals. It went top 40 in the US and Canada, and onstage Petty sometimes folded it into Ray Charles's "Hit the Road Jack", a pairing preserved on The Live Anthology.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.