Petty regroups with one of his first bands, Mudcrutch, which will perform in Malibu April 12.
By Laura Tate / Associate Publisher / Editor
Malibu resident Tom Petty is going back to his roots. He’ll be onstage April 12 at the Malibu Performing Arts Center as part of the third installment of “From Malibu With Love,” a concert benefiting The Midnight Mission, which helps the homeless. However, he won’t be performing with “The Heartbreakers,” and his name is not headlined on the show’s playbill.
Petty will perform with a band called Mudcrutch, with members Tom Leadon, Randall Marsh, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, the Florida band Petty belonged to more than 35 years before his Grammy and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career took off (Campbell and Tench are members of “The Heartbreakers,” as well).
As Petty tells it on the Mudcrutch Web site, the band was simply the incarnation of his first band, called The Epics; just a name change took place in the late ’60s. Leadon, who, until Petty called about regrouping, had been giving guitar lessons back home, and Petty are the first original members. There were, according to Petty, quite a few member changes in the next five to six years the band was together, and by the time the group came out to Los Angeles in the early ’70s, Tench, Campbell and Marsh had joined Petty and Leadon. However, it seemed people kept coming and going, and eventually “the band called it a day,” Petty said.
The rest, as far as “Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers” is concerned, is written in history.
Now, it seems, Petty is rewriting history by coming up with the idea of regrouping with Mudcrutch, which is releasing its debut album this month, called “Highway Companions.”
The background essence of this Gainesville, Florida band is country rock mixed with bluegrass, with Petty on bass, as Warren Zanes writes in the story of their reunion on the Mudcrutch Web site. (Petty first played bass with Mudcrutch, and switched to guitar when bassist Charlie Souza joined them briefly in Los Angeles.)
Zanes writes, “Mudcrutch is ultimately about a band sound, a sound that was just too good to leave back there,” referring to Petty’s answer as to why he decided to regroup Mudcrutch. “I guess I started thinking that we left some music back there, and it was time to go and get it,” Petty had told Zanes.
Vocals and songwriting are a combined effort on the album, and it seems Petty’s effort to focus on the band as a whole is reflected in the poster advertisement for the upcoming concert: a faceless, bearded (ala ZZ Top) man.
The concert is produced by Norman Harris of Norman’s Rare Guitars with help from MPAC. Harris has brought out top-notch performers to Malibu for the first two fundraisers, all benefiting The Midnight Mission, a nonprofit organization that helps homeless people with meals, lodging, medical care and job placement. Harris, who would regularly go downtown and help distribute toys to needy children during the holidays at a mission called Santa’s Village, wanted to do something on a grander scale to help people in need. So he came up with the idea of a benefit concert.
Top rockers and musicians regularly come and go at Norm’s store, and he thought why not try and get these great musicians he knows to contribute.
“Seeing all these rock stars come in, I thought maybe I could get these guys together [to do something],” Harris said. “I called Richard Sambora, a great friend and one of the bighearted guys of all time, and then called Jackson Browne, then Los Lobos, [and they] all said they were in.”
That was April of last year. He did another one in December, which featured John Mayall (the godfather of British Blues), Kevin Cronin and Dave Amato of REO Speedwagon, and lead guitarist Laurence Juber of Paul McCartney’s “Wings.”
As for Petty, like the rest, Harris said, “He’s doing this for me as a favor.”
Harris gave him a little incentive: “I had a guitar he really wanted-a Rickenbacker, very rare, made for export in England -[and] I agreed to sell it to him,” if he did the concert.
The guitar had the original receipt from the music store where The Beatles bought all their equipment, Harris said.
“I want you to have it,” Harris told Petty, “but I would really like you to do my concert…”
Petty, Harris said, who doesn’t do this type of thing very often, playing in a 500-seat venue, “would have done it for me anyhow.”
“He’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart,” Harris said. “He is a Malibu resident and wants to set an example for other residents, to do something good for the needy.”
The tickets for the show cost between $150 for reserved seating to $2,500, which includes VIP premier seating with champagne service, and a private seated dinner, pre- and post-show cocktail parties, as well as a gift bag.
The tickets might seem pricey to some, but, as Harris said, “Tom Petty plays [at venues with] 18,000 seats and up. To see him at a smaller venue, up close, in town, is historic,” and “it’s the first time [the band Mudcrutch] has played in 30 years.”
“From Malibu With Love III” takes place April 12 at the Malibu Performing Arts Center, 23825 Stuart Ranch Rd. Malibu. Tickets can be purchased online at malibuperformingartscenter.com and www.tix.com, or by calling 310.456.6722.