Breakdown – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

I miss Tom Petty, dammit. I think I’ve mentioned that before. One of my favorite Heartbreakers tracks is also one of the group’s most popular, as well as being the group’s first single. “Breakdown” is slow yet intense and has a certain feeling to it that is borderline sensual. It’s a super fun one to sing along to, and there are some tremendous renditions of it out there, one by Grace Jones, for whom Tom wrote a third verse. She does a very cool version with heavily reggae influenced instrumentation.

I love Mike Campbell‘s guitar work on this one, especially the intro. Very smooth stuff. Petty’s signature nasally vocals draw most of the attention on this one, but if you really listen to it, even though it’s short, there is a lot going on. The original studio recording was around 8 minutes, but they cut it to a little under 3. I really enjoy hearing Benmont Tench‘s keyboards in the live versions.

Audio – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv1ncpySOAY

Live – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNxfPAF1frM

Grace Jones – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbgcdYnZrmQ