How a Drum Loop and Synthesizer Kick-Started Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “You Got Lucky”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ fifth studio album Long After Dark landed with a series of firsts for the band. It was the first to feature bassist and backing vocalist Howie Epstein, replacing Ron Blair. It also marked a new visual period for a band that reluctantly embraced music videos.

Long After Dark arrived a year after the launch of MTV. The music channel helped the band’s single “You Got Lucky” become a hit in 1982 with a thematic video that set the standard for how rock bands used the era’s most powerful marketing tool. Though it wasn’t their first video, the cinematic treatment was groundbreaking and reportedly impressed even Michael Jackson.

Thanks to the video’s success, fans began stopping Petty on the streets. “That was when we really saw MTV change our daily lives,” Petty said. He had used his discomfort in front of the camera and successfully turned it into an endearing on-screen persona.

But “You Got Lucky” isn’t your typical Tom Petty heartland rock song. There are more synthesizers than guitars as the Heartbreakers embraced new wave and drum loops.

Good Love Is Hard To Find

There aren’t many songwriters who can craft a better girl-done-me-wrong tune than Petty. He’d always written with a chip on his shoulder—the persistent underdog from Gainesville, Florida. Still, his partner wants to leave, and he offers a bitter warning before she goes.

You better watch what you say
You better watch what you do to me
Don’t get carried away
Girl, if you can do better than me

Petty sings about how good love is hard to find. You got lucky, he says. It brings to mind Chappell Roan’s parting words to a hesitant lover: Well, good luck, babe.

You put a hand on my cheek
And then you turned your eyes away
If you don’t feel complete
If I don’t take you all of the way

Drum Loop

Guitarist Mike Campbell constructed a loop from a few bars of Stan Lynch’s drum beat. This was long before Pro Tools or Logic, where loops are now created in seconds using only a few keyboard clicks. Campbell’s loop was made by splicing the recorded tape and running it around the studio room, producing repeated bars of music.

The guitarist explained on the Life of the Record podcast how the drum loop gave “You Got Lucky” its rigid feel. He then demoed the music on a 4-track recorder and played it for Petty, who wrote the lyrics. However, the chordal elements were written on a keyboard, which Benmont Tench later recorded using a synthesizer.

Tench showed reluctance to play the synthesizer. Lynch described him as a “purist” and thought maybe the synth was just the “flavor of the month.” The single echoes the ’80s synth-heavy hits by The Cars. (Petty wasn’t the only rocker flirting with keyboards; two years later, Bruce Springsteen created his own synth-rock classic, “Dancing in the Dark.”) Though Tench’s faux brass synth dominates the track, Campbell layered in sparse guitar textures that recall old Western films.

Petty had the idea for the song’s production to elicit an Ennio Morricone “kind of Clint Eastwood Western feel.” When the time came to film a video, Petty said, “I really just wanted an excuse to go play around in the desert.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky

The post-apocalyptic video begins with Petty and Campbell exiting a hovercraft in a desolate location. They walk toward a ragged tent when Petty discovers a cassette player. He presses play, and the song begins. The rest of the Heartbreakers arrive in a motorcycle and sidecar.

Inside the tent, the band finds dusty television sets and vintage recording equipment. The others watch Campbell as he locates a guitar and plays the twangy riff. The clips of Petty in a top hat and bandana became iconic visuals at the dawn of MTV.

Unlike most contemporary videos, Petty didn’t want to lip-sync into the camera. They chose, instead, to make a “little movie.” That’s how Petty and his lighting director Jim Lenahan arrived at the sci-fi Western treatment for “You Got Lucky.” A treatment that had nothing to do with the song’s meaning other than the dumb luck of stumbling upon a recording studio in the middle of a vast, empty desert.

All of it, from the song’s origin to the music video, had the band experimenting with technology. Petty and the Heartbreakers made a pioneering music video without ever having seen MTV. Perhaps luck was on their side.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Photo by Solomon N’Jie/Getty Images