Remember When: Stan Lynch, a Founding Member of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Left the Band

Tom Petty‘s backing band doesn’t get as much credit as they deserve for bringing Petty’s songs and overall artistic vision to invigorating life. The Heartbreakers were a tight five-man unit during Petty’s commercial peak in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Stan Lynch played an integral role in that unit with his drumming, and he was also one of the biggest personalities in the band. Maybe too big, as clashes between Petty and him eventually led to Lynch being replaced as the band’s drummer. Here’s how it all went down.

A Close-Knit Band Starts to Fray

Tom Petty had his chance to be a solo act at the start of his career. But he found himself more comfortable as part of a group, which is why he assembled the Heartbreakers, some of whom he knew well from playing with them as Mudcrutch. Although like Petty he also hailed from Florida, Lynch only connected with the singer/songwriter when they were both in Los Angeles and the Heartbreakers were formed at the start of Petty’s recording career.

Oddly enough, the band’s greatest commercial success coincided with Lynch starting to feel some heat. Producer Jimmy Iovine proved particularly demanding about the drum sound when the band was making their breakout 1979 album Damn the Torpedoes, to the point that session drummers were tested on some of the songs. In the end, Petty and Iovine couldn’t find anybody to bring what Lynch did to the material.

The stresses of maintaining the level of success they’d earned, combined with the natural strain of spending so much time together, caused Petty to put the Heartbreakers on a temporary hiatus while he made a solo album (Full Moon Fever) in 1989 with producer Jeff Lynne. During that time, Lynch began to broaden his own musical horizons, adding important songwriting and producing duties to Don Henley’s hugely successful album The End of the Innocence, also released in 1989.

Lynch’s Departure

When Petty reassembled the Heartbreakers to make the 1991 album Into the Great White Open, with Lynne producing, Lynch rankled at the lack of input he had into his drum parts, which often came via overdubs instead of in sessions with the rest of the group. When Petty began making his next solo record with Rick Rubin, he used the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, and Howie Epstein throughout the record, but did not call Lynch to play.

Lynch’s last session with the band came on the 1993 song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” which was released in a Heartbreakers’ greatest hits package. He had also set up shop in Florida while the rest of the band were located in Los Angeles, furthering the disconnect.

In October 1994, the Heartbreakers played a pair of benefit concerts in California for Neil Young’s Bridge School. Lynch complained about having to play songs from Full Moon Fever, since he hadn’t been a part of that record. It was clear there was no repairing the relationship between Lynch and the rest of the band, so he was let go following those shows.

The Aftermath

In interviews after the fact, both Tom Petty and Stan Lynch accepted blame for the way they clashed during their time together in the band. They were both strong-willed individuals who struggled at times to compromise. On Lynch’s part, by the end of his tenure in the band, he had seen a future in music where he could be much more of a contributor on the creative end, a path he followed in collaborations with Henley and John Mellencamp, among others.

Thankfully, this story has a somewhat happy ending. When Petty and the Heartbreakers played at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, Lynch, who had been replaced as drummer by Steve Ferrone, returned to the fold. The reunion was a pleasant one, and Lynch and Petty put aside past differences.

It’s impossible to listen to those early Heartbreakers’ records without hearing the snap and swing that Lynch brought to the table as the drummer. He was also the band’s chief harmony singer during that time. Even though they endured a somewhat turbulent relationship, the work that Petty and Lynch together is unassailable.

Photo by Pete Still/Redferns