“We All Blamed Each Other”: This Iconic Tom Petty Track That Almost Never Happened

From Tom Petty’s laidback vocals to Mike Campbell’s effortlessly cool guitar licks, part of the appeal of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was how easy they made it all seem—but one iconic Tom Petty track proved to be the exception. Sonically speaking, listeners would be none the wiser.

But for those in the studio, this track became so difficult it resulted in band members leaving town, some band members getting fired, and countless restless nights for everyone involved.

An Instrumental Exercise Turned Into A Smash Hit

As was often the case in the songwriting partnership of Tom Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell, the Heartbreakers’ 1980 track “Refugee” started as an instrumental demo that Campbell recorded to tape. Campbell had originally set out to practice soloing in F# minor, but after stumbling upon the progression that would eventually become the groundwork for “Refugee,” Campbell knew he had to share the track with Petty.

Petty found inspiration just as easily. “I remember writing [“Refugee”] really quickly to his tape,” the Heartbreakers frontman told Paul Zollo in Conversation with Tom Petty. “The words came really quick. That bridge was on the tape. I just had to come up with a melody. I don’t think he saw it the same way as me where the chorus would go. But it worked out great.”

The speed with which Petty was able to turn Campbell’s bare-boned instrumental into a full-fledged rock hit surprised the guitarist. In a 2021 conversation with Classic Rock magazine, Campbell said, “All I remember is giving him a cassette. I didn’t think much about it. Then, the next rehearsal we had, he said, ‘I worked on your tape, and I got some words to the song.’ I said, ‘Oh, really?’ He played it to me, and I was just blown away.”

“The band tried to learn it, and that was a whole other movie. Trying to capture that demo with the band live took a while,” Campbell continued. And he certainly wasn’t exaggerating, either.

The Iconic Tom Petty Track Almost Didn’t Make It To The Album

After Tom Petty came up with the words to complement Mike Campbell’s instrumental arrangement, the Heartbreakers took “Refugee” into the studio with producer Jimmy Iovine and engineer Shelly Yakus. That’s when the real work began. The band’s first hiccup was trying to find the perfect snare tone, which took hours to achieve. But even then, the song wasn’t grooving the way it did in the demo tape—a frustrating roadblock they started to blame on Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch.

“We were so hard on Stanley,” Campbell recalled to Classic Rock. “He worked really hard to get this drum sound. [The demo] had a swing to it that Stan didn’t quite understand. None of us did really, but it just seemed to work. We all blamed each other, but we never doubted the song. We just kept at it until, finally, one day, we played it and said, ‘Oh, that’s it.’”

However, before the band could reach that point in the studio, Campbell left town for two days in the middle of the session in an unprecedented show of frustration. The band even fired Lynch for a brief time before inviting him back into the group. All in all, the band recorded the track over 100 times. After session drummer Jim Keltner suggested the band add a shaker to the percussion track, “Refugee” finally had the swing they were after.

“Refugee” is considered one of Petty’s best songs, and it’s easy to see why. The band’s refusal to stray from their instinctual feel of the song paid off. As Campbell said in 2003, “[That song] always makes me happy. Maybe because it was so hard to get on the tape. There was a time when I thought it would never come out. It always sounds like it really captured a moment.”

Photo by Mychal Watts/WireImage