By: Howie Edelson

Over 20 years after releasing his first solo album, Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty recalls the Heartbreakers responding to the project with both confusion and anger. Petty told Mojo, "They were really pissed. This is a bunch of people who've been running around since we were kids -- a lot of baggage. I think their biggest fear was that I was leaving, 'cos after that I joined the Traveling Wilburys. I wasn't (leaving) but I'd been on the road with them for two years straight and needed a break. I was toast."

He said that the band eventually contributed to the album with varying degrees of support: "Mike (Campbell) played on it quite a bit, Howie (Epstein) sang one background part, and Benmont (Tench) played a piano fade-out. Benmont was very angry; he came in, played, and walked out after one take -- never said a word, not hello or goodbye."

Petty remembers that the tensions started during the solo album led the way for drummer Stan Lynch's eventual departure: "Stan was really burned about it. . . (He) never got over it. And because it was such a huge hit, he was doubly insulted."

Petty says the key to keeping the Heartbreakers a living, breathing unit, is having them spend more time on the road than holed up in recording studios: "I've seen people that have been around a long time, and they just fall into routine and self-parody, and that's just not where we want to wind up. We want to keep this thing fresh, and we really believe in this music -- this rock and roll music that we're playing -- and we want to keep it fresh and contemporary, you know, and avoid any sort of routine to it."