Tom Petty Looks Back on Dylan and his career in December 10 Rolling Stone

Tom Petty’s Live Anthology: Deluxe Edition is releasing December 1, 2009. The 4 CD version is below but the full meal deal is the Blu-Ray, Vinyl, DVD and CD deluxe version if you can take the sticker price !

To celebrate its release Rolling Stone did a major interview with the long time rocker. Here’s a peak at the story.

Dylan excerpt

Mike Campbell once said that the offer to tour as Bob Dylan’s backing band came at a good time for the Heartbreakers, because you were kind of drifting, a bit rudder-less.

I read that too [laughs]. I think he was kind of bored at that point.

This was the time of [1985’s] Southern Accents
We were a little disorganized. It was weird, because we took time off from the road, which we had never really done. I don’t think it was that good for us, because we weren’t playing regularly. So when Bob came along, it invigorated us. He made us gel as a band. I don’t think he intentionally meant to [smiles]. And it was an eye-opener for me, because I got to step back into the band.

You were not the leader. Dylan was.
I wasn’t the leader of the whole band [laughs]. I was kind of musical director. But watching how he ran his show was a learning experience.

A lot of people say he just throws his songs to the wind. I didn’t get that feeling. A song might come up that we hadn’t rehearsed. But he had confidence in us that we would catch on quick. That was so liberating: “Wow, we just played something we’d never even practiced. That’s in the show now.” We started to try that when we went back to our shows. And Bob used to do these great things with Benmont, where he’d say, “OK, it’s just piano on this one,” and he’d go into a Hoagy Carmichael song. And Ben would know it. Ben knew how to play with him.

For the rest of the Internet excerpt, click Rolling Stone

See our earlier story Tom Petty announces new Blu-Ray The Live Anthology